The top of the vase is also oftentimes surmounted with several birds' heads, to signify and characterise the several winds which they know, and which either assisted or retarded the increase or the lowering of the waters; sometimes they put upon the canopus the head of a dog, to signify the state of the river, or the time of the rising of the dogstar. At another time they put thereon the head of a maid, to mark out the state of the Nile under the sign of the Virgin, and at the approach of the draining or retiring of the water.

It appears that the ancient Egyptians, after they had ascertained the great benefit of the inundation when they were properly prepared for it, changed the name of their Evil Genius, the Water Monster, from ob,* to Python; which had reference to the deadly effects of the miasmata arising from the stagnant waters left upon the low lands after the retiring of the inundation. "Ovid makes the serpent Python spring from the steams of the mud which the deluge had left upon the earth; and in this he is plainly making making an allusion to Typhon, whose name is the same by a simple transposition. In making Python spring from from the slime of the deluge, does not the poet point out thereby the noxious steams which rise in Egypt after the waters of the Nile have subsided. In fine, when he says that Apollo slew him with his arrows, does he not conceal, under this emblem, the victory of Orus over Typhon, or at least the triumph of the sunbeams over the vapors of the Nile ?" (Mayo's Mith. vol. ii. p. 47. Python, says Bailey, is derived from pytho, Gr. to putrify. The serpent Python's being slain by Apollo is thus interpreted: by Python is understood the ruins of waters; but Apollo (that is, the sun) dispersing the vapors by his arrows (that is, his beams), slew this serpent. Typhus, a species of continued fever, has the same origin. "It may be occasioned (says Hooper, in his Medical Dict.) by the effluvia arising from either animal or vegetable substances in a decayed or putrid state; and hence it is, that in low and marshy countries it is apt to be prevalent, when intense and sultry heat quickly succeeds any great inundation."

The convenience of that language, which rendered itself intelligible to the eyes, and in some sense made animals and even stones themselves to speak, by degrees became more common. It was extended to every thing. The symbolical writing soon served as the rule of

The descendants of Africa, in the West Indies, still retain the name of ob, or obi, by whose aid they pretend to magical powers.-EDIT.

The custom of conveying moral instruction by symbolical figures has descended to the masons, that is, a show of it is kept up by them, but without being seriously regarded. The practice is now a mere dead letter; showing, however, the force of habit in continuing a custom no longer needed Too much light is now abroad in the world to require the square and compasses to direct men in their duties. The continuance of these old practices, notwithstanding, is of use in pointing out the origin of the institution that observes them.-EDIT.

morals, as well as the regulation of husbandry. It was made use of to perpetrate among the people, the knowledge of the most important truths, and to inculcate their principal duties.†

The character of the Egyptian writing designed to signify God, was not a simple flame or blaze, as was the general usage of the east, but a circle, or rather a sun. They added to the circle, or solar globe, several marks or attributes, which served to characterize so many different perfections. For instance, in order to indicate that the Supreme Being is the author and preserver of life, they annexed to the circle sometimes two points of flame, but more commonly one or two serpents. This animal was always, among the Egyptians, as in other countries, the symbol of life and health. Not because the serpent makes itself look young again, by every year casting its old skin, but because among most of the Eastern nations, as the Phenicians, Hebrews, Arabians, and others, with the language of whom that of Egypt had an affinity, the word heve or heva equally signifies the life, and a serpent. The name of him who is, the great name of God, Jov, or Jehovah, thence draws its etymology. Heve, or the name of the common mother of mankind, comes likewise from the same word.

It is from this word that the Latins made their ævum, the life and the ave, which is a wish of good health.

St. Clement of Alexandria, observes, that the word heva, which is known to signify the life, likewise signifies a serpent. And it is barely on a double meaning of the word hevi or heva, that the metamorphosis of Cadmas and Hermione into serpents is grounded, (Ovid, Metam.) They were of the country of the Hevians.

Macrobius has informed us that the serpent was an emblem of health, salutis draco, speaking of Esculapius. When Moses lifted up a brazen serpent in the wilderness, the afflicted Hebrews understood, that it was a sign of preservation.*

To express the wonderful fecundity of providence, they added to the symbolical circle the figures of the most fruitful plants, and most commonly two or three large leaves of the banana-tree.

