ported the worship of the hero-deities, by making their theology more intricate; and by keeping out of sight, what could not but weaken religious veneration in remote posterity, the naked truth, that they were only DEAD MEN DEIFIED. And these advantages they afterwards improved with notable address; by making those symbols as well relative to new conceived imaginary qualities and influences of their first natural gods, the host of heaven, as to what they properly respected, in hieroglyphic writing, their later heroes and tutelary deities; which trick, invented to keep the Egyptians in their superstition, spread so impenetrable an obscurity over paganism, as hindered the most sagacious philosophers and knowing antiquaries of Greece from ever getting a right view of the rise and progress of their own idolatry. And, if I be not much mistaken, it was the design of these Egyptian priests to commemorate the advantages of this contrivance in the celebrated fable* of TYPHON'S WAR WITH THE GODS; who, distressed and terrified by this earth-born giant, fled from his persecution into EGYPT ; and there hid themselves each under the form of a several ANIMAL. This adventure is related by Ovid in a very agreeable and artful manner, where he makes one of the impious Pierides sing it, in their contest with the muses: Bella canit superúm: Falsoque in honore gigantes Et se MENTITIS superos celasse FIGURIS: Duxque gregis, dixit, fit Jupiter: UNDE recurvis Nunc quoque formatus Libys est cum cornibus Ammon; Delius in corvo, proles Semeleia capro, Fele soror Phebi, nivea Saturnia vacca, Pisce Venus latuit, Cyllenius Ibidis alis.† Typhon, amongst the Egyptians, was the exemplar of impiety: so that under that name we are to understand the inquisitive, which the priests always surnamed the impious (such who in after-times followed the celebrated Euhemerus of Greece); these, in a malicious search into the genealogies of their gods, had so near detected their original, and consequently endangered their worship, that the priests had nothing left but to perplex and embroil the inquiry, by encouraging the SYMBOLIC worship as explained above. Hence this fable (in which they celebrated the subtilty of their expedient) that Egypt afforded a place of refuge for the gods; who there lay hid under the forms of beasts. Where we must observe, that the shape each god was said to have assumed was that of his symbolic mark in hieroglyphic writing. Indeed Antonius Liberalis § differs from Ovid in the particular transformations; and Lucian, || from * Diod. Sicul. lib. i. p. 54.-Steph. ed. informs us, that this was an Egyptian fable: as does Lucian, in his tract De Sacrificiis. See note QQQ, at the end of this book. || De Sacrif. Metem. lib. v. fab. 5. > Cap. xxviii. them both; but this rather confirms than weakens our interpretation; since each god, as we have seen, was denoted by divers hieroglyphics. We must not suppose, however, that the whole of their distress came from the quarter of their enemies. More favourable inquirers would be a little troublesome. And the same expedient would keep them at a distance likewise. The priests seem to have hinted at this case likewise, in the similar story they told Herodotus, "that Hercules was very desirous to see Jupiter, who was by no means consenting to this interview; at last overcome by the hero's importunity, he eluded his curiosity, by this expedient: he flayed the carcass of a ram; and investing himself with the skin separated with the head from the body, he presented himself under that appearance to the inquirer."* Herodotus himself seems to hint at something like the explanation of the fable of Typhon given above, where speaking of Pan soon after, and on the same occasion, he says, "The Egyptians represent Pan as the Grecians paint him, with the face and legs of a goat. Not that they imagine this to be his real form, which is the same with that of the other gods. But I take no satisfaction in recording the reason they give for representing him in this manner."† From these two different ways of relating the circumstance of Jupiter's and Pan's disguises under a brutal form, it appears that the Egyptian priests had two accounts concerning it, the exoteric and the esoteric. Herodotus, in the story of Jupiter, makes no scruple to record the first; but the other, which concerns Pan's transformations, he did not care to touch upon. If this explanation of the famous fable of Typhon needed any further support, we might find it in what the Egyptian theologers continued to deliver down concerning it. Diodorus Siculus, speaking of the difficulty n discovering the true original of Egyptian brute worship, says, that the priests had a profound secret concerning it: ‡ a strong presumption that his here delivered was the secret; it being the only one which the priests were much concerned to keep to themselves; as we shall see when we come to speak of the causes assigned by the ancients for brute worship. What the priests thought fit to intrust to the people concerning this matter, the Sicilian tells us, was this; That the gods of the early times being few in number, and so forced to yield to the multitude and injustice of earth-born men, assumed the forms of divers animals, and by that means escaped the cruelty and violence of their enemies; but that, at length, gaining the empire of the world, they consecrated the species of those animals whose forms they had assumed, in gratitude for that Θηβαῖοι μέν νυν, καὶ ὅσοι διὰ τούτους οΐων ἀπέχονται, διὰ τάδι λέγουσι τὸν νόμον τόνδί σφε τιθῆναι. Ηρακλέα θελῆσαι πάντως ἰδέσθαι τὸν Δία, καὶ τὸν οὐκ ἐθέλειν ὀφθῆναι ὑπ' αὐτοῦ· τέλος δὲ, ἐπεί τε λιπαρίων τὸν Ἡρακλέα, τὸν Δία μηχανήσασθαι, κριὸν ἐκδείραντα προεχέσθαί τε τὴν κεφαλὴν ἀποταμόντα τοῦ κριοῦ καὶ ἐνδύντα τὸ νάκος, οὕτω οἱ ἑωυτὸν ἐπιδείξαι. Lib. ii. cap. 3. + τοῦ Πανὸς τὤγαλμα, καθάπερ Ελληνες, αιγοπρόσωπον καὶ τραγοσκελία· οὔτε τοιοῦτον νομίζοντες εἶναί μιν, ἀλλ' ὅμοιον τοῖσι ἄλλοισι θεοῖσι, ὅταν δὲ εἵνεκα τοιοῦτον γράφουσι αὐτὸν, οὐ μοι ἡδιόν ἐστι λέγειν.—Lib. i. cap. 46. † Οἱ μὲν ἱερεῖς αὐτῶν ἀπόῤῥητόν τι δόγμα περὶ τούτων ἔχουσιν.—Lib. i. p. 54. relief which they had received from them in their distresses.* The moral of the fable lies too open to need an interpreter: it can hardly, indeed, be any other than that we have here given. But Diodorus aids us in the discovery of that secret, which he himself appears not to have penetrated, where he says that Melampus, who brought the mysteries of Proserpine from Egypt into Greece, taught them the story of TYPHON, and the whole history of the disasters and sufferings of the gods. Now we have shown that one part of the office of the hierophant of the mysteries was to reveal the true original of polytheism: which instruction could not be conveyed more appositely, than in the history of Typhon, as here explained. From the whole then, we conclude, that this was indeed the profound secret, which the Egyptian priests had concerning it. So that the passage of Diodorus, last quoted, not only supports our interpretation of the fable of Typhon, but of the secret of the mysteries likewise. Only one thing is worth our notice, that the priests should think fit to give the people this curious origin of brute worship: we have observed, that they promoted and encouraged this brutal idolatry in order to hide the weakness of their hero worship; but then some reason was to be given for that more extravagant superstition: so, by a fine contrivance, they made the circumstances of the fable, by which they would commemorate their address in introducing a new superstition to support the old, a reason for that introduced support. This was a fetch of policy worthy of an Egyptian priesthood. But let us hear what the ancients in general have to say concerning the beginning of brute worship. Now the ancients having generally mistaken the origin of hieroglyphics, it is no wonder they should be mistaken in this likewise: and how much they were mistaken, their diversity and inconstancy of opinion plainly show us: and yet, amidst this diversity, the cause here assigned hath escaped them; which had otherwise, 'tis probable, put an end to all farther conjecture. But as they chanced to fall into a variety of wrong opinions, it will be incumbent on me to examine and confute them. What I can at present recollect as any way deserving notice, are the following: They suppose brute worship to have arisen, 1. From the benefits men receive of animals. 2. From the doctrine of the metempsychosis. 3. From the use of asterisms. 4. From the notion of God's pervading all things. 5. From the use of animals as symbols of the divine nature. Φασὶ γὰρ τοὺς ἐξ ἀρχῆς γενομένους θεοὺς, ὀλίγους ὄντας καὶ κατισχυομένους ὑπὸ τοῦ πλήθεος καὶ τῆς ἀνομίας τῶν γηγενῶν ἀνθρώπων, ὁμοιωθῆναι τισὶ τῶν ζώων, καὶ διὰ τοῦ τοιούτου τρόπου διαφυγεῖν τὴν ὠμότητα καὶ βίαν αὐτῶν· ὕστερον δὲ τῶν κατὰ τὸν κόσμον πάντων κρατή σαντας καὶ τοῖς αἰτίοις τῆς ἐξ ἀρχῆς σωτηρίας χάριν ἀποδιδόντας, ἀφιερῶσαι τὰς φύσεις αὐτῶν is ápopuúênsa».—Lib. i. p. 54. + Το σύνολον τὴν περὶ τὰ πάθη τῶν θεῶν ἱστορίαν.—Lib. i. ‡ Div. Leg. vol. i. p. 316, &c. 6. From the invention of a certain Egyptian king for his private ends of policy. These, I think, are all the opinions of moment. And of these, we may observe in general, that the fourth and fifth are least wide of the truth, as making brute worship symbolical: but the defect, common to them all, is that the reason assigned by each concludes for the universality of this worship throughout paganism; whereas it was in fact peculiar to Egypt; and seen and owned to be so by these very ancients themselves. 1. The first opinion is that we find in CICERO,* who supposes the original to be a grateful sense of benefits received from animals. (1.) This labours under all the defects of an inadequate cause, as concluding both too much, and too little: too much; because, on this ground, brute worship would have been common to all nations; but it was peculiar to the Egyptian and its colonies: too little; because on this ground none but useful animals should have been worshipped; whereas several of the most useless and noxious † were held sacred. (2.) Plant worship must then, in the nature of things, have been prior to, or at least coëval with, that of brutes. But it was much later; and, on our theory, we see how this came to pass; the vegetable world would not be explored, to find out hieroglyphical analogies, till the animal had been exhausted. 2. Neither could the doctrine of the metempsychosis, mentioned by DIODORUS, be the origin of brute worship: 1. Because that opinion was common to all nations; but brute worship peculiar to Egypt. The doctrine of the metempsychosis flourishes, at this day, with greater vigour in India, than, perhaps, it ever did in any place or age of the world: yet it occasions no worship, or religious veneration to those animals which are supposed the receptacles of departed souls. A very excessive charity towards them it does indeed afford. And this is the more remarkable, not only as this people are sunk into the most sordid superstitions, but because, having learnt animal worship of Egypt,§ if the doctrine of the metempsychosis had any natural tendency to inflame that superstition, they had by this time been totally devoted to it. 2. Because the hypothesis which makes transmigration the origin of brute worship, must suppose brutes to be venerated as the receptacle of human souls become deified: but the ancient Egyptians deified none but heroic and demonic souls: and souls of this order were not supposed subject to the common law of the metempsychosis. 3. The intrusion *See note RR R, at the end of this book. † See note SS S, at the end of this book. Diodorus delivers this original, in his account of the superstitious worship of Apis: Τῆς δὲ τοῦ βοὸς τούτου τιμῆς αἰτίαν ἔνιοι φέρουσι, λέγοντες ὅτι τελευτήσαντος Οσίριδος, εἰς τοῦ τον ἡ ψυχὴ αὐτοῦ μετέστη, καὶ διὰ ταῦτα διατελεῖ μέχρι τοῦ νῦν ἀεὶ κατὰ τὰς ἀναδείξεις αὐτοῦ μεθισταμένη πρὸς τοὺς μεταγενεστέρους. Lib. i. p. 54. As appears from hence, that those few animals, which are the objects of their religious worship, are such as were formerly most reverenced in Egypt; and into such, no souls are doomed by the law of transmigration; the reason of which we shall see presently. The difference between heroic, demonic, and human souls, as it was conceived by the most early pagans, will be explained hereafter. of those souls into brutal bodies, according to the law of transmigration, was understood to be a punishment for crimes. Their prison-house therefore could never become the object of adoration; but rather of aversion and abhorrence; as all subterraneous fire was amongst the ancient Romans, and as that of purgatory is amongst the modern. 4. Lastly, the doctrine of the metempsychosis was much later than the first practice of brute worship; and evidently invented to remove objections against providence, when men began to speculate and philosophise. What seems to have given birth to this opinion of the origin of brute worship, was the fancy of the later Egyptians, that the soul of Osiris resided in the Apis. Diodorus himself supports the conjecture: for, reckoning up the several opinions concerning the origin of brute worship, when he comes to that of the metempsychosis, he delivers it in a popular relation of the soul of Osiris residing in the Apis. 3. The third opinion we find to be favoured by LUCIAN:† which is, that the Egyptian invention of distinguishing the constellations, and marking each of them with the name of some animal, gave the first occasion to brute worship. But, 1. the same objection lies against this solution as against the two preceding: for this way of distinguishing the asterisms was in use in all nations; but brute worship was confined to Egypt and its colonies. 2. This way of solving the difficulty creates a greater: for then nothing will be left in antiquity, to account for so extraordinary a custom as the giving to one constellation the form of a ram, to another the form of a scorpion, &c., when, in the apparent disposition of those stars, there was not so much resemblance to any one part of any one animal as was sufficient to set the fancy on work to make out the rest. But if, for distinction's sake, those things were to have a name which had no shape,§ why then, as being of such regard from their supposed influences, were they not rather honoured with the titles of their heroes than of their brutes? Would the polite Egyptian priests, who first animalized the asterisms, do like Tom Otter in the comedy, bring their bulls and bears to court? would they exalt them into heaven, before they had made any considerable figure upon earth? The fact is, indeed, just otherwise. It was brute worship which gave birth to the asterisms. That the constellations were first named and * See vol. i. book iii. sect. 3. † Οἱ δὲ [Αἰγύπτιοι] καὶ ἄλλα ἐμήσαντο πολλῷ μείζω τουτέων· ἐκ γὰρ δὴ τοῦ παντὸς ἠέρος, καὶ ἀστέρων τῶν ἄλλων, ἀπλανίων τε καὶ εὐσταθέων, καὶ οὐδ ̓ ἅμα κινεομένων, δυώδεκα μοίρας ἐτάμοντο ἐν τοῖσι κινεομένοισι, καὶ οἰκεῖα ζῶα ἐόντα, ἕκαστον αὐτῶν ἐς ἄλλην μορφήν μεμιμίαται ἀπὸ τίων δὴ καὶ ἱερὰ τὰ Αἰγύπτια πολυειδέα ποιέεται· οὐ γὰρ πάντες Αἰγύπτιοι ἐκ τῶν δυώδικα μορίων τασίων ἱμαντεύοντο, ἄλλοι δὲ, ἀλλοίησι μοίρησιν ἐχρέοντο· καὶ κριὸν μὲν σέβουσιν, οκόσοι ἐς κριὸν ἀπέβλεπον· ἰχθύας δὲ οὐ σιτέονται, οκόσοι ἰχθύας ἐπεσημήναντο· οὐδὲ τράγον κτείνουσιν, ὅσει αἰγόκερων ήδεσαν—καὶ μὴν καὶ ταῦρον ἐς τιμὴν τοῦ ἠερίου Ταύρου σεβάζονται.-De Astrologia, t. ii. p. 363, edit. Reitzii, Amst. 4to. 1743. I say, in antiquity: for as to the solution of this point by the liberty of imagining, nothing is more easy. The French author of the History of the Heavens has, by the mere force of imagination, removed all these difficulties; not only without any support from antiquity, but even in defiance of it. § Εΐδια σημαίνοιεν ἄφαρ δ' ὀνόμαστα γίνοντα Άστρα |