A church in the temple of Isis
It is impossible not to make the connection between these Philae inscriptions and a transformation process running more or less in parallel with them, namely the transformation of Philae's temple of Isis into a Christian church. For a long time, attempts were made to establish a link between the end of pharaonic cults in Philae and several texts, notably a passage from Procopius[1] in the Persian Wars. However this episode took place some two hundred years after the last hieroglyphic inscription at Philae and just under a century after the last demotic graffito, since the events reported can be dated to 535 to 537 AD. Whereas the last inscriptions, the last graffiti from Philae that can be termed “pagan”, that is to say acts of adoration addressed to Isis or Osiris, are datable to 457 AD or thereabout.
This issue of the end of the “last bastion of paganism”, has inspired several competing narratives. A romantic line adopted by some often well established authors likes to present Isis's last faithful followers in open conflict with the Christian authorities in the person of General Narses[2]. Upon arriving in Philae, the latter supposedly destroyed and pursued the last “pagans”. Conversely, more cautious historians, among whom J. H. F. Dijkstra, put forward a more nuanced analysis. Indeed one has to wonder whether the end of pharaonic cults at Philae was the effect of a Christian will to obliterate a pagan cult rather than the product of a perhaps slower mutation process, a sort of fatality, a forgetting of the old ways. Thanks to archaeology, it is possible, as we shall see, to attempt an evaluation of these hypotheses but not before discussing Priscus of Panium[3]'s writing. He reports a local arrangement concerning indigenous populations known as the Blemmyes and the Nobatae (or Nubades) who were from highest antiquity acknowledged under those names as local ethnic groups and who apparently had permission (or the possibility) to come from time to time, at least once a year, to the isle of Philae to worship the goddess Isis. Clearly, the case of the Blemmyes[4] and Nobatae is fairly singular and it is entirely reasonable to assume that they are not one and the same with the Egyptian family of Philae's priests of Isis. This is corroborated by a Cairo papyrus bearing a petition from (Christian) priests from Kom Ombo, a little further north, who complain that, in 567 AD, their region, some tens of kilometres north of Philae had been the target of raids conducted by marauders whom they called Blemmyes. It is therefore not excluded that there is a part of truth in the literary yarn which does no more than rely on some well established local events.
Over and above the literary and documentary sources, the study of the terrain and monuments provides information of the highest interest. The evidence in Philae of a process of transformation of some ancient sites into Christian cult sites is plain for all to see. Suffice it to cite the example of the passage through the pylon gate where the presence of crosses that have been carved in place of the goddess Isis' face can be observed on both sides. The relief has indeed been transformed. We therefore have a precise site taken over and reassigned. Furthermore, several different types of crosses can be studied in the temple, which can be dated according to style. The most ancient are surrounded with a kind of halo or are set inside a circle, the most recent are carved inside a square. On the door to the naos[5], more precisely on the eastern jamb of the doorway, this inscription can be read: « This work was done under our most Godloving father, the Bishop Apa Theodore »
. In the naos we read « This topos became, in the name of the holy and consubstantial Trinity, the house of St Stephen under our most Godloving father, Bishop Apa Theodore. May God preserve him for a very long time. »
Bishop Theodore[7] lived under Justinian[8], between 525 and 577 AD. Accordingly, it is in the 6th century and not before that the transformation of the “pagan” temple of Philae into a Christian temple was effected. So, between the last hieroglyphic inscription (the last 394 AD demotic inscription and the last 452 AD graffito for Isis) and the first traces of Christianity, there is a documentary gap. Whatever happened in this near-century interval? It must be clearly understood that the above mentioned text by Procopius relating the destruction of the Philae temple is not a precise historical report for in fact the temple of Philae had not really been destroyed. The statues of pharaonic gods were no doubt removed, probably destroyed, some images were hacked out others erased, crosses were added etc (all this between the 5th and 6th century). But we may well ask what really remained of the pharaonic cults at the time these changes took place – which is tantamount to ask whether Christianity, in this part of Egypt really faced down the old-time religion. The question is particularly relevant if one thinks of Alexandria, at the other end of Egypt, where sources show that confrontation did occur as illustrated by the account of the destruction of the temple of Serapis in Alexandria after an actual battle. At both ends of Egypt the shift to Christianity seems to happen in completely different ways. There could therefore be several ways to envisage the end of the Egyptian religion.
At this point in our enquiry, we must bring the concept of forgetting to bear on the cultural transformation processes observable in Egypt. A culture does not necessarily disappear because it is superseded by another but because it somehow gets forgotten. Without the means to keep going it dwindles, scatters. Yet, as Pierre Nautin points out the inscriptions at Philae bear the hallmark of exorcism. Indeed expressions such as « The cross has conquered. It always conquers »
can be found reitereated and such assertions were very concrete expressions of the victory that the cross erected in the naos had won over the demon Isis. It is certainly admissible to think that such reasoning would have come to the mind of early Christians but it is equally reasonable to ask whether they did face the necessity to dislodge the last priests of Isis or whether that clergy had already disappeared over the past decades. Many other crosses answering other stylistic criteria and other ritual imperatives have been added to the columns of the temple. They belong not with exorcism rites but with Coptic[9] rituals for the consecration of churches whereby the church pillars represent the apostles, supporting God's house, and are as such consecrated. According to the stylistic analysis, the transformation of the pharaonic temple's naos into a church with its altar and recess was only completed in the 10th century, that is more than five centuries after the disappearance of the last “pagans”. At the same time, in the temple of Philae like in many other temples in Egypt the gouging, of mostly human figures can be observed. These systematic depredations go back to the Christian, in some cases Muslim ages and they are difficult to date. It remains that they were carried out with the object of suppressing representations that were feared in one way or another. It wouldn't have been felt necessary to erase or gouge representations considered harmless. Indeed, for Egypt's Christians and Muslim alike the faces of the ancient gods bespoke something not just inappropriate but altogether sinister. They smacked of the demonic; they were sure to harbour the “evil eye”. Now these building were perforce often reassigned, on occasions as living quarters and it is conceivable that the gouging marked an intention to somehow neutralise those figures.
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