For ten years the province owned allegiance to Persia, though it enjoyed a certain degree of doubtful independence under the immediate government of a native intendant-general of the land revenues named Mokaukas, who subsequently, at the time of the Saracen conquest, acted a conspicuous part in the history of his country. During the Persian supremacy, he became so influential in the administration that he is styled by several writers the prince of Egypt. Mokaukas, under the Roman government, had conformed to the established church, in order to hold an official situation, but he was, like most of his countrymen, at heart a monophysite, and consequently inclined to oppose the imperial administration, both from religious and political motives. Yet it appears that a portion of the monophysite clergy steadily refused to submit to the Persian government; and Benjamin their patriarch retired from his residence at Alexandria when that city fell into the hands of the Persians, and did not return until Heraclius had recovered possession of Egypt. Mokaukas established himself in the city of Babylon, or Misr, which had grown up, on the decline of Memphis, to be the native capital of the province and the chief city in the interior. The moment appears to have been extremely favourable for the establishment of an independent state by the monophysite Egyptians, since, amidst the conflicts of the Persian and Roman empires, the immense revenues and supplies of grain formerly paid to the emperor might have been devoted to the defence of the country. But the native population appears, from the conduct of the patriarch Benjamin, not to have been united in its views; and probably the agricultural classes, though numerous, living in abundance, and firm in their monophysite tenets, had not the knowledge necessary to aspire at national independence, the strength of character required to achieve it, or the command of the precious metals necessary to purchase the service of mercenary troops and provide the materials of war. They had been so long deprived of arms and of all political rights, that they had probably adopted the opinion prevalent among the subjects of all despotic governments, that public functionaries are invariably knaves, and that the oppression of the native is more grievous than the yoke of a stranger. The moral defects of the people could certainly, at this favourable conjuncture, alone have prevented the establishment of an independent Egyptian and Jacobite state.