1. It becomes wise men, dame Clea,[13] to go to the Gods for all the
good things they would enjoy. Much more ought we, when we would aim at
that knowledge of them which our nature can arrive at, to pray that
they themselves would bestow it upon us; truth being the greatest good
that man can receive, and the goodliest blessing that God can give.
Other good things he bestows on men as they want them, they being not
his own peculiars nor of any use to himself. For the blessedness of the
Deity consists not in silver and gold, nor yet his power in lightnings
and thunders, but in knowledge and wisdom. And it was the best thing
Homer ever said of Gods, when he pronounced thus:
Both of one line, both of one country boast,
But royal Jove’s the eldest and knows most;[14]
where he declares Jupiter’s prerogative in wisdom and science to be the
more honorable, by terming it the elder. I, for my own part, do believe
that the felicity of eternal living which the Gods enjoy lies mainly in
this, that nothing escapes their cognizance that passes in the sphere
of generation, and that, should we set aside wisdom and the knowledge
of true beings,[15] immortality itself would not be life, but merely a
long time.
2. And therefore the desire of truth, especially in what relates to
the Gods, is a sort of grasping after divinity, it using learning and
enquiry for a kind of resumption of things sacred, a work doubtless of
more religion than any ritual purgation or charge of temples whatever,
and especially most acceptable to the Goddess you serve, since she is
more eminently wise and speculative, and since knowledge and science
(as her very name[16] seems to import) appertain more peculiarly to her
than any other thing. For the name of Isis is Greek, and so is that
of her adversary Typhon, who, being puffed up[17] through ignorance
and mistake, pulls in pieces and destroys that holy doctrine, which
she on the contrary collects, compiles, and delivers down to such as
are regularly advanced unto the deified state; which, by constancy of
sober diet, and abstaining from sundry meats and the use of women, both
restrains the intemperate and voluptuous part, and habituates them
to austere and hard services in the temples, the end of which is the
knowledge of the original, supreme, and mental being, which the Goddess
would have them enquire for, as near to herself and as dwelling with
her. Besides, the very name of her temple most apparently promises the
knowledge and acquaintance of true being (τὸ ὄν), for they call it
Iseion (Ἴσειον), as who should say, We shall know true being, if with
reason and sanctimony we approach the sacred temples of this Goddess.
3. Moreover, many have reported her the daughter of Hermes, and many
of Prometheus; the latter of which they esteem as the author of wit
and forecast, and the former of letters and music. For the same reason
also they call the former of the Muses at Hermopolis at the same time
Isis and Justice, Isis being (as we before said) no other than wisdom,
and revealing things divine to such as are truly and justly styled the
sacred bearers, and keepers of the sacred robes; and these are such as
have in their minds, as in an ark, the sacred doctrine about the Gods,
cleansed from superstitious frights and vain curiosities, keeping out
of sight all dark and shady colors, and exposing to sight the light and
gay ones, to insinuate something of the like kind in our persuasion
about the Gods as we have represented to us in the sacred vestments.
Wherefore, in that the priests of Isis are dressed up in these when
they are dead, it is a token to us that this doctrine goes with them
to the other life, and that nothing else can accompany them thither.
For as neither the nourishing of beards nor the wearing of mantles can
render men philosophers, so neither will linen garments or shaved heads
make priests to Isis; but he is a true priest of Isis, who, after he
hath received from the laws the representations and actions that refer
to the Gods, doth next apply his reason to the enquiry and speculation
of the truth contained in them.
4. For the greater part of men are ignorant even of this most common
and ordinary thing, for what reason priests lay aside their hair and
go in linen garments. Some are not at all solicitous to be informed
about such questions; and others say their veneration for sheep is the
cause why they abstain from their wool as well as their flesh, and that
they shave their heads in token of mourning, and that they wear linen
because of the bloomy color which the flax sendeth forth, in imitation
of that ethereal clarity that environs the world. But indeed the true
reason of them all is one and the same. For it is not lawful (as Plato
saith) for a clean thing to be touched by an unclean; but now no
superfluity of food or excrementitious substance can be pure or clean;
but wool, down, hair, and nails come up and grow from superfluous
excrements. It would be therefore an absurdity for them to lay aside
their own hair in purgations, by shaving themselves and by making their
bodies all over smooth, and yet in the mean time to wear and carry
about them the hairs of brutes. For we ought to think that the poet
Hesiod, when he saith,
Not at a feast of Gods from five-branched tree
With sharp-edged steel to part the green from dry,[18]
would teach us to keep the feast when we are already cleansed from such
things as these, and not in the solemnities themselves to use purgation
or removal of excrementitious superfluities. But now flax springs up
from an immortal being, the earth, and bears an eatable fruit, and
affords a simple and cleanly clothing, not burdensome to him that is
covered with it, and convenient for every season of the year, and which
besides (as they tell us) is the least subject to engender vermin; but
of this to discourse in this place would not be pertinent.
