back so very high. Their ancient kings are nothing more than the names of the stars; and the pretended duration of their lives is only a supputation of the time necessary to bring again a planet to that point of the heavens from which it had begun its course. Thus they made as wrong a use of their astronomical computations as they had done of their writing.

Let us not, in mentioning the retrogradation of the feast of Isis and the return of that feast at the rising of the dog-star at 1460 years' end, omit one observation, viz., that they looked upon the 1461st year as privileged, as a year of plenty and delights. It was because this so important event, according to them, concurred with the desired Etesian wind, that they expressed the whole by a bird of singular beauty, that raised admiration more than any of the rest, and returned to Egypt after an absence of 1460 years. (Tacit, Annal, 6.) They farther said, that this bird came hither to die upon the altar of the sun, and that out of its ashes there rose a little worm, that gave birth to a bird perfectly like the preceding. They called it Phoenix, which signifies the advantage they pretended was annexed to the concurrence of the opening of the year with the real rising of the dog-star; I mean the most delightful plenty (- -phonek, deliciis abundans, Prov. 26; 21). We then have here again another emblematic figure converted into a wonder which it would have been a crime to doubt of.*

The dog-star has already afforded us two deities, one residing in the fine star near Cancer, under the name of Thot or of Anubis, and very well employed in swelling and sinking the river Nile, the other wholly intent upon physic, and entirely taken up with the care of people's health, under the name of Esculapius. Next to Anubis and Esculapius, let us now see the Camillus of the Heturians, the Janus of the Latins, the Hermes of the Greeks, and the Mercury of the Phenicians, all of them rising out of the same figure. The observation of the dog-star was not only justly denoted by the figure of a serpent, the symbol of the life it had procured the Egyptians, but having besides procured them abundance, or rather a superabundance of corn, which enabled them to help foreigners and to enrich themselves by the selling of their commodities, the figure of Anubis was often accompanied by a full purse, the sight whereof filled the people with joy; and this procured it the new title of Mercury, which signifies the dealer, or the intriguing, the cunning, or only commerce.

A new proof that Mercury was no more than a symbol of the dogstar, or of the warning of the retreat, and not a man that ever taught

* Bailey observes that "a Phoenix, hieroglyphically, was pictured to signify a reformation," which corroborates our author's hypothesis, for there was a complete reformation of the calendar, according to the Egyptian calculation,' at the end of the above-mentioned period.-EDIT.

or invented anything, is that they put into his hand the mark of the swelling of the Nile, and at his feet the wings, intimating the necessity of escaping the inundation by a speedy flight.

The mark of the rising of the water was a pole crossed; a very plain symbol indeed, and the serpent twisted round it had, in the hand of this figure, no other meaning than elsewhere. It always signified the life, the subsistance. When double it denoted subsistance in very great plenty, and such as was sufficient both for the Egyptians and foreigners. This pole was terminated with two little wings; the symbol of the wind that regulated the increase of the waters. All which significations were forgotten, and the monitor becoming a god as well as the other figures, they changed his name of Anubis, the barker, into that of Hannadi, the orator. (Hannobeah, Isai. lvi. 10.) His gesture and the stick he had in his hand helped on this metamorphosis. It was taken for the mark of a leader, an ambassador. Hence the title or guide, of inspector of the roads, of messenger of good news, and so many the like that were given Mercury, and of which we find a collection in Geraldi's history of the gods. Hence came the roads under his protection, and of placing his statue at the entrance of the highways.. But what can be the origin of the name of Caduceus given to Mercary's rod?

In the East, any person preferred to honours bore a sceptre* or staff of honour, and sometimes a plate of gold on the forehead called cadosh or caduceus, signifying a sacred person, (- -cadosh sanctus, se

The proof of this is frequently met with in Scripture. When the tribes murmured at seeing the priesthood settled in the family of Aaron, the chiefs of the tribes received orders to bring their sceptres into the tabernacle. The sceptre of Levi borne by Aaron was found in bloom the next day; and the Scripture observes, that the other chiefs took back their sceptres or staves of command.

