right, with the Ægyptians is no other than their Isis, who, as I have elsewhere hinted to you, is made universal nature, though differently specified, and partially considered, upon different occasions, under the several powers and attributes which the Greeks ascribe to their respective divinities. The use of lamps and torches, both in religious worship, and for the purposes of common life, were (the Ægyptians say) originally their invention, and first received from them. But however that be, it is certain they had them very anciently in their religious revels and ceremonies; and the application of them to the mysteries of their worship, among other divine symbols, has rendered the symbol itself so sacred in the hieroglyphicks, that a lamp in that picture-character implies the whole mystery of the Ægyptian religion. From the use of torches and lamps, thus introduced into their religious ceremonies, came the practice of burning them at the shrines of illustrious personages, whom the passionate devotion of their friends desired to honour as divinities, and to rank among superior natures; of the antiquity of which custom a remarkable monument remains in Sais to this day. MERCHERINUS, the seventh king of the Memphite dynasty, to soothe his grief for the loss of an only daughter, erected for her a magnificent repository adjoining to his palace, and ordered a case of wood to be made in the shape of an heifer, richly overlaid with gold, to inclose her remains, intending thereby that divine honours should be paid to her memory, and to graft her worship upon the reigning superstition of Egypt. The heifer is as large as the life, in a' kneeling posture, and covered with a scarlet pall. Between the horns is set a circle of gold resembling the rays of the sun. He appointed a certain number of priests to burn incense before it in the day time, and to light up lamps round the chamber in the night, and settled a stipend upon them to continue the ceremony for ever. They constantly once a year bring out the heifer into the open air, after the celebration of

certain

certain rites, which may be mysterious, but scem highly absurd in the vulgar account. For in these rites they are said to scourge a certain deity, whose name the profane are not to know. The remains of the ancient palace at Sais are magnificent. The temple of the Goddess, whom the Greeks call MINERVA, contains the sepulchres of those ancient kings that were natives of the Saite nome. In the body of this temple is a magnificent stone chamber, the columns of which are carved in imitation of palm-trees. Here are seen several of those obelisks, which were the ancient representations of the celestial divinities; and near to them is a stone bason, or lake, the workmanship of which is much admired. An inscription on the pavement of this temple countenances the opinion I have advanced, that the Deity of the place is ISIS. The inscription runs thus: "I am all that has been, that is, and that shall be, and none among mortals has hitherto taken off my veil.” AMASIS, who subdued Apries, the last of the lineage of the Memphite kings, raised a portico to this building, which, for its height and dimensions, and the largeness of the stones that compose it, exceeds every thing of that kind in Ægypt. He placed about it colossal statues and sphinxes of a prodigious size. A little above the town is a grove called the sanctuary of OSIRIS, where the Saites maintain his sepulchre to

66

have been.

We passed from Sais to Bubastus, which is near the full extent of the Delta, part of the way by land, and part through the cuts that communicate between the several channels of the Nile. It were endless to describe to thee, CLEANDER, the beauty and richness of the country; or to enumerate the many ancient cities and towns, which presented themselves to our notice in the whole way. But indeed, though all bespeak the magnificence and glory of this ancient kingdom, I know not any that affords a sight more pleasing

than

than the city where I now am. It is situate where the Bubastick branch of the Nile separates into two channels; one of which discharges itself into the sea at the Tanitick, the other at the Pelusiack mouth. These streams form a perfect peninsula, in which stands the temple of Bubastis; the city itself lying part between these streams, and part scattered on the two opposite sides of the Nile beyond where the streams divide. The ground on all sides, whereon the buildings of the city are erected, was raised by SESOSTRIS, and afterwards by the Ethiopian king, to a greater height than any other town in Ægypt. The peninsula only with the town remains on the same level it always was, and is joined by a narrow isthmus to the land, along which is a vista of thick trees of the tallest growth, continued for the length of three stadiums into the town, and leading through the forum up an ascent to the temple of Mercury. The temple of Bubastis, in length and breadth a stadium, is likewise encompassed with a thick grove, that casts a delightful shade, and is reflected on the water. It has a stately portico, thirty cubits in height, upon which are figures. and bas-reliefs of six cubits; and round the extremities of the island runs a parapet of stone, adorned with much curious sculpture. The temple, with the plantations about it, lying thus in the middle of the town, and surrounded with the water, has a most beautiful effect, as you look down upon it from the city, on every side. The goddess BUBASTIS is by the Greeks called DIANA, but is in reality Isis, if one may regard the ancient inscription upon her pillar at Nysa in Arabia. A little above the town begins that famous cut, which was intended for a communication between the Nile and the Red Sea. The digging of it was first attempted by NEco, the son of PSAMMETICHUS, and twelve thousand men perished in the work. DARIUS, after him, made a great progress with better success, but without completing it; discouraged, as tradition goes, by the report of his surveyors, who

apprehended

apprehended it would, when finished, let in the sea upon the Lower Egypt; the level of the Arabian gulph being, as they thought, higher than the Delta. The gyptians solemnize their religious revels at most of their towns through the Delta several times in the year. But those are most frequented which attend the great sacrifices performed at Bubastus. Great numbers of both sexes come down the Nile at these times in boats together; and the men and women, besides children, that are brought to Bubastus on occasion of these solemnities, are computed by the inhabitants to be seldom fewer than seventy thousand. Their musick all the way is a strange dissonance of flutes, crotala, bad voices, and clapping of hands. At every town by the water-side they stand up to the shore, to give the women in the boats an opportunity of calling out to those at land, who never are at a loss to answer them in the peculiar ribaldry of their water-language. While some of the women are engaged in this scurrilous diversion, the rest are dancing, or making ridiculous gestures.

Strange it is, CLEANDER, and unaccountable, that such mean buffooneries should ever be mistaken for religious rites, or made preparative to the celebration of one of their greatest festivals. But it has been the policy of our government never to interfere with such national extravagancies, as are merely adapted to the genius of the vulgar. For as these institutions fall in with the natural bent of the common people, at the same time that they have the sanction of religious ceremonies, there is nothing they would with greater difficulty give up. The Egyptian priests could not have taken a surer method for establishing their own authority, than by accommodating the national rites to that strong propension to farcical pomps and revels, which no where prevails more among the common sort than in Egypt. The people thus gratified and amused, according to their own sense

of

of things, and indulge in all their grossest prejudices, presume not to arraign the superior wisdom of their teachers, but assent with an implicit reverence to their dictates.

I shall in a very few days set sail from Pelusium. HERODOTUS will part from me at Magdolum, to pass over Mount Casius, and by the lake Serbon into Palestine. That inquisitive traveller has taken abundant pains to examine into the learning of the Ægyptian priests, and sift out all the recondite doctrines of their religion; yet, after all, he has cause to complain of their mysterious reservedness. It is discouraging enough, I have often heard him say, to an accurate historian, who is to treat of their religious ceremonies, that he must in many things, either affect the same mysterious secrecy himself, or appear to posterity to have been a collector of senseless and ridiculous fables. Adieu.

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