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Brute- to the present article do not permit us to pursue this Worship. subject; nor is it necessary that we should pursue it. The attentive reader of the article MYTHOLOGY, of the histories given in this work of the various divinities of paganism, and of the different nations by whom those divinities were worshipped, will perceive that the progress of polytheism and idolatry has been uniform over the whole earth.

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There is, however, one species of idolatry more wonderful than any thing that has yet been mentioned, of Brute wor- which our readers will certainly expect some account. It ship of the is the worship of brutes, reptiles and vegetables, among Egyptians the Egyptians. To the Greeks and Romans, as well as to us, that superstition appeared so monstrous, that to enumerate every hypothesis, ancient and modern, by which philosophers have endeavoured to account for it, would swell this article beyond all proportion. Bruteworship prevailed at so early a period in Egypt, that the philosophers of antiquity, whose writings have descended to us, had little or no advantage over the moderns in pursuing their researches into its origin; and among the modern hypotheses those of Mosheim and Warburton appear to us by much the most probable of any that we have seen (B). The former of these learned writers attributes it wholly to the policy of the prince and the craft of the priest. The latter contends, with much earnestness and ingenuity, that it resulted from the use of hieroglyphic writing. We are strongly inclined to believe that both these causes contributed to the production of so portentous an effect; and that the use of hieroglyphics as sacred symbols, after they were laid aside in civil life, completed that wonderful superstition which the craft of the priest and the policy of the prince had undoubtedly begun.

* Lib. ii.
.65.
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itroduced

We learn from Herodotus *, that in his time the
number of useful animals in Egypt was so small as
hardly to be sufficient for tillage and the other pur-
with a poli- poses of civil life; whilst serpents and other noxious
ical view; animals, such as the crocodile, wolf, bear, and hippo-
potamus, abounded in that country. From this fact
Cudworth, Mosheim very naturally concludes †, that the founders
ntellect. of society and government in Egypt would by every
yst. cap.iv.
to 158.

art endeavour to increase the number of useful animals
as the number of inhabitants increased; and that with

this view they would make it criminal to kill or even to Brute-
hurt sheep, cows, oxen, or goats, &c. whilst they would Worship.
wage perpetual war upon the noxious animals and beasts
of prey. Such animals as were assisting to them in the
carrying on of this warfare would be justly considered
as in a high degree useful to society. Hence the most
grievous punishments were decreed against the killing,
or so much as the wounding, of the ichneumon and ibis;
because the former was looked upon as the instinctive
enemy of the crocodile, and the latter of every species of
serpents. The learned writer, however, observes, that in
Egypt as in other countries, people would be tempted to
sacrifice the good of the public to the gratification of their
own appetites, and sometimes even to the indulgence of
a momentary caprice. He thinks it was found necessary
to strengthen the authority of the laws enacted for the
preservation of useful animals by the sanctions of reli-
gion and he says, that with this view the priests decla-
red that certain animals were under the immediate pro-
tection of certain gods; that some of those animals had
a divine virtue residing in them; and that they could
not be killed without the most sacrilegious wickedness,
mcurring the highest indignation of the gods. When once
the idolatrous Egyptians were persuaded that certain ani-
mals were sacred to the immortal gods, and had a di-
vine virtue residing in them, they could not avoid view-
ing those animals with some degree of veneration; and
the priests, taking advantage of the superstition of the
people, appointed for each species of sacred animals ap-
propriated rites and ceremonies, which were quickly
followed with building shrines and temples to them, and
approaching them with oblations and sacrifices, and
other rites of divine adoration.

To corroborate this hypothesis, he observes, that,
besides the animals sacred over all Egypt, each pro-
vince and each city had its particular animal to which
the inhabitants paid their devotions. This arose from
the universal practice among idolaters of consecrating
to themselves Lares and Penates; and as the animals
which were worshipped over the whole kingdom were
considered as sacred to the Dii majorum gentium, so the
animals whose worship was confined to particular cities
or provinces, were sacred to the Lares of those cities
and provinces. Hence there was in Upper Egypt a
city

