It is a fictionalised account of the life of the philosopher Hypatia, and tells the story of a young monk called Philammon who travels to Alexandria, where he becomes mixed up in the political and religious battles of the day.

The plot revolves around Hypatia the pagan philosopher; Cyril the Christian patriarch; Orestes the power-hungry prefect of Egypt; and Philammon an Egyptian monk.

[2] A series of events, some of which are orchestrated by a Jewish woman called Miriam, raise tensions between the prefect and the church.

Philammon, despondent, returns to the desert where he eventually becomes abbot of his monastery, albeit with a more worldly view of Christianity.

[3] Kingsley expresses a view of the superiority of northern Europeans in his portrayal of the Goths in Alexandria as saviours of Christianity, who, although crude and violent, possess the necessary Teutonic values of hardiness and virility to counter the corrupt church.

It was this aspect of the novel, as well as its alleged indecency, which thwarted an attempt to bestow an honorary degree at Oxford University on Kingsley in 1863.

[18] One review describes it as "Christian apologia, [with] religious and ethnic bigotry in the form of anti-Semitism and anti-Catholicism", but nevertheless concludes that "it is an unexpectedly involving novel, and is well worth searching out.

"[6] In 1859 a play based on the novel entitled The Black Agate, or, Old foes with new faces was performed at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia.

[19][20] A more notable adaptation of the novel to the stage was G. Stuart Ogilvie's Hypatia, which opened at the Haymarket Theatre in London on 2 January 1893.

[23] Even The Jewish Chronicle noted that Issachar is "ambitious and able, he plots and counterplots but there is no suspicion or meanness in his nature" and concluded that he was the "least conventional and least offensive of recent stage Jews".