Serpents are winding about the ceilings, or interwoven in rings, to represent vast astronomical cycles. There are serpents with the heads of deities, and serpents with the legs of human beings; serpents winged, and serpents crowned. In both countries, this creature was the symbol of wisdom and immortality. Three was a mystical and significant number, and the Triangle is found in all their sacred places. Perhaps its three sides were a type of their Divine Triad, or Trinity, consisting of the masculine principle of the universe, the feminine principle, and the offspring, or result, of the two. The Emblem of Life, so often found on Egyptian monuments, is explained by Sir J. G. Wilkinson as the union of the perpendicular line and the horizontal line, already mentioned as in use among Hindoos; one being a representative of the masculine emblem of generation, the other of the feminine; both together signifying the reproduction of life, or birth. It is surmounted by a ring, which is sometimes formed of eggs. This cross of Hermes, as it is called, is in various ways connected with the hieroglyphics of the planets, and is everywhere placed in the hands of deities, especially of Osiris. The sculptures often represent them offering it, with a cornucopia of fruit and grain, to kings at their inauguration; perhaps to signify the bestowal of abundant harvests, numerous flocks, and many children. It was generally worn by the devout, and was considered an amulet of great virtue, a protection from Evil Spirits. When this Cross was twined with a Serpent, it was the emblem of Immortal Life. The Mundane Egg occurs often among the sculptures; and so does an Eye to represent the all-seeing Osiris, and the Sun. There are apes and dwarfs looking pigmy and strange in the presence of colossal companions. The mysterious emblem called the Sphinx was much more frequently introduced in Egypt than in India. It is supposed to have been a royal emblem, manifesting their ideas of what a king ought to be. It had a lion's body with a man's head, or a ram's head; perhaps to signify the union of physical strength with VOL. I.-17

intellect in one case, and with innocence in the other.

In these antique records of deceased generations, the greatest discords occur, as they do everywhere else in the manifestations of our unharmonized nature. There are deities serenely majestic, and in their sublime presence priests are kneeling before a monkey or a beetle. In one place are pleasing pictures of domestic life, men, women, and children with countenances innocent and mild; in another are heaps of human hands and ears cut from enemies in battle. Sometimes a man is represented kneeling, with his hands bound, while a priest points a knife to his throat. Sometimes there are men with knives thrust through their foreheads, or with heads flying from their shoulders. These may signify the execution of criminals, or the immolation. of human victims. Such sacrifices were offered in ancient times. The priest examined the victim and put his seal upon him, as he did to animals intended for the altar. It is said the custom was abolished in Upper Egypt before the time of Moses; but it remained in other parts of the empire till the time of Amasis, who reigned five or six hundred years before the Christian era. He ordained that wax images should be substituted for human beings.

Long pilgrimages to holy places were considered efficacious for the expiation of sin; but there are no records of such self-tortures as are practised by Hindoo devotees. Philostratus, a Greek writer, about two hundred years after Christ, describes an association of men who lived in a grove not far from the Nile. He calls them Gymnosophists, which means naked philosophers. Perhaps they discarded clothing in sign of superior sanctity and indifference to the world. He says they worshipped the god of the Nile, and believed in the immortality of the soul. Each one lived by himself, and studied and sacrificed apart; but they sometimes met together in assemblies. If a man at Memphis had by any chance killed another, he was exiled till these Gymnosophists had absolved him by ceremonies of purification.

The laws of caste appear to have been less rigid in

Egypt than in Hindostan. Solomon, though a foreigner, married a daughter of one of their kings; a degree of toleration which perhaps originated in the fact that Egyptians and Jews were both circumcised nations. The condition of women in Egypt was prodigiously in advance of their enslaved sisters in Hindostan. It was customary to marry but one wife. Trade was carried on by women. The sculptures represent them buying and selling in the markets, and meeting with men at feasts, apparently on terms of equality. When kings died without sons, daughters succeeded to the throne; and in some of the sculptured processions, queens take precedence of kings.