5. But now the priests do so abhor all kinds of superfluous excrements,
that they not only decline most sorts of pulse, and of flesh that of
sheep and swine, which produce much superfluity, but also in the time
of their purgations they exclude salt from their meals. For which, as
they have several other good reasons, so more especially this, that it
whets the appetite and renders men over-eager after meat and drink.
For that the reason why salt is not accounted clean should be (as
Aristagoras tells us) because that, when it is hardened together, many
little animals are catched in it and there die, is fond and ridiculous.
They are also said to water the Apis from a well of his own, and to
restrain him altogether from the river Nile,—not because they hold the
water for polluted by reason of the crocodile, as some suppose, for
there is nothing in the world in more esteem with the Egyptians than
the Nile, but because the water of the Nile being drunk is observed
to be very feeding, and above all others to conduce to the increase
of flesh. But they would not have the Apis nor themselves neither to
be over fat; but that their bodies should sit light and easy about
their souls, and not press and squeeze them down by a mortal part
overpowering and weighing down the divine.
6. They also that at Heliopolis (_Sun-town_) wait upon the sun never
bring wine into his temple, they looking upon it as a thing indecent
and unfitting to drink by daylight, while their lord and king looks
on. The rest of them do indeed use it, but very sparingly. They have
likewise many purgations, wherein they prohibit the use of wine, in
which they study philosophy, and pass their time in learning and
teaching things divine. Moreover their kings, being priests also
themselves, were wont to drink it by a certain measure prescribed
them in the sacred books, as Hecataeus informs us. And they began
first to drink it in the reign of Psammetichus; but before that time
they were not used to drink wine at all, no, nor to pour it forth in
sacrifice as a thing they thought any way grateful to the Gods, but as
the blood of those who in ancient times waged war against the Gods,
from whom, falling down from heaven and mixing with the earth, they
conceived vines to have first sprung; which is the reason (say they)
that drunkenness renders men besides themselves and mad; they being,
as it were, gorged with the blood of their ancestors. These things (as
Eudoxus tells us in the second book of his Travels) are thus related by
the priests.
7. As to sea-fish, they do not all of them abstain from all, but some
from one sort, and some from another. As for example, the Oxyrynchites
abstain from such as are catched with the angle and hook; for, having
the fish called oxyrynchus (the pike) in great veneration, they are
afraid lest the hook should chance to catch hold of it and by that
means become polluted. They of Syene also abstain from the phagrus
(or sea-bream) because it is observed to appear with the approaching
overflow of the Nile, and to present itself a voluntary messenger of
the joyful news of its increase. But the priests abstain from all in
general. But on the ninth day of the first month, when every other
Egyptian eats a fried fish before the outer door of his house, the
priests do not eat any fish, but only burn them before their doors.
For which they have two reasons; the one whereof, being sacred and
very curious, I shall resume by and by (it agreeing with the pious
reasonings we shall make upon Osiris and Typhon); the other is a
very manifest and obvious one, which, by declaring fish to be not a
necessary but a superfluous and curious sort of food, greatly confirms
Homer, who never makes either the dainty Phaeacians or the Ithacans
(though both islanders) to make use of fish; no, nor the companions of
Ulysses either in so long a voyage at sea, until they came to the last
extremity of want. In short, they reckon the sea itself to be made of
fire and to lie out of Nature’s confines, and not to be a part of the
world or an element, but a preternatural, corrupt, and morbid excrement.