A similar plate decorated the chief priest of the Israelites. The highpriest wore a plate of gold upon his forehead, on which were engraven these, two words, Kodesch Layhovah, that is Holy to the Lord. It was tied with a purple or blue ribbon to his tiara, which was made of linen, like those of the other priests, and was only distinguished from them by this plate and ribbon. There was in every synnagogue a sort of minister, who read the prayers, directed the reading of the law, and preached. He was called Chazan, that is, Inspector or Bishop.-See Dr. A. Clark's Hist. Israel, p. 286-7.

There is a degree in masonry called "a Chapter of the grand Inspector of Lodges, or Grand Elected Knights of Kadosh," who seem to have borrowed their title and functions as Inspectors from those of the Egyptian Mercury. The badge borne by Mercury appears to be alluded to by the manner of answering the question "Are you Kadosh ?" up on which the person questioned places his hand upon his forehead and says, "Yes, I am." The sacred words.

paratus) to inform the people that he who bore this rod or mark was a public man, who might go hither and thither freely, and whose person was inviolable. Such is the origin of the name given to Mercury's wand. Thus they made the guide of travellers, the interpreter, (interpres, nuncius sacer) and deputy of the gods, of a figure whose office they confusedly knew was to warn people of being gone. Being wholly ignorant of the relation between this long measure and the Nile, it was everywhere converted into an ambassador's staff, that there might be some connection between the envoy and the wand he carried.

Instead of the measure of the Nile, they very often put into his hand a key, and gave him two faces, one of a young man, the other of a man in years; incompassing the whole with a serpent having his tail in his mouth. The serpent, symbol of life or of time, here signifies the year that makes a perpetual circle, and the revolution of the stars coming again to the point of the heavens from which they began their course the year before. Our door-keeper, who here shuts up the concluding year, and opens the new, is no other than the dog-star, whose rising or disengaging from the rays of the sun pointed out the new solar year. I say solar, or natural, because it happened for reasons before stated, that the beginning of the sacred year went through every one of the seasons. But they still observed the custom of making the god Anubis, who was the door-keeper of the feasts, to precede the pomp of Isis, which was the first feast of the year; whence it appears, that the whole was rather astronomical than historical. This undoubtedly is the Janus of the Latins, who had the same attributes with the name of door-keeper. His ordinary companion, good king Picus, with his hawk's head, has so much the air of an Egyptian, that we cannot doubt but that Egypt, not Latium, was the country of both.

Anubis, considered as a symbol, was in reality the rule of the feasts, and the introducer of all the symbolical figures that were successively shown to the people during the whole year. When a god he was made inventor and regulator of these feasts. Now the solemnities were called the manes, that is, the regulations, the signs, the ensigns, because the figures there presented to the assistants were originally designed to regulate the works of the people. This they made the noblest function of Anubis; and it was with regard to this frivolous opinion, that the pomp of Isis was alway preceded by a dog. But the neomeniæ of each season, and the particular feasts that went before, or that followed

are Nekam Adonai; which probably have the same signification as the words engraved on the plate worn by the Jewish high-priest, Adonai or Adonis, meaning Lord. This degree will hereafter be particularly noticed.

The mitre worn by the high-priest of masonry, in the royal arch degree is surrounded with the words Holiness to the Lord.-EDIT.

each harvest, having peculiar names that distinguished them, the general word of manes, ensigns or images, was still the name of the funeral assemblies, which were frequently repeated, and the names of manes, images simaulcres, and dead persons were confounded. Thus Merzury, who opened and shut the manes, (manium dux, ductor animarum), became the leader of the dead. He conducted the souls with a high hand. The king or the shepherd must indiscriminately follow the troop. He opened the melancholy abodes to them, shut these again without remorse, and took away the key, not permitting any one to escape. Tum virgam capit. Hac animes ille evocat orco.) This again is what the Phenicians and the Arcadians meant, when they called him Cyllenius, a word which signifies the shutting, or one that concludes the year, and who finishes for ever the duration of life.

