Review at BMCR of JHF Dijkstra, Philae and the End of Ancient Egyptian Religion: A Regional Study of Religious Transformation (298-642 CE) by Robert Gozzoli at the University of Siam. A rewrite of his PhD, Dijkstra asks what happened to the cults at Philae in the Late Antiquity? What was the role played by Christianity on the island? And was Philae exceptional?
For Philae, one of the few established dates for
the fate of ancient Egyptian religion is 537 CE, as Justinian ordered
the closure of the temples. Dijkstra offers two relevant texts. The
first is the petition written by Diodorus in Antinoopolis on behalf of
the councilors of Omboi against a man nicknamed as the 'Eater of Raw
Meat' (ὠμοφάγος), the so called Blemmyan incident (circa 567 CE). The
accused man is blamed for neglecting the taught Christian doctrine and
renewing pagan sanctuaries of Philae with the help of the Blemmyes. The second text is Procopius' Persian Wars,
which states that the temple of Isis was finally closed in 535-537 CE
(pp. 11-14), following Emperor Justinian's order. Dijkstra's sees the
two documents not necessarily contradicting each other, for Procopius
is describing imperial policies while the petition reflects a
particular moment of local history. Dijkstra's main thesis is that the
negative picture of a rising Christianity fighting against the old
religion is fundamentally erroneous, as the ancient Egyptian cults were
already dying by themselves, without external intervention.
The original PhD can be downloaded here, but note that it is a hefty pdf file.
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