The solar year.-Osiris.

The year relates to three principal objects. To the course of the sun, the order of the feasts to each season, and to the works in common to be done. Let us begin with the symbols of the sun.

That luminary, as it was the grandest object in nature, had also its

*In one of the modern degrees of masonry, entitled "The Brazen Serpent," the jewel is a serpent entwined upon a cross pole, in form of a T, about which are the Hebrew characters-which signify, one who shall live. The covered word is John Ralph, the founder of this degree. The sacred word is Moses. This degree has reference to the deliverance of the Israelites from captivity. (Benard.)-EDIT.

peculiar character or mark in the symbolical writing. It was called Osiris. This word, according to the most judicious and most learned among the ancients,* signified the inspector, the coachman, or the leader, the king, the guide, the moderator of the stars, the soul of the world, the governor of nature. From the energy of the terms of which it was composed, it signified in general the governor of the earth, which amounts to the same sense. And it is because they gave that name and function to the sun, that it was expressed in their writing sometimes by the figure of a man bearing a sceptre, sometimes by that of a coachman carrying a whip, or plainly by an eye.†

They were often contented with setting down the marks of his dignity, such as a sceptre surmounted with an eye, or a sceptre with a serpent twined round it, the symbol of life which the sun maintains, or barely the whip and the sceptre united; sometimes the royal cap of Osiris on a throne, with or without a sceptre.

The Egyptians every where saw, and especially in the place of their religious assemblies, a circle or the figure of the sun. Near the sun, over the head of the symbolical figures, were seen sometimes one or two serpents, the symbol of life, sometimes certain foliages the symbols of the bounties of nature; sometimes scarabeus's wings the emblem of the variations of the air. All these things being connected with the object of their adorations, they entertained a sort of veneration for the serpent, which they besides saw honourably placed in the small chest that was the memorial of the state of the first men, and the other ceremonies whose meaning began to be lost.

Having already contracted a habit of confounding the Most High with the sun, they by little and little mistook the symbol itself of the sun, the Osiris, the moderator of the year, for a man. Osiris, from the letter or symbolical personage he was before, becoming in the minds of the people a real person, a man who had formerly lived among them, they made his history to relate to the attributes which attended the figure. So soon as Egypt was possessed with the ridiculous notion, that the statues of Osiris, Isis, and Horus, which served to regulate society, by their respective significations, were monuments of their founders; that Osiris had lived in Egypt, and had been interred there, they framed stories agreeable to this belief. For want of a tomb containing in reality the body of Hammond or Osiris, they were contented with a cenotaph, an empty tomb. A vast concourse of people gathered

Plutarch de Isid, and Isirid, and Macrob. Dux and princeps, moderator luminum, reliquorum, mens mundi, and emperatio.

"Eye and son are expressed by the same word in most of the ancient languages of Asia." (Ruins p. 159.)

This is one of the emblems of masonry called the all seeing eye, and said to represent the true God; whereas it is nothing more than a symbol of the sun made use of by the ancient Egyptians, and from them descended to the masons.-Edit.

near these pretended tombs, and with pomp celebrated an annual feast there. Plutarch often mentions the feasts of Osiris' tomb, and informs us, that when the Egyptians were reproached with placing in heaven gods whose tombs they showed, their reply was, that the bodies of these gods had been embalmed and interred in Egypt; but that their souls resided among the stars.

These tombs, though merely representative, were become a necessary part of the ceremonial. The Cretians, being of Egyptian extraction, had their own feast of Osiris or Jehov, the feast of their god, and of course the empty tomb was inseparable from that solemnity.*

Death and Resurrection of Osiris.

The author here gives a complex figure, copied from the collection of Mountfaucon, and which, he says, is painted on a mummy at the Austinfriar's of La Place des Victoires, representing the death and resurrection of Osiris, and the beginning, progress, and end of the inundation of the Nile.

