an abridgement of it, and which was considered the salvation of Egypt. A like veneration is bestowed upon this figure, that is the cross, by Roman Catholics: which, like other customs of the ancients, has probably been adopted by them without understanding its origin, and which they attribute to a different source. A spell, which they no doubt consider more potent, however, is now generally used instead of the cross. This is called gospels, and consists of short passages extracted from the gospels by a priest, which is enclosed in a piece of silk, and tied round the necks of children, going to bed. The same superstition prevails among the Mahometans.

Dr. Hume, in Walpole's memoirs speaking of modern Egypt, says, "The general remedy in cases of fever and other kinds of illness, is a saphie from a priest, which consists of some sentence from the Koran written on a small piece of paper and tied round the patients's neck. This, if the sick man recovers, he carefully preserves by keeping it constantly between his scull-caps, of which he generally wears two or three. Saphies are very commonly used by the Mohammedans, being considered to possess much efficacy for the body as well as the soul, and occupy the same place in the estimation of the superstitions as did the frontlets of the Jews and the phylacteries of the early Christians." Quoted in Russell's View of Egypt, p. 324, New-York edition.

In regard to the sacred writing of the Egyptians, it is not improbable that its characters were originally formed from the figure of the Nilometer, consisting of right angles, and thence considered sacred.

The Egyptian Mysteries.

We must not expect, we are told, that the priests of Isis, or Plutarch, or any other travellers who heard them talk, can be able to give us any information about the true sense and meaning of their symbols. It was a mysterious theology; which they took great care not to divulge. Those who were initiated therein engaged themselves by an oath never to communicate to the people any part of what had been revealed to them. Does not Herodotus often tell us, that he is permitted, upon no account whatever, to reveal the names and the honours that were destined and annexed to certain deities, or what these deities were? The secret in this point being inviolable, are we to wonder that they have not explained themselves on the grounds which concern us; and can we judge of what they have not revealed?

Let us then see (and this shall be the conclusion of our essay upon. the Egyptian religion) what these mysteries so much spoken of were; and, if possible, let us penetrate into these secrets, in spite of the veil and barriers intended to render them inaccessible.

Among the Ancient Egyptian figures, there were some which could not well be mistaken for celestial gods, and of which it was difficult to lose the meaning, having, at first, been of infinite use to the people.

G.

Such were, for instance, the serpent, the canopus, and the hawk.' We see, therefore, from the interpretation given of them by the grammarian Horapollo, that in the fourth century the Egyptian priests still expressed the life or eternity of their gods by a serpent encompassing them, (Serpentem auream Diis suis circumponent) that they represented the overflowing of the Nile by three pitchers, and denoted the wind by a hawk spreading her wings. Accipiter alis in aere protensis ventum significat.-Ibid. But the people having once forgotten the sense of the sacred writing, and taken human figures for celestial powers, never gave over inventing histories; and the priests who preserved this writ ing adapted it to their histories, which render it worthy of contempt, and altogether different from the ancient as to the meaning.

The priests at first retained a part of the primitive explications, Thence comes the mixture of great and little in the Egyptian theology and in the Eleusinian, which was the same. In them, more than anywhere, remained the ancient footsteps of the truths which constituted the principal ground-work of the religion of the patriarchs.

But it would have been dangerous for the Egyptian priest to attempt undeceiving the people and divert them from the pleasing thought that Osiris and Isis were two real personages, and were besides of their country and the protectors of Egypt. This chimera and all the others in appearance were authorised by the agreement of the monuments with the common phrase. The actions of Osiris and Isis were incessantly mentioned; the people believed what they saw and heard; the perpetual recital of as many historical facts as there were figures and ceremonies exhibited, completed their errors, and rendered them invincible.

