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Long before the fifteenth century many men had thought it possible to reach India by sailing around Africa. Since classical times geographers had both asserted and denied the possibility. During the Middle Ages the Ptolemaic theory was in the ascendant; but the observations of thirteenth-century travelers gave powerful support to the ideas of Eratosthenes.
The observed course of the comet intersected the planetary orbits, which fact gave a quietus to the long-mooted question as to whether the Ptolemaic spheres were transparent solids or merely imaginary; since the comet was seen to intersect these alleged spheres, it was obvious that they could not be the solid substance that they were commonly imagined to be, and this fact in itself went far towards discrediting the Ptolemaic system.
Important finds of documents written in Aramaic have also been made here; they show that there was on the island in Ptolemaic times a regular colony of Syrian merchants.
Erman, in an admirable paper contributed to the Zeitschrift, 1883, showed it to have been a forgery concocted by the priests of Khonsû during the period of the Persian rule in Egypt, or in early Ptolemaic times. Ancienne des Peuples de l'Orient, chap, vi., pp. 287, 288.
If the Ptolemaic system were taught at Cambridge instead of the Newtonian, the senior wrangler would nevertheless be in general a superior man to the wooden spoon.
The third book of the Maccabees tells of a Ptolemaic persecution during which Jewish victims were turned into the arena at Alexandria, to be trodden down by elephants made fierce with the blood of grapes, and of their deliverance by Divine Providence. Josephus relates that the anniversary of the deliverance was celebrated as a festival in Egypt.
Thaiemhetep was an important member of the semi-royal, great high-priestly family of Memphis, and her funerary inscription throws much light on the theology of the Ptolemaic Period. "And the heart of the Ur-kherp-hem rejoiced in her exceedingly. I bore to him a child three times, but I did not bear a man child besides these three daughters. And they did everything according as he had said.
These columns probably belonged to the twelfth dynasty. In what Naville called the "Ptolemaic Hall" occurs the name Nephthorheb or Nectanebo I. of the thirtieth dynasty. The relics of this remarkable temple thus cover a period from the sixth to the thirtieth dynasties, some 3,200 years.
Thus the Ptolemaic conception of the universe dominated the thought of Europe for a thousand years, and could not be substituted by the true theory without a fierce struggle; and, to cite an even more striking illustration, the early generalizations of primitive man which explain numberless phenomena of nature as due to an influence of unseen anthropomorphic beings remain to this day one of the most powerful influences that affect our race an influence from which we shall never shake ourselves altogether free until the average man and particularly the average woman learns to be a good observer and a logical reasoner.
The fifth act shows Setna as subjected to Na.nefer.ka.ptah, and ordered by him to bring the bodies of his wife and child to Memphis into his tomb. And the actual composition of it belongs to Ptolemaic times, not only on the evidence of the manuscript, but also of the language; this being certified by the importance of Isis and Horus at Koptos, which is essentially a late worship there.
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