he
provinces, the Arabs could hold out no longer, and the rocky fastness
of Petra was forced to receive a Roman garrison. The event was as usual
commemorated on the coins of Rome; and for the next four hundred years
that remarkable Arab city formed part of the Roman empire; and Europeans
now travelling through the desert from Mount Sinai to Jerusalem are
agreeably surprised at coming upon temples, carved out of the solid
rock, ornamented with Corinthian columns of the age of the Antonines.

In the twelfth year of this reign, when Lucius Sulpicius Simius was
prefect, some additions which had been made to the temple at Panopolis
in the Thebaid were dedicated in the name of the emperor; and in the
nineteenth year, when Marcus Rutilius Lupus was prefect, a new portico
in the oasis of Thebes was in the same manner dedicated to Serapis and
Isis. A small temple, which had been before built at Denderah, near the
great temple of Venus, was in the first year of this reign dedicated to
the Empress Plotina, under the name of the great goddess, the Younger
Venus.

The canal from the Nile near Bubastis to the Bitter Lakes, which had
been first made by Necho, had been either finished or a second time
made by Philadelphus; and in this reign that great undertaking was again
renewed. But the stream of the Nile was deserting the Bubastite branch,
which was less navigable than formerly; and the engineers now changed
the greater part of the canal's bed. They thought it wiser to bring
water from a higher part of the Nile, so that the current in the canal
might run into the Red Sea instead of out, and its waters might still
be fresh and useful to agriculture. It now began at Babylon opposite
Memphis and entered the Red Sea at a town which, taking its name from
the locks, was called Clysmon, about ten miles to the south of Arsinoe.
This latter town was no longer a port, having been separated from the
sea by the continual advance of the sands. We have no knowledge of how
long the care of the imperial prefects kept this new canal open and in
use. It was perhaps one of the first of the Roman works that went to
decay; and, when we find the Christian pilgrims sailing along it seven
centuries later, on their way from England to the holy sepulchre, it had
been again opened by the Muhammedan conquerors of Egypt.

[Illustration: 089.jpg ANTONINIAN TEMPLE NEAR SINAI]

Writings which some now regard as literary forgeries appeared in
Alexandria about