If our councils and the most venerable of our bishops have had so much ado to abolish among the people the belief of certain legends unworthy the majesty of our religion, and which were connected with no monument capable of countenancing them, how can we conceive that the Egyptian priests were able to take from a people immersed in ignorance and cupidity the extravagant stories which universal custom offered to their minds on sight of the personages and animals wherewith the places of their assemblies were filled? It is much more natural to think, that the priests themselves, like the rest, yielded to the persuasion of being under the patronage of their ancestors transported into the stars, and now the moderators of the sun, the moon, and of all nature. The people, in their fanatic enthusiasm, would have torn in pieces any that should have dared to deny the history of Osiris and Isis. Truth was, then, altered and obscured by the very priests. They first accustomed themselves to these notions because it was dangerous not to comply with them, and afterwards became themselves the most zealous defenders of them. The whole came on by degrees. They first complied with the common language because they could not stem he torrent; but they studied in private what they could collect of the

interpretation of the ancient writing. Thus they at once admitted both the popular stories and the explications that demolished them: they only took care to require profound secrecy from those whom they would instruct in a more solid manner.

Thus instruction assumed a mysterious and important air, without altering any thing in what the people believed. It only mentioned a more perfect state, and a kind of knowledge of which none became capable till after many trials and efforts which suited not the common sort of men. Thus they avoided exciting the fury of the people.— This was already a crying injustice in those priests to detain truth captive, and to appropriate it exclusively to themselves.

So criminal a disposition could not but occasion a still greater impairing of truth. And really every thing degenerated more and more every day. The probation of the disciples, and the oath of an inviolable secrecy, being very remarkable practices, were perpetuated with great exactness. The ceremonial part easily supports itself in all religions, and is often embellished rather than diminished, because it is of no importance to the passions, which it never disturbs, and sometimes really indulges. It was not with truth and instruction as with the ceremonial. They were disfigured from age to age, sometimes through the ignorance of the priests, sometimes by their avarice, but principally by their fondness for systematic reveries, with which the most subtle among them tried to explain the symbolical writing; and of which they were much fonder than of a few plain and over simple truths, which their predecessors were contented to teach them. Therefore danger and fear first gave birth to the secrecy of the Egyptian instructions, and have converted the practices, of the ancient ceremonial of the public religion, into so many mysteries, to the knowledge of which none could be admitted but such as had given proofs of a profound respect for the objects of religion, of a perfection which common men could not attain, and of an unconquerable taciturnity. But then those who were initiated thought themselves of a class superior to the rest of men, and their condition appeared worthy the envying. The priests being sure of the discretion of their disciples might very well acknowledge to them the grossness of the meaning which the people annexed to these symbols. But their shameful connivance suffered error to get so much ground, that the piety of the initiated themselves sunk into a mere ceremonial; and the small remains of truths, which subsisted amongst so many fabulous stories, remained there stifled as it were, and without any useful effect. The priests themselves out-did the popular superstitions; and out of custom, and from interested views preserved the preparatory ceremonies, and the religion of silence, that gave the people a high notion of the ministers, and of their learning.

I have given the literal translation of most of the terms made use of in these mysteries. Neither the Greeks nor the Romans understood the meaning of them, because they are Phenician. The very name mystery being also a Phenician word, which signifies a veil," an in

*

velopement, we are, on this very account, authorized to look out in the Chananean language for the meaning of the other terms made use of in the mysteries. But if the terms used in the Eleusinian feasts shall perfectly concur with the sense I have ascribed to the pieces that were most in use in the symbolical writing and ceremonies, the result will evidently be, that the figures originally appointed to instruct the people have been converted into so many imaginary gods, and that we have obtained the true original of all these inhabitants of the poetical heaven.

The Ceres of Sicily and Eleusis is no other than the Egyptian Isis, brought into those places by the Phenician merchants, who made themselves rich by transporting the corn of Lower Egypt into the places whither the scarcity of provisions drew them, and generally on the different coasts of the Mediterranean, where they had offices, and establishments. The ceremonial of the rural feasts had in their hands taken a turn somewhat different. The mother of harvests there lamented her daughter, instead of bewailing her husband, as the Egyptian ritual would have it. This excepted, the ground and intention were the same.†

The feasts instituted in honour of Ceres were called Thesmophoria, whose principal parts may be reduced to three, viz., the preparations, the processions, and the autopsia, or the sight of truth.