The people were persuaded, that he invented music, the lyre, wrestling, and all the exercises that form the body, because all these things being inseparably annexed to the ancient feasts, he was thought the regulator of them as well as of the feasts, he of course introduced everything belonging to them.

As to the genealogy of Mercury, it confirms all we have said. He is the son of fair Maia, and grandson of Atlas. Maia is the Pleias or the cluster of stars known even by the vulgar, and placed on the back of the bull. The eastern nations called these stars Mæah, which signifies the hundred, the multitude. The Greeks sometimes retained their first name, and called them Maia; sometimes translated this word by those of Pleiades and Pleione, which likewise signify the multitude. These so very remarkable stars being most fit to regulate the study of the heavens, and being the first that struck the eye before the rising of the dog-star, of which they thus became the forerunners; they, together with the Hyades, were the first in the knowledge of which the Egyptian priests took care to instruct their young pupils, in the sphere of Atlas. This symbol being once become a god, all his instructions were embellished with histories as well as he. The stars, that served as a rule to know the others by, became the beloved daughters of doctor Atlas. Maia disengaged herself at that time from the rays of the sun in Gemini, that is, in the month of May, to which the seems to have given her name. The finest star that clears itself a month or somewhat more after from the rays of the sun, is the dog-star, or the Anubis, of which they were pleased to make Maia the mother, because the star of Anubis was the first that succeeded her.

Dædalus.

It was the custom in Egypt to say, when the dog-star or Anubis was represented with large hawk's wings, that the water would be of a sufficient height, and there would be a certainty of a plentiful harvest. On this occasion Anubis was called Daedalus, which signifies a suffi

cient height, or a sufficient depth. All the ancients agree that Dœdalus was an ingenious architect. They ascribe to him the invention of the compasses and the square. They farther add, that to him mankind is indebted for statuary; they even characterize the nature of the progress which this noble art made under him, by circumstances which render the thing very credible. Before Dædalus, and to his very time, according to Diodorus Siculus, "Statues had their eyes shut, and their hands close to their sides, But Doedalus taught men how to give them eyes, to separate their legs, and to clear their hands from their body, which procured him the general admiration."

But by misfortune, both the history and the statues with their feet united become the proof of the origin here assign to Dædalus. The compasses and square, of which he is made the inventor, are no other than the compasses and square that were put into the hands of Anubis or Horus, to warn the husbandmen to be in readiness to measure their lands, to take angles, in order to distinguish them from the lands of others. Thus he was made the inventor of the symbolical instruments they saw in his hands. The statues whose hands and feet are frequently swathed, and which are found in the cabinets of our virtuoso, are no other than the statues of Osiris, Isis, and Horus, such as they were presented to the people at the time of the inundation. There was nothing then to be done, and the inaction was universal. The entire cessation of the rural works could not be better intimated, than by a Horus swathed or deprived of the use of his feet by the inundation, and using only his arms to point out the measure of the water, a vane to shew the wind, another instrument io take angles, and a horn to proclaim the general surveying.

sea.

The Cabiri of Samothracia.

The three principal figures of the Egyptian ceremonial were carried to Berytus in Phenicia, and thence into several Islands of the Ægean Their worship became very famous, especially in Lemnos, and in the island of Samothracia, which lies very near it. They were called there the Cabiri, ( — cabirim, potentes,) meaning the powerful gods: and their name of Cabiri, which is Phenician, was as much used in Egypt as in Phenicia itself: which is a standing proof of the mixture of the Phenician terms with the Egyptian language, if the ground of both be not exactly the same.

The figures of these gods being originally designed to make up a certain sense, by a collection of several pieces that very seldom meet together, could not but have a very odd, if not a very ridiculous air in the eyes of such as did not understand their meaning. The foliages, horns, wings, and spheres, so commonly found on the heads of Osiris, Isis and Horus, could not but amaze or raise the laughter of such as were not accustomed to them. Herodotus observes, that the Cabiri, as well as the same figure of Vulcan, were the diversion of