The sign of the lion is transformed into a couch, upon which Osiris is laid out as dead; under which are four canopi of various capacities, indicating the state of the Nile at different periods. The first is terminated by the head of the dog-star, which gives warning of the approach of the overflow of the river; the second by the head of the hawk, the symbol of the Etesian wind, which tends to swell the waters; the third by the head of a Heron, the sign of the south wind, which contributes to propel the water into the Mediterranean sea; and the fourth by that of the Virgin, which indicates that when the sun had passed that sign, the inundation would have nearly subsided.

To the above is superadded a large Anubis, who with an emphatic gesture, turning towards Isis who has an empty throne on her head, intimates that the sun, by the aid of the lion, had cleared the difficult pass of the tropic of Cancer, and was now in the sign of the latter, and, altho' in a state of exhaustion, would soon be in a condition to proceed on his way to the South; at the same time, gives to the husbandman the important warning of retiring to avoid the inundation. The empty throne is indicative of its being vacated by the supposed death of Osiris.

The raising of grand master Hiram, in the third degree of Masonry, by the "grip or paw of the Lion," (the terms used in that operation) who, as the story goes, had been murdered by three fellows of the craft, is evidently copied from this fable of the death and resurrection of Osiris. The position of the master Mason, when in the act of raising Hiram, is a fac simile of that of Anubis over the body of Osiris.

Mr. Pluche seems not to have had an adequate conception of the fabled death of Osiris, and consequently to have mistaken the purport of the

*The coffin of Hiram has a place among the emblematical figures of masonry.-Edit.

figures now under consideration, I therefore offer the foregoing explanation as the result of my investigation of the subject.

Mr. Pluche candidly acknowledges that he had doubts of his understanding the intention of the picture which he endeavours to expound; for he says, immediately after giving his explanation, "But it would be a rashness in me to presume to write any longer in Egyptian, when I am not as yet over sure of my skill in reading it. Let us first of all confirm ourselves therein, and again try the application of our principles to some other monuments." He adds, in a note, "We shall in another place explain why this figure is used about a dead body, when we show how the sense of these symbols came to be perverted."

This he afterwards attempts to do as follows;

"Thus being gradually come to ascribing divinity, and offering their worship to the ruler, representing the functions of the sun, they to complete the absurdity, took him for the first of their kings. Thence this odd mixture of three inconsistent notions, I mean of God, of the Sun, and of a dead man, which the Egyptians perpetually confounded together."

The cause of their thus confounding them is easily accounted for, when the supposed death of Osiris, the sun, and God of the Egyptians, is taken into consideration.

It must be understood that the sun was supposed to be in insurmountable difficulties at both the solstices, which caused as great lamentations as his victories and reappearances afterwards, did rejoicings. What led to these apprehensions when he was in the summer solstice, is well explained in Rees's Cyclopedia, as follows:

"Orus or Horus, a famous Deity of Egypt, which, as well as Osiris was an emblem of the sun. Macrobius, who informs us why the Greeks gave Horus the name of Apollo, says, in the mysteries (Saturn, lib. 1,) they discover us a secret which ought to be inviolable, that the sun arrived at the upper hemisphere, is called Apollo. Hence we may infer, that this emblematical Deity was no other than the star of day, passing through the signs of summer. As Apollo among the Greeks was called the Horus of the Egyptians, as to his skill both in Medicine and divination, he was regarded as the same person, and called by the ancients Horus-Apollo.† The Allegory of Horus has been thus explained. The wind Rhamsin makes great ravages in Egypt in the spring, by raising whirlwinds of burning sands, which suffocate travellers, darken the air, and cover the face of the Sun, so as to leave the earth in perfect obscurity. This circumstance represents the death of Osiris, and the reign of Typhon the sun approaches the sign of the lion, he changes the state of the atmosphere, disperses these tempests, and restores the northerly winds, which drive before them the malignant vapors, and preserve in Egypt coolness and salubrity under a burning sun. This is the triumph of Horus over Typhon, and his glorious reign. As some natural philosophers have acknowledged the influence of the moon over the state of the atmosphere,

When

* Authors write this name differently: in the Greek, from which it seems to be copied, the first letter, omega, is aspirated.-Edit.

+"Orus was more particularly Osiris in his second state, and therefore represented by the Egyptians as a child."-(Holwell's Myth.)-Edit.