he extent of his travels, has helped to prove that the Roman government
of the country was carried on in the Greek language. The coins often
bear the eagle and thunderbolt on one side, while on the other is the
emperor's head, with his name and titles; and, after a few years, they
are all dated with the year of the emperor's reign. In the earliest he
is styled a Son of God, in imitation of the Egyptian title of Son of the
Sun. After Egypt lost its liberty, we no longer find any gold coinage in
the country; that metal, with everything else that was most costly, was
carried away to pay the Roman tribute. This was chiefly taken in money,
except, indeed, the tax on grain, which the Egyptian kings had always
received in kind, and which was still gathered in the same way, and
each year shipped to Rome, to be distributed among the idle poor of
that great city. At this time it amounted to twenty millions of bushels,
which was four times what was levied in the reign of Philadelphus.
The trade to the east was increasing, but as yet not large. About
one hundred and twenty small vessels sailed every year to India from
MyosHormos, which was now the chief port on the Red Sea.

No change was made in the Egyptian religion by this change of masters;
and, though the means of the priests were lessened, they still carried
forward the buildings which were in progress, and even began new ones.
The small temple of Isis, at Tentyra, behind the great temple of Hathor,
was either built or finished in this reign, and it was dedicated to the
goddess, and to the honour of the emperor as Jupiter Liberator, in a
Greek inscription on the cornice, in the thirty-first year of the reign,
when Publius Octavius was prefect of the province.

[Illustration: 018.jpg A KOPTIC MAIDEN]

The large temple at Talmis, in Nubia, was also then built, though not
wholly finished; and we find the name of Augustus at Philae, on some of
the additions to the temple of Isis, which had been built in the reign
of Philadelphus. In the hieroglyphical inscriptions on these temples,
Augustus is called Autocrator Caesar, and is styled Son of the Sun, King
of Upper and Lower Egypt, with the other titles which had always been
given by the priests to the Ptolemies and their own native sovereigns
for so many centuries. These claims were evidently unknown in Rome,
where the modesty of Augustus was almost proverbial.

The Greeks had at all times been forward in owning the Egyptians as