Death in the Nile

‘Who does not know what monsters crazy Egypt worships’ (qualia demens Aegyptos portenta colat)? Not long before Hadrian arrived in the country, or perhaps while he was there, Juvenal composed a ferocious satire about an incident in Upper Egypt. Something appalling had happened, near Coptus, ‘recently, in the consulship of Juncus’, in other words in autumn 127. During a religious festival the neighbouring communities of Ombos and Tentyra had come to blows – they worshipped rival deities – which led to a bloody riot and ended in cannibalism. Juvenal himself had been in Egypt, he is careful to stress: ‘Egypt is crude, to be sure, yet the native rabble is just as prone to luxury, I have observed, as the notorious Canopus.’ It is difficult not to wonder whether the old poet had not chosen to write up this gruesome traveller’s tale precisely because Hadrian was in Egypt or on his way there. That Hadrian was heading for Egypt had probably been known since he left Rome in 128 – the admittedly muddled fourth-century writer Epiphanius even asserted that the whole journey was to Egypt and was undertaken for the sake of his health. ¹