(B) There is, however, another hypothesis worthy of some attention, if it were only for the learning and ingenuity of its author. The celebrated Cudworth infers, from the writings of Philo and other Platonists of the Alexandrian school, that the ancient Egyptians held the Platonic doctrine of ideas existing from eternity, and constituting, in one of the persons of the godhead, the intelligible and archetypal world. (See PLATONISM). Philo, he observes, did not himself consider those ideas as so many distinct substances and animals, much less as gods; but he mentions. others who deified the whole of this intelligible system as well as its several parts. Hence, when they paid their devotions to the sensible sun, they pretended only to worship the divine idea or archetype of that luminary and hence, thinks our learned author, the ancient Egyptians, by falling down to bulls, and cows, and crocodiles, meant at first to worship only the divine and eternal ideas of those animals. He allows, indeed, that as few could. entertain any thoughts at all of those eternal ideas, there were scarcely any who could persuade themselves that the intelligible system had so much reality in it as the sensible things of nature; and hence he thinks the devotion which was originally paid to the divine ideas had afterwards no higher object than the brutes and vegetables of which those ideas were the eternal patterns.

This hypothesis is ingenious, but not satisfactory. There is no evidence that the mysterious doctrine of Platoconcerning ideas had anywhere been thought of for ages after brute-worship was established in Egypt. Of the state of Egyptian theology at that early period, Philo, and the other philosophers of the Alexandrian school, had, no better means of forming a judgment than we have; and they laboured under many Grecian prejudices, which must have prevented them from judging with our impartiality.

Bru'e city called Lycopolis, because its inhabitants worshipped Worship the wolf, while the inhabitants of Thebes, or Heliopolis, paid their devotions to the eagle, which was probably looked upon as sacred to the sun. Our author, however, holds it as a fact which will admit of no dispute, that there was not one noxious animal or beast of prey worshipped by the Egyptians till after the conquest of their country by the Persians. That the earliest gods of Egypt were all benevolent beings, he appeals to the testimony of Diodorus Siculus; but he quotes Herotus and Plutarch as agreeing that the latter Egyptians worshipped an evil principle under the name of Typhon. This Typhon was the inveterate enemy of Osiris, just as Ahraman was of Ormuzd; and therefore he thinks it in the highest degree probable that the Egyptians derived their belief of two sclf-existent principles, a good and an evil, from their Persian conquerors, among whom that opinion prevailed from the earliest ages.

*Div. Leg. book iv. Eect. 4.

From whatever source their belief was derived, Typhon was certainly worshipped in Egypt, not with a view of obtaining from him any good, for there was nothing good in his nature, but in hopes of keeping him quiet, and averting much evil. As certain animals had long been sacred to all the benevolent deities, it was natural for a people so besotted with superstition as the Egyptians to consecrate emblems of the same kind to their god Typhon. Hence arose the worship of serpents, crocodiles, bears, and other noxious animals and beasts of prey. It may indeed scem at first sight very inconsistent to deify such animals, after they had been in the practice for ages of worshipping others for being their destroyers; but it is to be remembered that long before the deification of crocodiles, &c. the real origin of brute worship was totally forgotten by the people, if they were ever acquainted with it. The crafty priest who wishes to introduce a gainful superstition, must at first employ some plausible reason to delude the multitude; but after the superstition has been long and firmly established, it is obviously his business to keep its origin out of sight.

Such is Mosheim's account of the origin and progress of that species of idolatry which was peculiar to Egypt; and with respect to the rise of brute-worship, it appears perfectly satisfactory. But the Egyptians worshipped several species of vegetables; and it surely could be no part of the policy of wise legislators to preserve them from destruction, as vegetables are useful only as they contribute to animal subsistence. We are therefore obliged to call in the aid of Warburton's hypothesis to account for this branch of Egyptian superstition.