8. For nothing hath been ranked among their sacred and religious
rites that savored of folly, romance, or superstition, as some do
suppose; but some of them were such as contained some signification of
morality and utility, and others such as were not without a fineness
either in history or natural philosophy. As, for instance, in what
refers to the onions; for that Dictys, the foster-father of Isis,
as he was reaching at a handful of onions, fell into the river and
was there drowned, is extremely improbable. But the true reason why
the priests abhor, detest, and avoid the onion is because it is the
only plant whose nature it is to grow and spread forth in the wane
of the moon. Besides, it is no proper food, either for such as would
practise abstinence and use purgations, or for such as would observe
the festivals; for the former, because it causeth thirst, and for the
latter, because it forceth tears from those that eat it. They likewise
esteem the swine as an unhallowed animal, because it is observed to be
most apt to engender in the wane of the moon, and because that such as
drink its milk have a leprosy and scabbed roughness in their bodies.
But the story which they that sacrifice a swine at every full moon are
wont to subjoin after their eating of it,—how that Typhon, being once
about the full of the moon in pursuit of a certain swine, found by
chance the wooden chest wherein lay the body of Osiris, and scattered
it,—is not received by all, but looked upon as a misrepresented story,
as a great many more such are. They tell us moreover, that the ancients
did so much despise delicacy, sumptuousness, and a soft and effeminate
way of living, that they erected a pillar in the temple at Thebes,
having engraven upon it several grievous curses against King Meinis,
who (as they tell us) was the first that brought off the Egyptians from
a mean, wealthless, and simple way of living. There goes also another
story, how that Technatis, father to Bocchoris, commanding an army
against the Arabians, and his baggage and provisions not coming in as
soon as was expected, heartily fed upon such things as he could next
light on, and afterwards had a sound sleep upon a pallet, whereupon he
fell greatly in love with a poor and mean life; and for this reason he
cursed Meinis, and that with the consent of all the priests, and carved
that curse upon a pillar.
9. But their kings (you must know) were always chosen either out of
the priesthood or soldiery, the latter having the right of succession
by reason of their military valor, and the former by reason of
their wisdom. But he that was chosen out of the soldiery was obliged
immediately to turn priest, and was thereupon admitted to the
participation of their philosophy, whose genius it was to conceal the
greater part in tales and romantic relations, containing dark hints
and resemblances of truth; which it is plain that even themselves
would insinuate to us, while they are so kind as to set up Sphinxes
before their temples, to intimate that their theology contained in it
an enigmatical sort of learning. Moreover, the temple of Minerva which
is at Sais (whom they look upon as the same with Isis) had upon it
this inscription: I am whatever was, or is, or will be; and my veil no
mortal ever took up. Besides, we find the greater part to be of opinion
that the proper name of Jupiter in the Egyptian tongue is Amun (from
which we have derived our word Ammon). But now Manetho the Sebennite
thinks this word signifies hidden and hiding; but Hecataeus of Abdera
saith, the Egyptians use this word when they call anybody; for that
it is a term of calling. Therefore they must be of the opinion that
the first God is the same with the universe; and therefore, while they
invoke him who is unmanifest and hidden, and pray him to make himself
manifest and known to them, they cry Amun. So great therefore was the
piety of the Egyptians’ philosophy about things divine.
10. This is also confirmed by the most learned of the Greeks (such
as Solon, Thales, Plato, Eudoxus, Pythagoras, and as some say, even
Lycurgus) going to Egypt and conversing with the priests; of whom they
say Eudoxus was a hearer of Chonuphis of Memphis, Solon of Sonchis
of Sais, and Pythagoras of Oenuphis of Heliopolis. Whereof the last
named, being (as is probable) more than ordinarily admired by the men,
and they also by him, imitated their symbolical and mysterious way of
talking, obscuring his sentiments with dark riddles. For the greatest
part of the Pythagoric precepts fall nothing short of those sacred
writings they call hieroglyphical, such as, Do not eat in a chariot; Do
not sit on a choenix (or measure); Plant not a palm-tree; Stir not fire
with a knife within the house. And I verily believe, that their terming
the unit Apollo, the number two Diana, the number seven Minerva, and
the first cube Neptune, refers to the columns set up in their temples,
and to things there acted, aye, and painted too. For they represent
their king and lord Osiris by an eye and a sceptre. There are some
also that interpret his name by many-eyed, as if _os_ in the Egyptian
tongue signified many, and _iri_ an eye. And the heaven, because by
reason of its eternity it never grows old, they represent by a heart
with a censer under it. There were also statues of judges erected at
Thebes, having no hands; and the chief of them had also his eyes closed
up, hereby signifying that among them justice was not to be solicited
with either bribery or address. Moreover, the men of the sword had a
beetle carved upon their signets, because there is no such thing as a
female beetle; for they are all males, and they generate their young in
certain round pellets formed of dirt, being herein as well providers of
the place in which they are to be engendered, as of the matter of their
nutrition.
