these, however, were local deities merely: this city was famous
for the worship of one animal, that for the worship of another;
and the people of one village treated with contempt, what those
of a neighbouring o o villaoge held sacred.
W e have already observed, that Christianity soon took root in
grecian Egypt, where it quickly flourished, but soon corrupted as
it spread. The verbal disputes that arose, and ultimately produced
scenes disgraceful to humanity from a source calculated to exalt
human nature to it’s highest pitch of perfection, were not all it
had to lament. Among the egyptians, previously addicted to a
life of contemplation, seclusion, and pious indolence, monachism
soon spread wide, with it’s unnatural and unholy vows of celibacy,
idleness, and poverty; certainly far from beneficial to the general
morals of those sects by which it has been cherished, and even in
the present day not extinguished in some of the enlightened nations,
as they are called, of Europe. The city of Oxyrinchus so
abounded with monasteries, that the greater number of it’s inhabitants
we are told consisted of monks, and the deserts of the
Thebaid were peopled with anchorites.
The copts, or present natives of Egypt, still profess Christianity;
of which, descended to them through this polluted channel,
they know little but the name; their monkish priests themselves
being almost as ignorant as the vulgar. But this is not to be
considered as the established religion of the country, though the
copts are indulged in it’s exercise by their mohammedan conquerors,
who introduced islamism; which is the faith of those
who have the law in their hands, as well as of the arabs that
wander about the deserts, or cultivate the fields on which they are
settled as farmers.
The population of Egypt is estimated at four millions of people.
Consisting of a mixture of turks, mamalukes, arabs, and copts,
each of these races has it’s peculiarities, though the general manners
of the east are more or less common to them all. The turks,
who at least claim the title of masters of Egypt, are chiefly to be
met with at Cairo, Alexandria, Rosetta, and Damietta, either as soldiers,
or in religious employments. They have little authority, however,
and the janizaries themselves, without discipline and without
spirit, are as much afraid of the mamalukes as any others of the
people. This may be one reason, perhaps, why they are much
more insolent than the arabs to europeans, against whom they are
early taught to conceive an antipathy, for their mothers employ
the term european as a bugbear to frighten them when infants.
By the arabs they are looked on with no friendly eye; and such of
them as make the pilgrimage to Mecca with the caravans are
exposed to be plundered and ill treated by them, after they have
left Cairo.
The mamalukes, who are the real governors of Egypt, are a
body of slaves. Torn from their native country; strangers to the
ties of parental affection, for they have been most of them sold by
their own parents, and have seldom any offspring of their own;
bred up in the most infamous practices, and surrounded by the
vilest examples; no wonder that they deserve in general the character
Mr. Bruce has given them. Not but that some among
them possess good qualities, and even virtues of a certain class: