CORRIGENDA. p. 49, 1. 4 (from bottom), for of read to. p. 103 (note, col. 2), 1. 10 (from bottom), for horvorgegangen read hervorgegangen. CHAPTER I. Characteristics of Egyptian Heathenism. Οὐ μόνον δὲ τούτου [Οσίριδος] οἱ ἱερεῖς λέγουσιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῶν ἄλλων θεῶν, ὅσοι μὴ ἀγέννητοι, μηδ ̓ ἄφθαρτοι, τὰ μὲν σώματα παρ' αὐτοῖς κεῖσθαι καμόντα καὶ θεραπεύεσθαι, τὰς δὲ ψυχὰς ἐν οὐρανῷ λάμπειν ἄστρα, καὶ καλεῖσθαι κύνα μὲν τὴν Ἴσιδος ὑφ ̓ Ἑλλήνων, ὑπ ̓ Αἰγυπτίων δὲ Σῶθιν, Ωρίωνα δὲ τὴν Ὥρου, τὴν δὲ Τυφῶνος, ἄρκτον. εἰς δὲ τὰς τροφὰς τῶν τιμωμένων ζώων, τοὺς μὲν ἄλλους συντεταγμένα τελεῖν, μόνους δὲ μὴ διδόναι τοὺς Θηβαΐδα κατοικοῦντας, ὡς θνητὸν θεὸν οὐδένα νομίζοντας, ἀλλὰ ὃν καλοῦσιν αὐτοὶ Κνήφ, ἀγέννητον ὄντα καὶ ἀθάνατον. EUDOXUS in Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride, c. XXI. I. Importance ON resuming this investigation into the distinctive CHAP. phases of religious thought among the dominant nations of antiquity, the reader will be next invited of ancient to a sphere whose influence on the early march of Egypt. civilisation it were difficult to overstate. The Valley of the Nile had ever since the oldest Pharaohs been the border-land, or point of confluence, where the African was brought into direct communication with his Asiatic brother, and the East was intermingling with the West. As one of the succession of luminous centres, which, emerging here and there amid the dimness of primeval history, are traceable from the Mediterranean to the utmost bounds of Eastern Asia, Egypt, in some branches of her sacred institutions, will be found to have remarkable traits in common with the Aryan conquerors' of 1 See Mr Kenrick's Ancient Egypt, 1. 105 sq., Lond. 1850, where after handling the subject very fairly, he concludes that there has been some connexion between the civilisation of Egypt and India, while the nations C. A. E. IV. themselves have as much claim to be 1 I. CHAP. the Panjáb; while her monuments, alike in area and in massive grandeur, will remind us also of those primitive ages when the Mayan architect was rearing kindred structures' near the rivers of the New World. Its connex ion with the ing coun tries. But full as such analogies may be of interesting neighbour speculation, in reference to the ultimate extraction of the human family from one common stock, our present business is to mark the place and character of Egypt during the historic period, and as standing in more intimate relations to the people of her own immediate neighbourhood. The reputation for superior knowledge once enjoyed by all the children of the East country' was believed to be the special heritage of the Egyptian priests (cf. 1 Kings iv. 30). Their cloisters were the recognised abode of art, of science, of religious mystery. Assyrian sculptors learned at Memphis what with greater or with less precision they have reproduced at Nineveh. The sons of Abraham, who like himself went down in search of shelter from a grievous famine, were constrained by closer contact with Egyptian modes of life to throw aside their old nomadic habits; and at length when they returned victorious to the land of promise, the great host was marshalled by a captain, who had grown to manhood in the court of Pharaoh, and was ‘learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians' (Acts vii. 22). Thither also in the dawn of western civilisation came the young philosophers of Hellas, panting far less guarded in his phraseology: Asia) is as groundless as it is absurd.' 1 Part III. p. 134. "The evidence on this point is all collected in Lepsius, Chronol. der Aegypter, 'Einl.' pp. 41 sq. |