ness and content, of liberality, humility, chastity and sobriety, of truthfulness and justice; and they show the wickedness and folly of disobedience, strife, arrogance and pride, of slothfulness, intemperance, unchastity and other vices. It is only through a lamentable misunderstanding of the text that some scholars have discovered anti-religious, epicurean or sceptical expressions.1 The same morality is taught in the romantic literature which sprung up at a very carly period and continued to flourish down to the latest times. It is an interesting question, but one which cannot as yet be answered with certainty, whether or no the moralizing fables about animals attributed to Esop are really of Egyptian origin? The Egyptian text of at least one of these fables is contained in a papyrus of the Leyden collection, but it is in "demotic," not in the early language of the country. I have laid before you some of the characteristic 1 "Let thy face be white (i.e. enjoy thyself) whilst thou livest; has there issued from the coffin (maxera chest) one who has entered therein?" This hasty translation by Mr. Goodwin (Zeitschr. 1867, p. 95) does not deserve the success it has enjoyed, and I do not believe the author of it would have published it, had his attention been called in time to such difficulties as these: 1, the Egyptian preposition en cannot stand at the end of a sentence; 2, it never means therein;" 3, the word maxera is never found in the sense of "coffin," but in that of "chest of provisions;" 4, the sentiment in question is absurdly out of place in the context where the words Occur. 66 features of Egyptian civilization, and I ought not to conclude without alluding to two errors, one of which may be considered as entirely obsolete among scholars, whilst the other may claim the sanction of very high authority. Castes. As long as our information depended upon the classical Greek authors, the existence of castes among the Egyptians was admitted as certain. The error was detected as soon as the sense of the inscriptions could be made out. A very slight knowledge of the language was sufficient to demonstrate the truth to the late M. Ampère.1 Among ourselves, many men may be found whose ancestors have for several generations followed the same calling, either the army or the church, or some branch of industry or trade. The Egyptians were no doubt even more conservative than ourselves in this respect. But there was no impassable barrier between two professions. The son or the brother of a warrior might be a priest. It was perhaps more difficult to rise in the world than it is with us; but a man of education, a scribe, was eligible to any office, civil, military or sacerdotal, to which his talents or the chances of fortune might lead him, and nothing prevented his marriage with the daughter of a man of a different profession. 1 66 'Des Castes dans l'ancienne Egypte," in the Revue des Deux Mondes, Sept. 1848. Monogamy. The high position occupied in ancient Egypt by the mother of the family, the "mistress of the house,” is absolutely irreconcilable with the existence either of polygamy as a general practice, or of such an institution as the harîm. The plurality of wives does not appear to have been contrary to law, but it certainly was unusual. A few of the Egyptian kings had a large number of wives, but they appear in this respect to have followed foreign rather than native custom. The use of the word harem in the translation of hieroglyphic texts tends to produce an entirely erroneous conception of ancient Egyptian society. The word itself is harmless; but (to say the least) it confounds Egyptian with utterly foreign ideas, Arabian or Turkish; and when it is used to signify an establishment of concubines, I believe the translator has entirely misunderstood the Egyptian text.1 1 Many excellent scholars have used "harem" of the Egyptian word xent. The most important passage which as the translation would justify this rendering is on the tablet of Pa-shere-en-Ptab. It is thus translated in Brugsch's Hieroglyphic Lexicon, p. 1093: "Es waren mir schöne Weiber, doch war ich bereits 43 Jahr alt ohne dass mir ein männliches Kind geboren war." passage is better understood if taken in connection with the I believe the sponding passage on the tablet of the wife of Pa-shere-en- Ptah (Sharpe, "Egyptian Inscriptions," Vol. I. pl. 4). This lady says of Corre her husband: "I had not borne to him a male child, but daughters THE GODS OF EGYPT. Identity of the Religious Institutions from First to Last. It was quite unnecessary for the purpose of these Lectures that the sketch of Egyptian civilization which I laid before you in the last Lecture should be completed or filled up in detail. But in studying the phenomena which a religion presents, it is indispensable that we should understand certain conditions accompanying those phenomena. Men's thoughts are forced into certain channels and assume definite forms according to the nature of their occupations. It is not a matter of indifference whether we have to do with people in what is called the hunting stage, nomadic populations, agriculturalists or merchants; with men of hot or of cold climates; with savages or with men in the most advanced stages of culture. The religions and mythologies of such peoples differ very widely. Even among those professing the same religion, great differences must necessarily be found between men of highly educated and cultivated minds, and unpolished men insensible to art or poetry of a high order. Now it is certain that at least three thousand years before Christ there was in Egypt a powerful and elaborately organized monarchy, enjoying a material civilization. in many respects not inferior to that of Europe in the last century. Centuries must have elapsed before such a civilization became possible. Of a state of barbarism or even of patriarchal life anterior to the monumental period, there is no historical vestige. The earliest monuments which have been discovered present to us the very same fully developed civilization and the same religion as the later monuments. The blocks of the Pyramids bear quarry marks exhibiting the decimal notation, and are dated by the months of the calendar which was in use down to the latest times. You must remember that the calendars of other nations (Hebrews, Greeks and Romans) show great ignorance of the real length of the year. It was only after the conquest of Alexandria that the Roman calendar was reformed by Julius Cæsar. The political division into nomes (provinces, each of which had its principal deity) is as old as the age of the Pyramids. The gods whose names appear in the oldest tombs were worshipped down to the Christian times. The same kind of priesthoods which are mentioned in the tablets of Canopus and Rosetta in the Ptolemaic period are as ancient as the Pyramids, and more ancient than any Pyramid of which we know the date. There is in the Ashmolean Museum G |