years after the death of Josiah, Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem, and in the following year compelled the king of Egypt, who had come to the relief of the city, to retreat, B. C. 590. The following year Nebuchadnezzar destroyed both it and the temple. After a siege of thirteen years Nebuchadnezzar took the city of Tyre, and then invaded Egypt, which he completely ravaged B. C. 572, deposed Pharaoh Hophra, and placed Amasis on the throne of Egypt, by whom Hophra was slain the year after.

The sacred historian closes this account in the following words: "And the king of Egypt came not any more out of his land; for the king of Babylon had taken from the king of Egypt every thing that belonged to him, from the river of Egypt to the river of Euphrates."

We are thus brought down to the 570th year before the present era, and it is not without considerable regret that we find the light of sacred history no longer assisting us in our enquiries into the ancient history of Egypt; and though we are now brought down to a period in which profane history has been for some time running collateral with that of the scriptures, yet we cannot but feel the mortifying contrast which the ambiguity and obscurity of the former presents to our view when compared. with the clearness and the explicitness of the latter. But to this source, however imperfect, we must now turn in our enquiries into the origin and progress of the religion of Egypt. In pursuing this subject, two distinct eras will demand our attention, viz. that in which the Egyptians were worshippers of Cneph-the one eternal and supreme being; and that in which they were wholly given up to an idolatrous worship, and that of the most absurd and despicable character.

The first settlement on the banks of Sihor, or the Nile, as it is now called, is said to have been made by Mizraim the son of Ham. This is in part sanctioned by the scriptures, in which Egypt is called the land of Ham. This was the name which Mizraim probably gave to the

country in honour of Ham his father. We have good reason therefore to conclude that both the language and the religious institutions of these settlers were similar to the language and religious institutions of their great ancestor Noah, and our farther progress in our enquiries will tend to confirm this opinion. And with the language, and religion of their great primogenitor these people brought with them, the history and the science imparted to them, by this able instructor; and the sons of Ham could not be ignorant of the leading facts contained in the Mosaic history. Of these the awful catastrophe of the flood was one that would excite the attention of their infant minds, and remain indelibly imprinted there. through every succeeding stage of their existence.

On the first settling of this branch of Noah's family in the land of Egypt, it is asserted that they experienced many hardships, disappointments, and painful privations resulting from their ignorance of the annual inundation of the Nile. The truth of this the ancient sculptures that have existed in Egypt time immemorial abundantly witness. But when they once became acquainted with the periodical returns of the flood, with the indications that preceded it, and with the degrees of inundation that would be productive of an abundant crop, as well as of those circumstances that were the sure harbingers. of failure and disappointment, they learned to regulate their agricultural proceedings by these infallible tokens; and thus the flood that had before proved their most destructive enemy was now become their most valuable friend, and the people of Egypt soon became wealthy by the superabundance of their harvests.

But a most attentive regard to the minutest circumstances connected with the inundation of the Nile was indispensibly necessary. The care of these important observations rested in their priests, who, in the first instance were no doubt the principal men among the respective tribes and families. The means resorted to for the public communications that were to direct the people, not only in their civil occupations but in their

public assemblies, on religious and other occasions, were such as plainly evince the non-existence of written language at that very early period.

I shall first briefly describe these necessary substitutes for writing, and then proceed to demonstrate how the mythology of Egypt and of Greece grew out of the abuse of them. The memorials of ancient events appears to have been preserved by Noah and his sons, and communicated to posterity in the form of allegories, poems, and aphorisms; these were calculated from their conciseness, and from the nature of their composition, to assist the memory; for poems, even in the form of blank verse, or that of the poetic portions of scripture that consisted of a sort of measured language and of epithets, did not easily admit of any alteration in their rangement, nor the changing of one word for another. These allegories, poems, and aphorisms when once imprinted on the memory were not easily forgotton, more especially if they were, as there is good reason to believe, frequently revived in their memory by the public recitation of them at stated periods. For an exemplification of this species of verbal history, let us refer to the Mosaic history of the creation.,

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"In the beginning the Alehim created the heavens and the earth.

"And the earth was without form, and void, and darkness rested on the face of the deep.

"But the breath of Alehim moved the face of the waters, and the Alehim said, Let there be light, and there was light."

Here is a form of words very easy to be remembered, aud at the same time not very susceptible of alteration.

The same is observable of the song of Moses, made in commemoration of the passage of the Israelites through the Red Sea, and the destruction of their purThis beautiful poem was certainly no new mode

suers.

of commemoration, but the practice of former ages, common to all the descendants of Noah, as well the children of Ham, as the posterity of Shem and Japheth. To return to the song of Moses, it is impossible to read the following extracts without being struck with the admirable adaptation of their sententious brevity to the purpose of assisting the memory and guarding against innovation.

"The Lord is my strength and my song: he also is become my salvation.

"He is my God, and I will prepare him an habitation: the God of my fathers, and I will exalt him.

"The Lord is a man of war: Jehovah is his name. "Thou didst blow with thy breath and the sea covered them, they sunk as lead in the mighty waters."

As this sententious species of composition existed from the days of Noah to Moses; so did it continue to the time of the ancient Britons and other Celtic tribes, deriving their origin from Palestine, as I have already observed in my first lecture on the remains of ancient Britain; in which I remarked that while the British aphorisms were chiefly triads or sentences of three members; the scriptural aphorisms were mostly biads or sentences of two members. But we are not without example of the triad in this poem; thus,

"With the blast of thy nostrils the waters were gathered together:

"The floods stood upright as a heap:

"The depths were congealed in the heart of the sea.

"The dukes of Edom shall be amazed:

"Trembling shall seize the mighty men of Moab: "The inhabitants of Canaan shall melt away."

It is highly probable that this poetic memorial of the mercy and goodness of God to his people was one more

added to the number of the popular songs of the children of Israel, in which were perpetuated the history, the genealogies, the science, the sacred productions, and the religious institutions of their ancestors.

It is also probable that the history of the deluge was preserved by the children of Ham in the form of an allegory or poem, in which the sun was designated as the governor; and the rising waters accompanied with a dismal darkness that rendered the sun invisible, was designated by the appellation of a monster rising from the earth and destroying him. Such being the case, it was natural for the new settlers in Egypt to describe the inundation of the Nile, in terms of nearly the same import, and that they should speak of this flood as a huge serpent attacking the Lord of the heavens, whose influence on the earth was thus rendered abortive.

At the first application of the term governor to the sun, or the moon, there was nothing improper in it, nor was the least tincture of idolatry attached to the epithet; it indeed had the sanction of the Almighty himself, who ordained, the sun to rule by day-the moon by night. Thus these titles, though they were in process of time miserably perverted, were perfectly innocent when they were first adopted. Preparatory to entering on the mythology of this people, as the source from which that of the Greeks primarily emanated, I shall as concisely as possible detail those symbols, figures and representations, which the Egyptian priests substituted for a written calendar, and which I consider as the basis of the Greek Mythology.

On the Egyptians Signs and Representations.

In the public exhibitions of the Egyptians for regulating the affairs of husbandry, there were three principal characters, viz. the SUN, whom they represented by the figure of a man, giving him the name of Osiris, the governor. The EARTH, which they represented by the figure