Cambyses, when he entered their temple and that of the forging deity.

They often add to these a fourth god, whom they sometimes call Mercury, sometimes Camilus or Casmilus, which among the Hetuians and in Latium signified a minister or a messenger. In all which it is plain, that we again meet with the four principal keys of the ancient Egyptian writing, changed on account of their human figure into so many tutelar and powerful gods.

The names of the Cabiri, with their significations, are thus given in Anthon's Class. Diet. :-" Axieros is said to have signified in Egyptian, the all powerful one ;-Axiokersos is made to denote the great foundator;Axeokersa is consequently the great fecundatrix; and Casmilus he who stands before the deity, or he who beholds the face of the deity."

The first answers to the Supreme, Intelligence; the second to Osiris the sun; the third to Isis; and the fourth to Anubis.

Apollo, the Muses, and three Graces.

Notwithstanding the variety which the caprice of private men and the difference of tastes have introduced into the Egyptian ceremonial, and among the signs that served to proclaim whatever was of concern to the public, we find every where the same grounds, because the wants of all men were the same, and their practices were founded on these wants. After the sense of those emblems had been so far perverted as to change the significant figures into so many deities solely taken up with the care of supplying all the wants of the Egyptians, or of informing them of all their concerns; each province paid special worship to one or the other of the figures. For instance, in some places they honoured Apollo, holding in his hand a lyre. This so very plain a symbol of the feasts, having been taken for a deity presiding over harmony, the other figures which attended him to denote

*

The author, it seems, was not sensible of the propriety of this title; but none could be more appropriate for the inhabitants of the northern climates to bestow upon Apollo, the sun of the upper hemisphere. Dupuis, as before noticed, as well described the complaints that would naturally occur, in consequence of the absence of the sun in the winter season: "What has become of the happy temperature which the earth enjoyed in the summer? that harmony of the elements which accorded with that of the heavens? that richness, that beauty of our fields," etc.

Apollo restored this happy state of things, and might, therefore, very properly be styled a deity presiding over harmony. "The god of the sun became also the god of music by a natural allusion to the movements of the planets and the mysterious harmony of the spheres." (Anthon's Class. Dict.)-Edit.

the several circumstances of each season, were taken in a sense agreeable to the notion they had framed to themselves of Apollo. The nine Isises which proclaimed the menomeniæ, or the first days of every one of the nine months, during which Egypt is freed from the inundation, bore in their hands symbols peculiar or suitable to each of these months; as for instance, a pair of compasses, a flute, a trumpet, a mask, or other attribute, to denote the feast that preceded the surveying of the lands that had been overflowed, or some other solemnity. All these figures in reality informed men of what they were to do. They had a general confused remembrance that these were their functions. But being once become goddesses, people imagined that they had the superintendence of music, geometry, astronomy, and, all the sciences. They were united in a chorus to the musician Apollo; and instead of seeing in the instruments they bore the peculiar characters of the feasts and works of each month, men took them for the specific marks of all fine and delicate arts, and even helped on this fancy, by adding a part of the emblems. They were called in Egypt the Nine Muses: which signified the nine months rescued from the waters, or from the inundation; an etymology whose exactness is demonstrated in the name of Moses, or Mose, which signifies saved from the waters, disengaged, freed from the waters. Such was the common name they always retained. But the Greeks, among whom this chorus of deities was introduced, gave each of them a proper name. Those names, if they are taken out of their language, conformably to the ridiculous notions they entertained of these figures, are no manner of information to us, and are not worth our translating. Near the nine Isises that denoted the nine months in which people might go up and down, and act at liberty, appeared also the three Isises, that represented the three months during which the water remained on the plains, and hindered the free correspondence of one city with another. They were drawn sometimes in swathings, and incapable of making any use either of their feet or arms; sometimes half women and half lizards, or half fishes; because men must then remain on the land by the water-side. In fine, (and this last form was more to the liking of the Greeks,) they were represented as the three idle sisters, without any attribute, holding one another by the hand; because they denoted the inaction of the three months of inundation, that succeeded each other without interruption. And as these three months broke off the ordinary correspondence of one city with another, at a time when they had not as yet raised the magnificent causeways that have since been made; the three Isises proclaiming the neomeniæ of these months of total separation were called Cheritout,* that is

From charat, abcingere, comes cheritout repudium, scissio, the interruption of commerce. See the word Cheritout. Isai. 50, 1; and Deut. 2 4, 1.

the divorce, the time of the separation. This word had a relative sound with the word charites, which in Greek signifies sometimes the thanksgivings, sometimes the favours, or a courteous behaviour. Which gave occasion to the Greek poets to imagine that these three goddesses presided over gratitude and outward charms.

Notwithstanding all the care every city had taken in the month of June to supply itself with necessary provisions, they could not on many occasions do without the assistance of each other, and they had recourse to the conveniency of barks and sails. The bark with its sail was represented in Egypt and Phenicia under a figure of a winged steed. On this account it was that the people of Cadis, who were originally of Phenician extraction, anciently gave a ship, whether large or small, the name of a horse ;* and speaking of their barks, they called them their horses. What can be then the meaning of Pegassus, or the winged horse set by the side of the three Graces and the nine Muses? If these goddesses preside over gratitude and the sciences, our winged horse becomes unintelligible. But if our Charites are the three months' separation, or the interruption of the free correspondence of one city with another, in this case indeed Pegassus comes to our assistance; and if the nine Muses are the nine figures that publish what is to be done during the nine months in which Egypt is freed from the waters, then indeed the winged horse, that is, the boat, becomes a symbol of the end of navigation, and of the return of the rural works. They therefore gave this figure the name of Pegassus, which signifies the end of navigation, according to the style of the Phenician people testified by Strabo, the conveniency of navigation.

