Apartheid

249
greedy, cunning, unreliable and slavish. The verb aigyptiazein denotes sly, crafty, malicious
behavior.’ 600 Assmann then goes on to characterize and label the Ptolemaic and early Roman
period (320 BCE-50 CE) as one of ‘scientific’ Greek texts about Egypt. 601 Of course, there is
a good reason for this: After having conquered the country and initiated massive immigration
into it, the Greeks learned more about Egypt than ever before. But here Assmann ignores the
strong ideological aspects of these texts, which will explain the Greek aversion towards
Egyptians, which appears ‘strange’ to him, and also why religion became the focus and the
only important locus of intercultural mixing. The first explanation will inevitably involve
what Peter Green called the ‘rampant’, ‘imperial racism’ of Greeks and Macedonians. 602 The
second will involve a short digression.
The one thousand years that Egypt remained under Greek and Roman rule was perhaps
the most de-secularized time in human history. It led up to and saw the birth of Christianity
and Islam, the two most intolerant and indeed brutal missionary religions the world has ever
seen. But the scene was being set from long before the birth of Jesus:
From the beginning of the Ptolemaic period innumerable temples,
shrines and priesthoods developed, celebrating some of the traditional
gods of old Greece, Zeus, Dionysus, Aphrodite, the Egyptian or
Graeco-Egyptian deities, Isis, Sarapis and Anubis, as well as the
deified members of the ruling house and Alexander in particular,
whose priesthoods carried great prestige. 603
Sarapis, the Graeco-Egyptian god, was created by Ptolemy I in order to combine the
religions of the two ethnic groups, to secure control over the favored Egyptians (the priests –
who were still often the ones that started armed uprisings and resistance movements), and
further to divert and distract the working population during its minimized free time. 604 With
the exceptions of the cults of the deified kings and queens and their families, the sanctioned
practice and content of religion (and of philosophy) had also become more de-politicized than
ever. The new god’s main temple, the great Serapeum, was erected in the crowded Egyptian
township in Alexandria, Rhakotis. The huge temple was built on top of a largely artificial hill
and ‘…dominated the southern part of the city like an Acropolis.’ Since the Egyptian living
quarters were confined to the southwest of the city, the Serapeum thus became a Greek and
royal presence among the indigenous, and at the same time a perpetually broken promise of
proximity. The closest a normal Egyptian could come to Greekness was through the contrived
religion imposed on him or her by the Greek elites. The Museum, on the other hand, was in
the royal palace district, where the monarchs followed closely how the ideology and the
technologies progressed. The Egyptians were to be controlled with a crude, state-concocted
opium for the people, whereas the Greeks needed to be reinforced and reminded of their own
cultural superiority (through Homer and the other greatest poets, along with the reintroduction
and use of Attic Greek), as well as of the perceived material needs for military and
600 Assmann 2000: 10: („Das im Ganzen positive, von Bewunderung geprägte Bild der Griechen von Ägypten,
dem Land und der Kultur, kontrastiert eigentümlich mit ihrer Abneigung gegen die Ägypter, die ihnen als
geldgierig, verschlagen, unzuverlässig und sklavisch galten. Das Verb aigyptiazein bezeichnet schlaues,
durchtriebenes, hinterhältiges Verhalten.”)
601 Ibid: 24. The Roman literary depiction of Egyptians was similarly ambivalent. ‘There are essentially two
traditional portrayals of Egypt and Egyptians. One emphasizes the irrational, ferocious, uncontrollably passionate
peasants, devoted to their incomprehensible deities, rejecting civil authority and prone to extreme violence and
banditry. The other is of an old culture of learning, religion and philosophy which goes back beyond even Greek
civilization.’ Alston 2002: 248
602 See footnote 115, above.
603 Bowman 1996 (1986): 216. See also Koch 1993: 497ff.
604 See, however, Huß 2001: 246ff, where the author argues that the cult of Sarapis was introduced to ‘unify’ the
Greek ruling class and that the new era needed a new god. Huß does concede that his is a minority opinion. Ibid:
245