Poole, Reginald S.: The cities of Egypt (London, 1882)

ALEXANDRIA.

193

very time when Pergamus and Rhodes were showing
great originality and mastery of form. When the Greeks
at Alexandria returned to the poetry and imagination
of philosophy, art, which cannot live without a perpetual
tradition, could no longer be revived.

The first traces of a definite school of philosophy at
Alexandria are seen where we should least expect them.
In an Egyptian temple of the Ptolemaic age, when we
are given the key which the genius of Mariette dis-
covered, we find ourselves in the presence of national
ideas transformed by Greek influence. The very art
has received a new impulse, and the graces of Greek
architecture, dead at Alexandria, live again in the
Thebais under an Egyptian shape. The system of the
different parts of the edifice is changed from the mere
chance of older times to a strict method. Each hall
and chamber has its proper purpose, its suitable sculp-
tures and inscriptions, leading up from the lower stages
of knowledge to initiation into the higher truths. At
the end of the temple, in the sanctuary, the king
worships the Ideas of Plato's philosophy, the Beautiful,
the True, and the Good.

Yet this transfusion of new life into the long dead
o