An Egyptian or Phenician colony, that had all these figures in the ceremonial of its religion, brought them along with it to Phocis in the neighbourhood of Mount Parnassus and of Delphos. They had for certain no meaning there, being no way related to anything belonging to that country. But they had been long honored, together with their president Apollo, as so many bountiful deities; which was sufficient to perpetuate the use of these figures, and the pretty stories which had been devised to account for all

* Gaditarorum mercatores ingentibus uti navibus, pauperes parvis, quas equos appellent. Strab. geograph. 1. 2. 99. edit. Reg.

+ From

sus, cursor, navis, comes

pag, cessat, otiatur; and from pegasus, navigationis intermissio. The head of a steed put on the shoulders of Isis, (Pausan, in Arcad.) with a fish in one hand and doves in the other, was evidently the proclamation of a feast that opened the navigation when the sun left the sign Pices, and brought on the Zephyrs, the gentleness of which was denoted by the dove.

It will not be improper, in order to strengthen what has been said, to observe, that in the ancient figures the three Graces are often seen under the conduct of Mercury, because the rising of the dog-star in Egypt is succeeded by the three months of inundation; and the nine Muses under the conduct of Apollo, because Horus, or working, makes its use and benefit of the nine following months.

But why did this Apollo pronounce oracles, and foretell future events? This was his first destination and appointment. Horus served only to inform people by his attributes, of what was to be done or expected according to the winds and years. People never forgot that these figures were the signs and regulations that guided the works of man; but when they were once made gods, instead of looking upon them as convenient indications and tokens, whereby persons of great experience regulated the works of the people, and beforehand pointed out to them what was to be done from one month to another, they fancied that these figures were acquainted with future events, and gave information about them.*

The author, it appears to me, is here in error. Apollo was a god, the sun, before the invention of the symbols that indicated his movement in the heavens, and the state of the seasons, which regulated the labours of man. Nor do I perceive the propriety of naming these symbols Horus, or Apollo, any other appellation would answer equally well. When Apollo bad become personified by means of the popular religion that governed the opinions of men at the time, he then, "Instead of being the god from whom emanate fecundity and increase, is a simple shepherd conducting the herds of another. Instead of dying and arising again to life, he is ever young. Instead of scorching the earth and its inhabitants with his devouring rays. he darts his fearful arrows from his quiver of gold. Instead of announcing the future, in the mysterious language of the planets, he prophesies in his own name. Nor does he any longer direct the harmony of the spheres by notes of his mystic lyre, he has now an instrument invented by Mercury and perfected by himself. The dances too of the stars cease to be conducted by him; for he now moves at the head of the nine muses, the strings of his divine cithara, the divi

Pæan or Pana,
It is the same

Possibly this has procured Horus-Apollo the title of revelator, the interpreter of hidden things, the oracle. name Pharoah gave Joseph in his tongue. He called him (Genes. 41, 45;) tsaphat pœanach, the interpreter of sacred things. These Egyptian words have a vast relation with the two of the Phenician language which signify the same thing-to observe to perceive and tsahan, to hide.

nities who preside over each of the liberal arts." (Constant, de la Religion, Anthon's Class. Dict.)

Niobe.

Niobe, the poets say, proud of her own fruitfulness, insulted Latona, but Apollo punished her by slaying her fourteen children with his arrows. She never could be comforted, and the gods out of compassion changed her into a rock. Latona or the lizard, or the figure which is half woman and half lizard, signifies the retreat of the Egyptians to the higher grounds.+

Niobe signifies the sojourn of the enemy, or of the river overflowing the plain. From - - nuah, habitares, to sojourn: and from -ob, exundation, tumer, comes- Nyob, mora exundationis.

The insult Niobe gives Latona is the necessity she lays the Egyptians under of flying, like amphibious animals, to terraces surrounded with water. The fourteen children of Niobe, are the fourteen cubits that mark the several increases of the Nile. (Strab. 1. 17.) These fourteen cubits are still seen represented by fourteen children dispoesd one above another upon the feet and arms of the figure of the Nile, now standing in the Tuileries.

Niobe, in short, is changed into a stone. Here lies the equivocation. The sojourn of the enemy becomes the preservation of Egypt, shelav. But the same word, disguised by a slight alteration into that of shelaw, signifies a stone: shelav, salus, shelaw, silex). Understanding no longer what was meant, by the mother of the fourteen children, changed into preservation, or become the preservator of Egypt, they metamorphosed her into a rock, and her eyes intc two fountains, that continue to shed tears for the death of her dear family.

The following remarks of Mr. Mackey are ingenious and plausible. If his derivation of Tantalus be correct, it sompletely developes the origin of this celebrated personage.

The figures of Anubis and Isis are sometimes attended by a tortoise, a duck, or an amphibious lizard. The nature of these animals is to keep within reach both of the land and water, which are frequently necessary to them, and to get to higher ground as the water rises. This was the symbol borne by the Egyptian Isis at the approach of the overflow, and she was then called Leto or Latona, which is the name of the amphibious lizard. This Isis, having the head and shoulders of a woman, with the paws, body and tail of a leto or lizard, is found in the monuments of antiquity.

5.