That learned and ingenious author having proved *, with great clearness and strength of argument, that hieroglyphic writing was prior to the invention of alphabetic characters; and having traced that kind of wri

Brute

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phic writing, and

ting from such rude pictures, as those which were in use among the Mexicans, through all the different species Worship. of what he calls curiologic, tropical, and symbolic hieroglyphics (see HIEROGLYPHICS)-shows, by many quo- continued tations from ancient authors, that the Egyptian priests by the wrapt up their theology in the symbolic hieroglyphics, means of after alphabetic characters had banished from the trans- hierogly actions of civil life a mode of communicating information necessarily so obscure. These symbols were the figures of animals and vegetables, denoting, from some imaginary analogy, certain attributes of their divinities; and when the vulgar, forgetting this analogy, ceased to understand them as a species of writing, and were yet taught to consider them as sacred, they could not well view them in any other light than as emblems of the divinities whom they adored. But if rude sculptures upon stone could be emblematical of the divinities, it was surely not unnatural to infer, that the living animals and vegetables which those sculptures represented must be emblems of the same divinities more striking and more sacred. Hence the learned author thinks arose that wonderful superstition peculiar to the Egyptians, which made them worship not only animals and vegetables, but also a thousand chimeras of their own creation; such as figures with human bodies and the heads or feet of brutes, or with brutal bodies and the heads and feet of men.

These two hypotheses combined together appear to us to account sufficiently for the idolatry of Egypt, monstrous as it was. We are persuaded that with respect to the origin of brute-worship Mosheim is in the right (c); and it was a very easy step for people in so good training to proceed upon the crutches of hieroglyphics to the worship of plants and those chimeras, which, as they never had a real existence in nature, could not have been thought of as emblems of the divinity, had they not been used in that symbolic writing which Warburton so ably and ingeniously explains.

To this account of the origin of brute-worship, we are fully aware that objections will occur. From a learned friend, who perused the article in manuscript, we have been favoured with one which, as it is exceedingly plausible, we shall endeavour to obviate. "Bruteworship was not peculiar to Egypt. The Hindoos, it is well known, have a religious veneration for the cow and the alligator; but there is no evidence that in India the number of useful animals was ever so small as to make the interference of the prince and the priest necessary for their preservation; neither does it appear that the Hindoos adopted from any other people the worship of a self-existent principle of evil." Such is the objection. To which we reply,

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That there is every reason to believe that brute-carried worship was introduced into India by a colony of E-from t gyptians at a very remote period. That between these Edit two nations there was an early intercourse, is universal

ly

(c) To prove that it was merely to preserve and increase the breed of useful animals in Egypt, that the prince and the priest first taught the people to consider such animals as sacred, he argues thus: "Hæc ita esse, non ex co tantum liquet, quod paulo ante observavi, nullas bestias universo Ægyptiorum populo sacras fuisse, præter eas, quæ manifestam regioni utilitatem comparent; sed inde quoque apparet, quod longe major ratio habita fuit famellarum inter animalia, quam marium. Boves diis immolare licebat, vaccas nullo mode. Canes fœminæ contumulabantur, non item mares." Lege HERODOT. Histor. lib. ii. cap. 41. & cap. 67.

India.

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Theorony. ly allowed: and though the learned president of the Asiatic Society has laboured to prove, that the Egyptians derived all that wisdom for which they were famed, as well as the rudiments of their religious system, from the natives of Hindostan, he does not appear to us to have laboured with success. To examine his arguments at length would swell this article beyond its due proportion; and we have noticed some of them elsewhere (see PHILOLOGY, No 33 and 39). At present we shall only observe, that Sesostris undoubtedly made an inroad into India, and conquered part of the country, whilst we nowhere read of the Hindoos having at any time conquered the kingdom of Egypt. Now, though the victors have sometimes adopted the religion of the vanquished, the contrary has happened so much more frequently, and is in itself a process so much more natural, that this single circumstance affords a strong presumption that the Egyptian monarch would rather impose his gods upon the Hindoos than adopt theirs and carry them with him to Egypt. Brute-worship might likewise be introduced into Hindostan by those vast colonies of Egyptians who took refuge in that country from the tyranny and oppression of the shepherd kings. That such colonies did settle on some occasion or other in India, seems undeniable from monuments still remain ing in that country, of forms which could hardly have occurred to a native of Asia, though they are very natural as the workmanship of Africans. But we need not reason in this manner. We have seen a manuscript letter from Mr Burt, a learned surgeon in Bengal, and a member of the Asiatic Society, which puts it beyond a doubt that great numbers of Egyptians had at a very early period not only settled in Hindostan, but also brought with them writings relating to the history of their country. As the shepherd-kings were enemies to the arts and to literature, it is probable that this settle.ment took place on their conquest of Egypt. Burt's words are: "Mr Wilford, lieutenant of engineers, has extracted most wonderful discoveries from the Shanscrit records: such as the origin and history of the Egyptian pyramids, and even the account of the expence in their building." Upon our hypothesis there is nothing incredible in this account; upon the hypothesis of Sir William Jones, it is not easy to be conceived how the history of Egyptian pyramids could have found a place in the Shanscrit records.

