Don't Know Much About Mythology - Kenneth C. Davis [27]
Ptolemaic Period 332–30
332 Alexander the Great conquers Egypt; founds the city of Alexandria.
323 Death of Alexander the Great.
305 Ptolemy I Soter, one of Alexander’s Greek generals, becomes king of Egypt; adapts pharaonic titles and Egyptian worship.
290 In Alexandria, Euclid sets out principles of geometry in Elements.
250–100 In Alexandria, Hebrew religious texts are translated into Greek, the version of the Old Testament known as the Septuagint.
c. 200 Alexandria is the scientific capital of the world, famed for its museum, library, and university.
146 Rome conquers and destroys Carthage.
49 Roman civil war. Julius Caesar in Egypt with Cleopatra.
46 Caesar returns to Rome with Cleopatra as his mistress and is made dictator of Rome.
44 Cleopatra murders Ptolemy XIV, coruler of Egypt. Julius Caesar assassinated in the Roman Senate.
41 Marc Antony meets Cleopatra and follows her to Egypt.
31 Battle of Actium; Octavian defeats Marc Antony.
30 Deaths of Marc Antony and Cleopatra; annexation of Egypt by Rome.
4 Death of King Herod; widely accepted date of birth of Jesus.
For the next five centuries, Egypt remained a province of the Roman Empire. But the rise of Christianity, and later the ascendancy of Islam in the Arab world, marked the final end of the old religions of Egypt. According to Christian lore, St. Mark, a Christian missionary, founded the Egyptian (Coptic) church in Alexandria around 40 CE. The city, which already had a large community of Jews, soon also developed a thriving Christian community. During the early years of the Christian Church, the bishops of Alexandria exercised enormous influence in defining Christian beliefs and practices.
Following the conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity under Emperor Constantine in 313 CE, the Roman emperor Theodosius ordered the closing of all pagan temples throughout the empire in 383 CE. Later imperial decrees by Theodosius and Emperor Valentinian in 435 CE called for the complete destruction of these temples, many of them replaced with Christian churches or shrines. (This was also the fate of the Olympian temples in Greece, site of the Olympic Games for more than 1,200 years.) Vestiges of the old Egyptian religion were permitted to continue in Egypt, even though Christianity was now the official religion in Egypt.
As the Roman Empire went into its decline, Arab armies claimed Egypt and introduced Islam. In 642, Arab Muslims conquered Egypt. The Arabs moved the capital from Alexandria to what is now Cairo. Modern Egypt is primarily Sunni Muslim (94 percent); Coptic Christians and other groups represent a small minority.
A
ncient Egypt. Say the words and conjure the images. For movie lovers, it may be the buff and bald Yul Brynner in a chariot chasing down a white-bearded Charlton Heston as Moses in The Ten Commandments. For devotees of pseudoscience, it might be the premise of the best-selling book Chariots of the Gods, which argues that alien astronauts landed their spaceships in the desert and built the pyramids long, long ago. A younger generation of music fans might be forgiven if the best vision of Egypt they can muster up comes from Michael Jackson’s 1992 video “Remember the Time,” featuring comedian Eddie Murphy as a pharaoh, with supermodel Iman imperiously enthroned beside him as his queen. Let’s face it. As victims of the myth-making mass media, we have been served up more than a fair share of badly distorted images of ancient Egypt, a culture that stood longer than any other in history. That’s unfortunate, because in reality, the Egyptians created a society that prized both morality and beauty—physical and artistic—and expressed those ideals through one of the most unique and rich systems of mythology in the ancient world. A very old set of gods and goddesses formed the soul of one of the most grandiose and unsurpassed civilizations in history. The Egyptian stories of animal-headed deities, sun gods sailing through eternity,