In the government the first thing that strikes us is the suppression of the court and of its residency, the necessary consequence of the annexation of the land by Augustus. There was left doubtless as much as could be left. On the inscriptions written in the native language, and so merely for Egyptians, the emperors are termed, like the Ptolemies, kings of upper and lower Egypt, and the elect of the Egyptian native gods, and indeed withal--which was not the case with the Ptolemies--great-kings.[215] Dates were reckoned in Egypt, as previously, according to the current calendar of the country and its royal year passing over to the Roman rulers; the golden cup which every year the king threw into the swelling Nile was now thrown in by the Roman viceroy. But these things did not reach far. The Roman ruler could not carry out the part of the Egyptian king, which was incompatible with his imperial position. The new lord of the land had unpleasant experiences in his representation by a subordinate on the very first occasion of his sending a governor to Egypt; the able officer and talented poet, who had not been able to refrain from inscribing his name also on the Pyramids, was deposed on that account and thereby ruined. It was inevitable that limits should here be set. The affairs, the transaction of which according to the system of Alexander devolved on the prince personally[216] not less than according to the arrangement of the Roman principate, might be managed by the Roman governor as by the native king; king he might neither be nor seem.[217] That was to a certainty deeply and severely felt in the second city of the world. The mere change of dynasty would not have told so very heavily. But a court like that of the Ptolemies, regulated according to the ceremonial of the Pharaohs, king and queen in their dress as gods, the pomp of festal processions, the reception of the priesthoods and of ambassadors, the court-banquets, the great ceremonies of the coronation, of the taking the oath, of marriage, of burial, the court-offices of the body-guards and the chief of that guard (ἀρχισωματοφύλαξ), of the introducing chamberlain (εἰσαγγελεύς), of the chief master of the table (ἀρχεδέατρος), of the chief master of the huntsmen (ἀρχικυνηγός), the cousins and friends of the king, the wearers of decorations--all this was lost for the Alexandrians once for all with the transfer of the seat of the ruler from the Nile to the Tiber. Only the two famous Alexandrian libraries remained there, with all their belongings and staff, as a remnant of the old regal magnificence. Beyond question Egypt lost by being dispossessed of its rulers very much more than Syria; both nations indeed were in the powerless position of having to acquiesce in what was contrived for them, and not more here than there was a rising for the lost position of a great power so much as thought of. [Sidenote: The officials.]