The body of Antinous, now mummified and encased in a golden sarcophagus, most likely went with him, back to Rome. It seems almost unbelievable that Hadrian would abandon Antinous to the furthest reaches of the desert, even if the place was now his sacred city. But the body has disappeared, and one can never begin to think that they understand the mind of Hadrian.

Perhaps Antinous, buried in the Thebaid was like a fortress of peace and love, the southern most emblem, amongst barbarous nations, of the grace and elegance of the Roman Empire.

Christianity, sent by the Church of Alexandria found a safe and welcome home, preaching in Greek to Greek speakers whose literacy, delicacy, and grace were predisposed to the words of Jesus as none of the native Egyptians were. Antinopolis was soon made the seat of a Bishop. But let us not think for a moment that this Alexandrian Church that spread to Antinoopolis was the same as our Church today. This was the age of Heresiarchs. The most outrageous of whom was Carpocrates, who preached total liberty and indulgence as the way to break free from the bonds of this world. Eusebius in The History of the Church says:

"Contemporary with these was Carpocrates, father of another heresy known as the Gnostics. These claimed to transmit Simon's magic arts, not secretly like Basilides but quite openly, as if this was something marvelous, preening themselves as it were on the spells which they cast by sorcery, on dream-bringing familiar spirits, and on other goings-on of this sort. In keeping with this they teach that all the vilest things must be done by those who intend to go through with their initiation into these "mysteries" or rather abominations; for in no other way can they escape the "cosmic rulers" than by rendering to them all the due performance of unspeakable rites."

The Gnostics can only have found welcome amongst the Antinoans, especially these Carpocratians, their Patriarch himself had perhaps been alive, when the court of Hadrian and Antinous passed through Alexandria. He began to speak later in the year 138, a mature man, who earlier, perhaps when he was in his twenties had looked upon the face of the young God on his journey towards death. An emotional, burning young man who was starting to overflow with a new vision, Saint Carpocrates must have been deeply affected by the founding of Antinopolis, and the message of his graceful priests.

The Deification of Antinous was celebrated in the Antinoan games. Athletic competitions, footraces, and boat races on the Nile held with a deep infusion of religious symbolism and sacrifice. Theatrical performances, musical competitions, and poetry were the other more graceful aspects of the festival which even in Greece, and of course Claudiopolis (the hometown of Antinous) was held on October 30th, the date on which Antinous became a God.

For the Priests, Antinoopolis was the pageant ground for the most lavish and outrageous new mystery religion to rise up at the dawn of the new celestial epoch. Surrounded by opulence and well funded by the state, the priests sought to absorb the wisdom of all creeds of the Roman Empire. These were Greco-Roman Pagans trying to uphold Olympus in the middle of the Egyptian desert, surrounded by wild Gnostics, cold Catholics, Mathematicians, the Roman Army, and every assortment of conjurer, and prophet of debauchery that could make his way up the Nile. It was a haven for the educated and mystically inclined homosexuals of this high point of the Roman Empire. Taking after the example of the Emperor, and surely approved by his successor, the gentle Antoninus Pius, there must have been an explosion of homosexuality across the face of the world, especially in the Greek East, and the southern deserts with Antinoopolis as the sanctified capitol.

The rituals of the priests of Antinous followed the Greek manner of singing chants, of blood sacrifice, and burning incense. To this was brought the Egyptian method of chanting as used in reading the Book of the Dead. The priests of Antinous must have kept the light within his name burning by reciting his oracles with a combination of Greek Chant and Egyptian bells. Flutes and harps accompanied the gestures of their ceremony. The Christian Fathers tell us that all inflamed with drink, these priests fell upon each other in unholy lust.

The Priests of Antinous venerated the beauty of young men, one superb example of which was held to be the Divine Ephebe, a boy of about nineteen years of age, perhaps the winner of the Antinoean Games...he was worshiped as the carnal and spiritual habitation of Antinous.

We can be certain that these elegant priests were of the doctrine of the Libertines, placed as they were on the very edge of the world, surrounded by unknown Africa, the citizens of Antinoopolis must have felt as though they were not part of the world, they were not subject to its rules and customs, and yet that they were the champions of civilization in the very extreme of barbarity.

Antinoopolis was our city, a refuge for aliens, built over the grave of the stranger-god, the beautiful boy who came from the place of light to free us from oblivion.

The fall of Antinoopolis was slow, his cult held strong even after Constantine and the conquest of Christianity. When the Barbarians invaded Rome, and the Empire crumbled, the flower of Antinoopolis withered, and the sands reclaimed the marble streets. But perhaps there was some branch of Antinoean aesthetics amoung the Hermetic monks who took refuge in the solitude of the wilderness. Though surely the more voluptuous priests of the Temple of Antinoopolis, who had persevered in the graceful religion of Antinous, must have retreated to the safety of Alexandria as the world fell into Barbarism...where they vanished forever.

By the time the Moslems invaded, Antinoopolis had vanished beneath the sand. The priesthood long since persecuted to extinction, survived only in the crude folk-lore of conjurers. The magical power of the holy city haunted the superstitions of the local people who believed the place to be inhabited by malevolent spirits. As utter darkness fell upon the Earth, all trace of the city of Antinous was lost to history. Antinoopolis is possibly referred to in the One Thousand and One Arabian Nights in several tales, as a fantastic city which lay in ruin, where only the genii lived. It was not until the invasion of Napoleon in the early 1800's that Antinoopolis was seen again by Western eyes. An Archeological expedition visited making drawings of the remaining structures. Among them the last view of the colonnades, and the marble gate that the world will ever know. They brought back shattered torsos that were easily recognizable as the true stomach and chest of Antinous.

The Temple of Antinous