The preparations, the long enumeration of which may be read in Meursius, (Græcia Feriata,) had for their object the frugality, chastity, and innocence that were necessary to the worshippers. The processions consisted in the carriage of the sacred baskets, wherein they inclosed a child and a golden serpent, a van, grains, cakes, and all the other symbols of which we have made the enumeration in another place.

If in the feasts of Ceres or Isis, men carried to an extravagant excess the form of the gestures and situations, the scrupulous recitals of the set-forms of prayers, the length of the vigils, outward purity, abstinence, the forbearance of all pleasures, and the shunning all manner of distraction; it is because the whole of religion was reduced to these outward practices. Those who observed them knew neither the motive nor the purport or destination of them. It was no

mistar, et mistor, velamen, absconsio, latibulum. Psl. 10: Isa. 4: 6. + Cicero, on the "Nature of the Gods," makes the following remarks upon this subject> "The sovereignty and power over the earth is the portion of a god, to whom we, as well as the Greeks, have given a name that denotes riches; in Latin Dis, in Greek Pluton, because all things arise from the earth and return to it. He forced away Proserpine, in Greek called Persephone, by which the poets mean the seed of corn; from whence their fiction of Ceres, the mother of Proserpine, seeking for her daughter, who was hid from her. She is called Ceres, which is the same as Geres, a gerendis frugibus, from bearing fruit, the first letter of the word being altered, after the manner of the Greeks; for by them she is called Demeter, the same as Gemeter," that is "mother earth."

Flache derives Persephone thus from

persephoneh, the corn lost.

peri, fruit, corn, and→→→ saphan, to hide, comes

It may be remarked, that the flambeau or torch which Ceres, according to the fable is said to have carried night and day in search of her daughter Proserpine, is a symbol of the lost sun, without whose aid no fruit or corn could be found or produced.-Edit.

longer any but an artificial devotion, or the skeleton of the ancient religion. But any upright unprejudiced mind will easily discern in them the intentions of the first founders, who knew the full value of rule, the beauty of order, and the benefit of recollection.

A long description of all the purifications and other ceremonies that filled up the first of the nine days of devotion consecrated to Ceres would have tired out my readers, and is no part of my plan, which chiefly aims at obtaining the origin of these establishments. It will be the same with the long procession formerly made from Athens to Eleusis, and with the several marches peculiar to each of the nine days. The Greeks had built the particulars of this minute ceremonial upon the little adventures that composed the wonderful story of the migration of Ceres into their country.

But this my reader is acquainted with. What was carried in the feasts of Ceres at Eleusis, is the same that was carried in the feasts of Isis. Let us, therefore, pass on to the explication of the autopsia, or the manifestation of truth, which was in a manner the last act of this representation, and was the whole purport of the mysteries. After a horrid darkness, lightnings, thunder claps, and an imitation of what is most shocking in nature, the serenity which at last succeeded, discovered four personages magnificently dressed, and whose habits were all mysterious.

The

The most brilliant of all, and who was especially called the Hierophant, or the expounder of sacred things, was dressed so as to represent the being that governs the universe. The second was the flambeau bearer, and had relation to the sun. The third, who was called the adorer, and who kept near an altar, represented the moon. fourth was called the messenger of the gods, or Mercury, which corresponds to the Egyptian Anubis, with his dog's head and measure of the Nile, accompanied by two serpents, and is nothing but the wholesome advice which the dog-star wisely gives to men, to make off, at the increase of the waters, and thereby secure their subsistence.

Nothing could be better contrived than these magnificent ceremonies whereby the Egyptians incessantly recalled to the minds of the assistants the belief of the first men concerning the judgment of God, and the hopes which are to quiet the minds of the just at the approach of death.

What an indestructible tradition attended with constant practices had been able to preserve of the ancient doctrine, proved at last so very opposite to the popular notions, that the priests thought themselves under the necessity of using much circumspection, and of having recourse not only to the trial of their disciples, but also to the oath of secrecy. The reason of the priests themselves went astray in this labyrinth of obscure signs and mysterious practices. Then came on systems. One looked out among all this apparatus of ceremonies and fables for a complete set of physics.

Another tried to find out a complete body of moral and instructive maxims, under the colour of the most scandalous fables. Others