Mr

We may admit that the Hindoos have never adopted from the Persians or Egyptians the worship of an independent principle of evil, and yet dispose of the other part of the objection with very little difficulty. It will be seen by and bye, that the bramins believe a kind of triad of hypostases in the divine nature, of which one is viewed as the destroyer, and known by several names, such as Siva and Iswara. When brute-worship was introduced into Hindostan, it was not unnatural to consider the alligator as emblematical of Iswara; and hence in all probability it is that the Hindoos believe that a man cannot depart more happily from this world than by falling into the Ganges, and being devoured by one of those sacred animals. Upon the whole, the bruteworship of the Hindoos, instead of militating against our account of that monstrous superstition as it prevailed in Egypt, seems to lend no small support to that account, as there was unquestionably an early intercourse between the two nations, and as colonies of Egyptians VOL. XVII. Part I.

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settled in India. To him who is not satisfied with our Theogony. reasoning on this subject, we beg leave to recommend an attentive perusal of Maurice's Indian Antiquities, where he will find many facts brought together, which tend to prove that Egypt has a just claim to a higher antiquity than India.

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* Lib ii.

c. 51.

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Having thus traced the rise and progress of poly- Polytheists theism and idolatry as they prevailed in the most cele- acknowbrated nations of antiquity, we now proceed to inquire supreme ledged one into the real opinions of those nations concerning the God, nature of the gods whom they adored. And here it is evident from the writings of Homer, Hesiod, and the other poets, who were the principal theologians among the Greeks and Romans, that though heaven, earth, hell, and all the elements, were filled with divinities, there was yet one who, whether called Jove, Osiris, Ormuxd, or by any other title, was considered as supreme over all the rest. "Whence each of the gods was generated (says Herodotus *), or whether they have all existed from eternity, and what are their forms, is a thing that was not known till very lately; for Hesiod and Homer were, as I suppose, not above four hundred years my seniors; and these were they who introduced the theogony among the Greeks, and gave the gods their several names." Now Hesiod†, towards the be-† Vers. ginning of his theogony, expressly invokes his muse to 104—112. celebrate in suitable numbers the generation of the immortal gods who had sprung from the earth, the dark night, the starry heavens, and the salt sea. He calls up-from on her likewise to say, "in what manner the gods, the whom the earth, the rivers, ocean, stars, and firmament, were generated, and what divine intelligences had sprung from them of benevolent dispositions towards mankind.” From this invocation, it is evident that the poet did not consider the gods of Greece as self-existent beings; neither could he look upon them as creatures; for of creation the ancient Greeks had no conception (see METAPHYSICS, No 264.); but he considered them as emanations coeval with the earth and heavens, from some superior principles; and by the divine intelligences sprung from them, there cannot be a doubt but that he understood benevolent dæmons. The first principles of all things, according to the same Hesiod, were Chaos, and Tartarus and Love; of which only the last being active, must undoubtedly have been conceived by this father of Grecian polytheism to be the greatest and only self-existing god. This we say must undoubtedly have been Hesiod's belief, unless by Tartarus we here understand a self-existent principle of evil; and in that case his creed will be the same with that of the ancient Persians, who, as we have seen, believed in the self-existence as well of Ahraman as of Ormuzd.

other divinities were generated:

Argo

naut. p 17. edit. Steph.

Hesiod is supposed to have taken his theology from Orpheus; and it is evident that his doctrine concerning the generation of the gods is the same with that taught in certain verses usually attributed to Orpheus, in* which Love and Chaos are thus brought together. "We will first sing (says the poet) a pleasant and delightful song concerning the ancient Chaos, how the heavens, earth, and seas, were formed ont of it; as also concerning that all-wise Love, the oldest and self-perfect principle, which actively produced all these things, separating one from another." In the original passage, Love is said not only to be ovatis, of much wisdom or sagacity, and therefore a real intelligent substance; but

T

also

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