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one accidentally, is punished by a fine, determined by the priests: but whoever, however involuntarily, kills an ibis " or an hawk 116 cannot by any means escape death.

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LXVI. The number of domestic animals in Ægypt is very great, and would be much greater if the increase of cats "7 were not thus prevented. The

Ibis.]-The Egyptians thus venerated the ibis, because they were supposed to devour the serpents which bred in the ground after the ebbing of the Nile.-T.

Hawk.]—They have a kind of domestic large brown hawk, with a fine eye. One may see the pigeons and hawks standing close to one another. The Turks never kill them, and seem to have a sort of veneration for these birds and for cats, as well as their ancestors. The ancient Egyptians in this animal worshipped the sun or Osiris, of which the brightness of its eyes was an emblem.-Pococke.

Osiris was worshipped at Philæ, under the figure of the Ethiopian hawk.-T.

117 If the increase of cats, &c.]-There occurs, I own, a difficulty in the Ægyptian system of theology. It is evident from their method of propagation, that a couple of cats in fifty years would stock a whole kingdom. If religious veneration were paid them, it would in twenty more not only be easier in Ægypt to find a god than a man, (which Petronius says was the case in some parts of Italy) but the gods must at last entirely starve the men, and leave themselves neither priests nor votaries remaining. It is probable, therefore, that this wise nation, the most celebrated in antiquity for prudence and sound policy, foreseeing such dangerous consequences, reserved all their worship for the full-grown divinities, and used the freedom to drown the holy spawn, or little sucking gods, without any scruple or remorse. And thus the practice of warping the tenets of religion, in order to serve temporal

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The female cats, when delivered of their young, carefully avoid the company of the males, who to obtain a second commerce with them, contrive and execute this stratagem: they steal the young from the mother, which they destroy, but do not eat. This animal, which is very fond of its young, from its desire to have more, again covets the company of the male. In every accident of fire, the cats seem to be actuated by some supernatural' impulse; for the Egyptians surrounding the place which is burning, appear to be occupied with no thought but that of preserving their cats. These, however, by stealing between the legs of the spectators, or by leaping over *their heads, endeavour to dart into the flames. This circumstance, whenever it happens, diffuses universal sorrow. In whatever family a cat by accident happens to die, every individual cuts off his eye-brows 120; but on the death of a

dog

temporal interests, is not by any means to be regarded as an invention of these later ages.-Hume.

In this place Mr. Hume, like the rest of his brethren, overshoots his mark. It was not the Ægyptians, but the male cats, that put a stop to the increase of their kind.

113 Supernatural.]-It is astonishing that Herodotus should see this as a prodigy. The cat is a timid animal, fire makes it more so the precautions taken to prevent its perishing frighten it still more, and deprive it of its sagacity.-Larcher.

110 Cuts off his eye-brows.]-The custom of cutting off the hair in mourning appears to have obtained in the East in the prophetic times.

Among

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Among the ancient Greeks it was sometimes laid upon the dead body, sometimes cast into the funeral pile, and sometimes placed upon the grave.

Women in the deep mourning of captivity, shaved off their hair. "Then thou shalt bring her home to thine house, and she shall shave her head and pare her nails." Deuteronomy, xxi. 12.

Maillet says, that in the East the women that attend a corpse to the grave generally have their hair hanging loose about their ears.

121 Death of a dog In this respect Plutarch differs from Herodotus. He allows that these animals were at one time esteemed holy, but it was before the time of Cambyses. From the æra of his reign they were held in another light; for when this king killed the sacred Apis, the dogs fed so liberally upon his entrails, without making a proper distinction, that they lost all their sanctity. But they were certainly of old looked upon as sacred; and it was perhaps with a view to this, and to prevent the Israelites retaining any notion of this nature, that a dog was not suffered to come within the precincts of the temple of Jerusalem. In the Mosaic law, the price of a dog, and the hire of a harlot, are put upon the same level. See Deuteronomy, xxiii. 18. "Thou shalt not bring the hire of a whore nor the price of a dog into the house of the Lord thy God for any vow, for both these are an abomination to the Lord thy God.”— Bryant.

