to hear learned men account for the presence of Oriental ideas in Europe, by the transmission of these ideas through the channel of Alexandria. Alexandria was supposed to be the seat of Oriental philosophy, and Philo, Origen, Porphyry, Plotinos and other great names, were imagined to be the representatives of the alliance between Greek and Oriental thought. All this is now considered as unhistorical as the reign of Jupiter in Crete. It was a mere a priori fancy, which has not been verified by facts. The most accurate analysis of the Alexandrian philosophy has not succeeded in discovering a single element in it which requires to be referred to an Oriental source. All attempts to refer Alexandrian opinions to Eastern sources have proved abortive. And long before the great work of Zeller on Greek Philosophy had dealt with the problem in detail, M. Ampère had shown how extremely improbable the received hypothesis was. Alexandria was a commercial Greek town, inhabited by a population which cared not the least for Eastern ideas. The learned men in it were Greeks who had the utmost contempt for barbarians and their opinions. Of the Egyptian language and literature, they were profoundly ignorant. "It is incredible," he says, "to what an extent the Greeks of Alexandria remained. strangers to the knowledge of the Egyptian language and writing; one could not understand it if there were not other instances of the contemptuous aversion of the 248 Greeks and Romans to the study of the barbarous languages." The greatest part of the information they give us is utterly erroneous, and even when it has been derived from an authentic source, it never fails to be completely hellenized in passing through a Greek channel. The Oriental works, like those attributed to Zoroaster, said to have been preserved in the Library at Alexandria, were Greek forgeries. "En somme, M. Ampère says, "Alexandre fut très grecque, assez juive et presque point égyptienne." And if Alexandria was not the means of communicating Egyptian ideas to the Western world, still less was it the channel It is an error to of learning from the farther East. suppose that Alexandria was on the chief line of traffic between Europe and Asia. During the whole period. which followed the foundation of Alexandria down to the Roman times, there was no direct communication between this city and the distant East. Indian traffic was in the hands of the seafaring Arabs of the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman, and the Gulf of Akaba. It came to the shores of the Mediterranean through Seleucia, Antioch and Palmyra, or through Gaza and Petra, the chief town of the Nabatacans.2 1 Revue des Deux Mondes, Sept. 1846, p. 735. Ampère refutes the opinions of Matter and of Jules Simon as expressed in their Histories of the Alexandrian School. 2 66 Presque tout le temps que les Ptolémées regnèrent en Egypte, les navires qui partaient des côtes égyptiennes ne depassaient pas la Conclusion. The interest which the history of Egyptian religion inspires must be derived solely from itself, not from any hypothetical connection with other systems. We have seen Egypt a powerful and highly civilized kingdom not less than two thousand years before the birth of Moses, with religious beliefs and institutions at least externally identical with those which it possessed till the last years of its existence. This religion, however, was not from the first that mere worship of brutes which strangers imagined in the days of its decline. The worship of the sacred animals was not a principle, but a consequence; it presupposes the rest of the religion as its foundation, and it acquired its full development and extension only in the declining periods of the Egyptian history. It is based upon symbols derived from the mythology. côte méridionale de l'Arabie. Ils relâchaient soit dans un port situé en terre ferme, notamment Aden, ou bien dans quelqu'île, telle que Socotora. Là arrivaient les navires arabes, indiens et malais, avec les produits destinés à l'occident."-Reinaud, "Sur le royaume de la Mesène et de la Kharasène," in the Mem. de l'Acad. des Inser. t. xxiv. pt. 2, p. 215. See also the chapter vi. (Du Commerce) of Lumbroso, "Recherches sur l'économie politique de l'Egypte sous les Lagides." M. Reinaud has also shown that the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, which displays an accuracy of information quite unknown to Strabo, Pliny or Ptolemy, was not written before the middle of the third century after Christ. 250 The mythology has exactly the same origin as the mythology of our own Aryan ancestors. The early language had no words to express abstract conceptions, and the operations of nature were spoken of in terms which would now be thought poetical or at least metaphorical, but were then the simplest expressions of popular intuition. The nomina became numina. The Egyptian mythology, as far as I can see, dealt only with those phenomena of nature which are conspicuously the result of fixed law, such as the rising and setting of the sun, moon and stars. The recognition of law and order as existing throughout the universe, underlies the whole system of Egyptian religion. The Egyptian maut, derived, like the Sanskrit rita, from merely sensuous impressions, became the name for moral order and righteousness. Besides the powers recognized by the mythology, the Egyptians from the very first spoke of the Power 1 This is my reason for being inclined (see p. 109) to identify the goddess Tefnut with the Dew, rather than with the Rain. Tefnut, as a common noun, is undoubtedly some form of moisture, but rain, though far from unknown in ancient Egypt, must always have been a comparatively rare and apparently irregular phenomenon. Otherwise it would be very tempting to identify the two lions, Shu and Tefnut, children of Ra, with the Wind and the Rain. I do not find any god as the personification of Thunder, which rather appears as the roaring of a lion-god, or the bellowing of a bull-god. This illustrates the position which occasional phenomena occupy in Egyptian mythology. The position of Fire in this mythology affords matter for an interesting inquiry. by whom the whole physical and moral government of the universe is directed, upon whom each individual depends, and to whom he is responsible. The moral code which they identified with the law governing the universe, was a pure and noble one. The summary of it as given in the Book of the Dead has often been quoted: "He hath given bread to the hungry, water to the thirsty, clothes to the naked; he hath given a boat to the shipwrecked; he hath made the offerings to the gods, and paid the due rites to the departed." The rites are paid to the departed, because death is but the beginning of a new life, and that life will never end. A sense of the Eternal and Infinite, Holy and Good, governing the world, and upon which we are dependent, of Right and Wrong, of Holiness and Virtue, of Immortality and Retribution-such are the elements of Egyptian religion. But where are these grand elements. of a religion found in their simple purity? Mythology, we know, is the disease which springs up at a peculiar stage of human culture, and is in its first stage as harmless as it is inevitable. It ceases to be harmless when its original meaning is forgotten, when, instead of being the simple expression of man's intuition of real facts, it obtains a mastery over his thought, and leads him to conclusions which are not involved in the original premisses. This disease of |