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statues of the gods, and Ochus, one of his succes

horror of idols, he defaced the stabbed Apis with his sword. sors, served up Apis at a banquet, and put an Ass in the temple in his stead; for which outrage an Egyptian assassinated him and threw his body to the cats. Viewed calmly at this distance of time, the spirit manifested by one seems scarcely more commendable than that of the other.

A variety of animals were venerated only in particular districts. Thebans abstained from sheep, because the ram was an emblem of their god Amun. They never put one to death, except on the annual festival of that deity, when they sacrificed a ram with many ceremonies, and placed the skin upon his image. At Mendes, the presiding deity was Kham, God of Generation, who was represented with the head of a she-goat, and the legs of a male; therefore goats were sacred in that region. The god Anubis was represented with a dog's head. Wherever his worship prevailed, the dog was sacred, and they shaved their heads in token of mourning when one died. In some places, apes and monkeys were sacred, being connected with the history of the god Thoth. At Heliopolis, they detested the crocodile and assigned it to Typho, the Destroyer; but in the vicinity of Lake Moris they worshipped the ugly creature. They kept a crocodile in a tank at the temple, and fed it with portions of the sacrifices. The priests, having rendered it perfectly tame by kind treatment, adorned it with bracelets of gold and necklaces of artificial gems. Worshippers brought offerings of bread and wine. In those districts they deemed it a mark of favour from the deity to be devoured by these monsters. A story is recorded of a woman who brought up a young crocodile, and her countrymen considered her the nurse of a divinity. Her little son played fearlessly with the beast, but when it grew large it devoured the boy. His mother exulted, considering his fate peculiarly blest in being thus incorporated with the household god. In some places small serpents were kept in the temples, fed on honey and flour. It was considered a mark of divine favour to be bitten by any

of this species. At Bubastis they worshipped a goddess represented with the head of a cat; and in that region cats were sacred. When one of them died, they shaved their eye-brows in sign of mourning. If a person killed one, even accidentally, a mob gathered round him and tore him to pieces without trial. When they went to foreign wars, they embalmed dogs and cats that died on the way, and brought them home for honourable burial. Belzoni found entire tombs filled with nothing but embalmed cats, carefully folded in red and white linen, the head covered by a mask representing its face.

Each district held to its own worship with the bigotry that every where characterizes disputes about religious faith. A civil war arose between two districts, because one ate the fish that the other worshipped. They did each other much mischief, and were severely punished by the Romans. The inhabitants of Ombos attacked those of Tentyris, because they had killed a crocodile; and the war was carried on with all the fury of sectarian zeal. Josephus declares that as early as the time when Abraham was in Egypt "they despised one another's sacred and accustomed rites, and were very angry one with another on that account." What theological tenets among the priests of different deities were at stake in these contentions cannot now be traced; but the great resemblance existing between their religion and that of Hindostan naturally leads to the conclusion that similar causes were at work to produce similar effects. Doubtless they had their formalists and spiritualists, their atheists and fanatics. It is recorded that the people of Thebais paid divine honours to nothing in mortal form, but adored only Cneph. Plutarch says the inhabitants of that region, on account of their more spiritual worship of One Invisible God, "without beginning or end," were excused from paying the public taxes levied on other Egyptians for maintenance of the sacred animals. It may readily be conjectured that such sects, like the Vedantins of Hindostan, regarded with pity those minds which had need of images and external symbols. But

elevated ideas of God and the soul were supposed to be above the comprehension of the populace, and incompatible with their employments. The priests, who were the only educated class, feared that if such knowledge were revealed to them, they would pervert it by all sorts of ignorant misconceptions. Therefore, they were left to obey laws without knowing why they were ordained, and to observe the ritual of religion without comprehending its import.