It is because the dog was consecrated to Anubis, that this deity was represented with a dog's head. Virgil and Ovid call him Latrator Anubis; Propertius and Prudentius, Latrans Anubis.-Larcher.

At the present day dogs are considered in the East as defiling; they do not suffer them in their houses, and ever with care avoid touching them in the streets. By the ancient Jews, as remarked before, they were considered in a de

grading

LXVII. The cats, when dead, are carried to sacred buildings, and after being salted 1** aré buried in the city Bubastis. Of the canine species, the females are buried in consecrated chests, wherever they may happen to die, which ceremony is also observed with respect to the ichneumons. The shrew-mice and hawks are always removed

grading light. "Am I a dog?" says the Philistine to David. "What is thy servant a dog?" says Hazael, &c. See Harmer, vol. i. p. 220. It may indeed be observed, that in most countries and languages the word dog is a term of contempt. "I took by the throat the uncircumcised dog."-T.

The following whimsical fragment from Anaxandrides, a Greek comic poet, which is preserved in Athenæus, seems to deserve a place here:

"How can I possibly fight or serve in the same ranks with you, as nothing can possibly be more unlike than our laws and customs. You worship an ox, I sacrifice it to the gods; you think an eel a very mighty divinity, we esteem it as one of the best dishes that come upon the table; you worship a dog, I flog the rascal, and particularly when I find him stealing my dinner."

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After being salted.]-Diodorus Siculus says the same thing, and he also describes the process used on the occasion.-T.

123 Ichneumon.]-This animal is found both in Upper and Lower Egypt. It creeps slowly along, as if ready to seize its prey; it feeds on plants, eggs and fowls. In Upper Ægypt it searches for the eggs of the crocodile, which lie hid in the sand, and eats them, thereby preventing the increase of that animal. It may be easily tamed, and goes about the houses like a cat. It makes a growling noise, and barks when it is very angry. The French in Ægypt have called this le rat de Pharaon

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removed to Butos; the ibis to Hermopolis the bears, an animal rarely seen in Ægypt, and the wolves125, which are not much bigger than foxes, are buried in whatever place they die.

LXVIII. I pro

Pharaon. Alpinus and Bellonius, following this, have called it Mus Pharaonis. The resemblance it has to a mouse in colour and hair, might have induced people ignorant of natural history to call it a mouse; but why Pharaoh's mouse? The Ægyptians were in the time of Pharaoh too intelligent to call it a mouse: nor is it at this day called phar by the Arabs, which is the name for mouse; they call it nems. What is related concerning its entering the jaws of the crocodile is fabulous.-Hasselquist.

124 Hermopolis.]-There were in Egypt two places of this name, Wesseling supposes Herodotus to speak of that in the Thebaid.-T.

Our gallant countryman, Sir Robert Wilson, describes an immense deposit of these birds in the plain between the Pyramids of Sacarah and those of Giza, the site probably of the ancient Memphis. The mummy pits, as he calls them, extend several leagues. The bird pits he thus describes :

In the bird pits, millions of earthen pots lie in the recesses, of which the sacred birds of Egypt, particularly the Ibis, are enclosed, and occasionally the bones of animals are found: these pots are closed by a strong cement, which no air can penetrate, when broken, there drops out what is apparently a lump of burnt cinders, which proves to be the cloth in which the bodies were preserved. In almost all, the string which bound them remains perfect, and their feathers are preserved with their very shades of colour.-p. 138.

125 Wolves.]-Hasselquist did not meet with either of these animals in Ægypt.

Wolves were honoured in Egypt, says Eusebius, probably from their resemblance to the dog. Some relate, that the Æthiopians having made an expedition against Ægypt, were put to flight by a vast number of wolves, which occasioned the place where the incident happened to be called Lycopolis.

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