A·bra·ham·ic
Adjective
/??br??hamik/
-
Denoting any or all of the religions (Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam) that revere Abraham, the
Biblical patriarch
- the monotheistic
faiths that grew out of
the Abrahamic heritage
- Relating specifically to the Biblical patriarch
Abraham
Picture: Isis-Aphrodite, a form of the
ancient goddess widely wor-
shipped in the Roman Period.
Isis was one of the last of Eg-
yptian deities to survive his-
torically. University of Leipzig
Mueum. Egyptian Gods.
Historically, a fatal denial
awaited the Egyptian gods. The eventual rise of
Christianity and later of Islam spelled doom for the
old pagan religion, but it did not die easily. In AD
383 pagan temples throughout the Roman Empire were
closed by order of the Emperor Theodosius and a number
of further decrees, culminating in those of Theodosius
in AD 391 and Valentinian III in AD 435 sanctioned the
actual destruction of pagan religious structures. Soon
most of Egypt's temples were shunned, claimed for other
use, or actively destroyed by zealous Christians, and
the ancient gods were largely deserted. But signs of
their tenacity are evident in many historical
records.
As late as AD 452, under a treaty between the Roman government
and native people in the south of Egypt, pilgrims travelled
north to the temple of Philae and took from there the statue of
the goddess Isis to visit her relatives, the gods in Nubia.
This situation was remarkable, as Eugene Cruz-Uribe has
stressed, because it occurred at a time when Roman law had
prohibited the worship of the old cults and officially endorsed
Christianity as the "only religion of Egypt and the empire".
Clearly, in at least this outpost, and perhaps in others, and
through secret worship, the old deities hung on for a time. By
AD 639 when Arab armies claimed Egypt they found only
Christians and the disappearing legacy of ancient gods who had
ruled one of the greatest centerss of civilization for well
over 3,000 years. Yet, while the old gods had almost vanished,
they left influences which would persist for thousands more
years...
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