Egyptians were conservative in the extreme. They had the greatest possible objection to introducing foreign customs or opinions, or innovations of any kind. But they could not resist that law of our nature which has written decay, death, and resurrection, on all material things and all forms of opinion. The primitive faith of every people has always a tendency to degenerate into unmeaning forms; and the progress of corruption must be greatly accelerated where religious ideas, studiously hidden from the people, become a monopoly of power in the hands of a privileged class. In the beginning, the priestly style of living was very simple, but what we afterward hear of their grand establishments indicates a change. During the last days, when Egypt became a province of Rome, we have means of knowing that many abuses crept in. Old mystical ideas were almost buried under a mass of grotesque fancies. The influence of the priests declined. They still had charge of the national records, the education of youth, and the superintendence of weights and measures; but they no longer swayed the councils of government, or presided in courts of justice. Their servility to wealth and power is implied by the fact that when Alexander the Great consulted the oracle at Thebes, his ambitious wishes were gratified by hearing himself declared the son of Jupiter Ammon. In such a state of things, the character of the deities became degraded, and the animals regarded as deities were sometimes treated with contempt. If prayers and sacrifices proved unavailing to counteract drought, famine, or epidemics, people reproached the gods, and insulted their VOL. I.-16

images. Priests conducted the sacred animals to dark places, where they terrified them with threats, and sometimes even put them to death, if the evils continued. Still people clung to the outward ritual hallowed by so many ages of observance. The temples continued to swarm with animals, and images of animals, such as silver and brazen serpents, and gilded or golden calves. If a foreigner asked the meaning of their religious customs, the answer depended upon whether he addressed the initiated or the uninitiated; and in either case it was likely to be coloured by sectional prejudice. To one whose education did not enable him to sympathize with the blind reverence of the populace, and who had no means of knowing that more spiritual minds attached mystical significance to their strange symbols, the worship of Egypt must have seemed absurd in the extreme. No wonder it became a mark for the arrows of Grecian and Roman satire. It was common in Rome to call a foolish, pompous fellow "an Egyptian temple," which had such a magnificent exterior, and a monkey for the deity within. Thus every growth passes away, and dreary looks the stubble when the grain is gone.

But it is necessary to remember that their faith was once a solemn reality to millions of men, whose minds it swayed for ages. Powerful indeed must have been the feeling, which prompted men to expend so much wealth, labour, and ingenuity, in the service of their gods. The effect produced by their sublime temples on those sincerely under the influence of their national belief, may be partly conjectured from the wonder and reverence their ruins still inspire in men of other religions and a distant age. Those who see drawings, or fragmentary specimens in museums, can form no idea of the general effect of their architecture. Deities wearing the heads of rams, hawks, and cows, seem uncouth and ridiculous to us, who attach no meaning to the emblems. There is moreover a want of perspective in Egyptian art, a monotonous straightness in the position of the figures, and a barbarous taste in their unharmonized masses of colour. Such was their respect for prescribed

rules, that time and intercourse with other nations produced little change in these particulars. Plato, in his Republic, introduces the following remark in a dialogue: "The plan we have been laying down for youth was known long ago to the Egyptians; that nothing but beautiful forms and fine music should be permitted to enter into the assemblies of young people. Having settled what those forms and that music should be, they exhibited them in their temples; nor was it lawful, either in painting, statuary, or any branches of music, to make any alteration, or invent any forms different from what were established. Upon examination, therefore, you will find that the pictures and statues made ten thousand years ago, are in no one particular better or worse than what they now make."

But after all these deductions, the Egyptian ruins are not only sublime and impressive, but often extremely beautiful. Many of the sculptured animals are spirited, and all travellers agree that the countenances of gods and mortals are remarkable for simplicity, sweetness, and serenity of expression. Harriet Martineau says: "I was never tired of trying to imprint on my memory the characteristics of the old Egyptian face; the handsome arched nose, with its delicate nostril; the well-opened, though long eye; the placid, innocent mouth, and the smoothrounded, amiable chin. Innocence is the prevailing expression, and sternness is absent. Thus the stiffest figures and the most monotonous gestures convey only an impression of dispassionateness and benevolence. The dignity of the gods and goddesses is beyond all description, from this union of fixidity and benevolence. If the traveller be blest with the clear eye and fresh mind, and be also enriched by comprehensive knowledge of the workings of the human intellect in its various circumstances, he cannot but be impressed, and he may be startled by the evidence before him of the elevation and beauty of the first conceptions formed by men of the Beings of the unseen world."

The architecture of Egypt greatly resembles that of Hindostan. There are the same gigantic proportions, the

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