When Alexander the Great conquered Egypt, three hundred and thirty-two years before Christ, he founded a new city, and gave it his own name, Alexandria. Among its many splendid edifices for worship, the most magnificent was dedicated to Serapis, tutelary deity of the city. Sesostris, after his return from extensive conquests, is said to have introduced into Egypt the worship of this new god. It has been conjectured that he was the emblem of Pantheism, combining in himself the attributes of all the gods, and therefore considered by Sesostris a desirable. point of unity for many nations, with distinct religions, all under the control of his government. For the same reason he was a peculiarly appropriate deity to preside over the great commercial city of Alexandria, where worshippers of various gods were wont to congregate. That he represented all things seems to be implied by the fact that his image was made of all metals fused together, and inlaid with all sorts of precious stones. A great variety of emblems were connected with the figure. A huge serpent entwined the whole, and rested his head in the hand. of the god. When Nicocreon, king of Cyprus, inquired who Serapis was, the god replied, through the voice of his oracle: "My head is heaven, my ears the air, my eyes the sunlight, my belly the sea, and my feet the earth." Severe penalties were incurred by any one who ventured to say Serapis had ever been incarnated in a human form.

This

law of the priests might have originated in the idea that it was blasphemy to suppose any one being could combine in himself all the attributes of the Universal Soul. The Temple of Serapis is described as one of the stateliest the world has ever seen. A great mass of buildings were included within its enclosures, and there were vast subterranean passages underneath, where it is supposed some of the great religious Mysteries were celebrated. In the centre of the enclosure stood the Temple, on an artificial elevation, surrounded with a magnificent portico. The lofty ceiling was supported by immense marble pillars, of beautiful proportions. The statue of the god was of such colossal size that the right hand touched the wall of the sanctuary on one side, and the left on the other. An aperture in the wall was so arranged that the first gleams of the rising sun fell directly on the face; and worshippers thought he smiled to meet the god of that luminary. A small image of the Sun, seated in a chariot, with four horses, was suspended from the ceiling, and at the close of day was drawn up by a powerful magnet, to represent his farewell. The temple was surrounded by a great number of galleries and apartments devoted to the priests, and to devotees, who had taken vows of celibacy. This splendid structure was totally destroyed in the fourth century of our era.

Alexander the Great was imbued with the Grecian freedom of thought, and facility of adaptation to new things. He was moreover desirous of attracting the enterprise, wealth and learning of the world to his new city. He commanded that the laws and religion of Egypt should be respected, but he encouraged Greeks and Jews to settle there, and extended the same toleration to their opinions. The site of the city was consecrated by solemn sacrifices both to the deities of Egypt and of Greece. As the great commercial route from India to various portions of the Roman empire lay through Alexandria, it became the great focus of trade; a connecting link between the unchanging East and the ever-changing West. It grew so

rapidly, that in a short time Rome was the only city that surpassed it in wealth and grandeur. In the century following Alexander, those two liberal kings of Egypt, Ptolemy Soter and Ptolemy Philadelphus, founded and enlarged an academy and museum, with a royal library of seven hundred thousand volumes. It was the first establishment of the kind ever known in the world. Scholars of all nations and creeds flocked thither to enjoy its advantages. A general indulgence was granted to this promiscuous crowd to teach their respective doctrines to whoever was inclined to listen. Disciples of diverse systems met together in the library, and at meals, and had ample opportunities to compare theories of religion and philosophy. Under these influences was formed a new set of teachers, who carried to distant countries the ideas they had received, and thus shook up and mixed together the forms of human thought everywhere.

Old Egypt, once called the "image of heaven, and the temple of the whole world," dwindled away. All the nations had borrowed of her religion and science, but she was too conservative to borrow of them. Successively conquered by Persia, Greece, and Rome, and largely settled by Jews, she gradually lost her strength. Her princes were Grecians, her children attended Greek schools. Her religion became a lifeless body, her language utterly extinct, her sacred writing an unknown cipher, and half her monuments buried in the drifting sand. But traces of her customs still exist on the shores of the Nile. Modern jugglers know the trick by which her old magicians rendered serpents motionless or stiff. They compress the cervical spine of the animal between the finger and thumb and call it changing the serpent into a rod, or stick. When thrown down, the pressure being removed, it be comes a serpent again. Idiots are considered holy, and their exclamations prophetic. In this form lingers the ancient reverence for unpremeditated speech. The dif ferent sections of Cairo are now under the guardianship of genii, as they were formerly each under the protection of VOL. I.-17*