In A.D. 122, the sixth year of the reign of Hadrian, Egypt was honoured by a visit from the emperor.  He was led to Egypt at that time by some riots of a character more serious than usual, which had arisen between two cities, probably Memphis and Heliopolis, about a bull, as to whether it was to be Apis or Mnevis.  Egypt had been for some years without a sacred bull; and when at length the priests found one, marked with the mystic spots, the inhabitants of those two cities flew to arms, and the peace of the province was disturbed by their religious zeal, each claiming the bull as their own.

Hadrian also undertook a voyage up the Nile from Alexandria in order to explore the wonders of Egypt.  This was the fashion then, for the ancient monuments and the banks of this mysterious river offered just as many attractions at that time as they have done to all nations since the expedition of Napoleon.  That animal-worship, which had remained unchanged for centuries, a riddle of human religion, was bound to excite the curiosity of strangers.  In this divinisation of animals lay the greatest contempt for human understanding, and it was a bitter satire on the apotheosis of kings and emperors.  For what was the divinity of Sesostris, of Alexander, of Augustus, or Hadrian compared with the heavenly majesty of the ox Apis, or the holy cats, dogs, kites, crocodiles, and god-apes?  Egypt was at this epoch already a museum of the Pharaoh-time and its enbalamed culture.  Strange buildings, rare sculptures, hieroglyphics, and pictures still filled the ancient towns, even though these had lost their splendour.  Memphis and Heliopolis, Bubastis, Abydos, Sais, Tanis, and the hundred-gated Thebes had long fallen into ruin, although still inhabited.

The emperor’s escort must have been an extraordinary sight as it steered up the stream on a fleet of dahabiehs.  The emperor was accompanied by students of the museum, interpreters, priests, and astrologers.  Amongst his followers were Verus and the beautiful Antinous.

The Empress Sabina also accompanied him; she had the poetess Julia Balbilla amongst her court ladies.  They landed wherever there was anything of interest to be seen, and there was more in those days than there is now.  They admired the great pyramids, the colossal sphinx, and the sacred town of Memphis.  This city, the ancient royal seat of the Pharaohs, and even in Strabo’s time the second town in Egypt, was not yet buried under the sand of the desert; its disappearance had, however, already begun.  Under the Ptolemies it had given much of the material of her temples and palaces for the building of Alexandria.  The great palace of the Pharaohs had long been destroyed, but there still remained many notable monuments, such as the temple of Phtah, the pyramids, the necropolis, and the Serapeum, and they retained their ancient cult.  The town was still the chief seat of the Egyptian hierarchy and the residence of Apis; for this very reason the