11. When therefore you hear the tales which the Egyptians relate
about the Gods, such as their wanderings, discerptions, and such like
disasters that befell them, you are still to remember that none of
these things have been really so acted and done as they are told.
For they do not call the dog Hermes properly, but only attribute the
warding, vigilancy, and philosophic acuteness of that animal, which by
knowing or not knowing distinguishes between its friend and its foe (as
Plato speaks), to the most knowing and ingenious of the Gods. Nor do
they believe that the sun springs up a little boy from the top of the
lotus, but they thus set forth his rising to insinuate the kindling
of his rays by means of humids. Besides, that most savage and horrible
king of the Persians named Ochus, who, when he had massacred abundance
of people, afterwards slaughtered the Apis, and feasted upon him, both
himself and his retinue, they called the Sword; and they call him so
to this very day in their table of kings, hereby not denoting properly
his person, but resembling by this instrument of murder the severity
and mischievousness of his disposition. When therefore you thus hear
the stories of the Gods from such as interpret them with consistency
to piety and philosophy, and observe and practise those rites that are
by law established, and are persuaded in your mind that you cannot
possibly either offer or perform a more agreeable thing to the Gods
than the entertaining of a right notion of them, you will then avoid
superstition as a no less evil than atheism itself.
12. The story is thus told after the most concise manner, the most
useless and unnecessary parts being cut off. They tell us how that once
on a time, Rhea having accompanied with Saturn by stealth, the Sun
found them out, and pronounced a solemn curse against her, containing
that she should not be delivered in any month or year; but that Hermes,
afterwards making his court to the goddess, obtained her favor, in
requital of which he went and played at dice with the Moon, and won
of her the seventieth part from each day, and out of all these made
five new days, which he added to the three hundred and sixty other
days of the year; and these the Egyptians therefore to this day call
the Epagomenae (or the superadded days), and they observe them as the
birthdays of their Gods. Upon the first of these, as they say, Osiris
was born, and a voice came into the world with him, saying, The Lord of
all things is now born. There are others that affirm that one Pamyles,
as he was fetching water at Thebes, heard a voice out of the temple
of Jupiter, bidding him to publish with a loud voice that Osiris, the
great and good king, was now born; and that he thereupon got to be
foster-father to Osiris, Saturn entrusting him with the charge of him,
and that the feast called Pamylia (resembling the Priapeian procession
which the Greeks call Phallephoria) was instituted in honor of him.
Upon the second day Arueris was born, whom some call Apollo, and others
the elder Horus. Upon the third Typhon was born, who came not into the
world either in due time or by the right way, but broke a hole in his
mother’s side, and leaped out at the wound. Upon the fourth Isis was
born in Panygra. And upon the fifth Nephthys, whom they sometimes call
the end, and sometimes Venus, and sometimes also Victory. Of these
they say Osiris and Arueris were begot by the Sun, Isis by Hermes, and
Typhon and Nephthys by Saturn. For which reason their kings, looking
upon the third of the Epagomenae as an inauspicious day, did no
business upon it, nor took any care of their bodies until the evening.
They say also that Nephthys was married unto Typhon, and that Isis and
Osiris were in love with one another before they were born, and enjoyed
each other in the dark before they came into the world. Some add also
that Arueris was thus begotten, and that he was called by the Egyptians
the elder Horus, and by the Greeks Apollo.
13. And they say that Osiris, when he was king of Egypt, drew them off
from a beggarly and bestial way of living, by showing them the use of
grain, and by making them laws, and teaching them to honor the Gods;
and that afterwards he travelled all the world over, and made it civil,
having but little need of arms, for he drew the most to him, alluring
them by persuasion and oratory, intermixed with all sorts of poetry
and music; whence it is that the Greeks look upon him as the very same
with Bacchus. They further add that Typhon, while he was from home,
attempted nothing against him; for Isis was very watchful and guarded
him closely from harm. But when he came home, he formed a plot against
him, taking seventy-two men for accomplices of his conspiracy, and
being also abetted by a certain Queen of Ethiopia, whose name they
say was Aso. Having therefore privately taken the measure of Osiris’s
body, and framed a curious ark, very finely beautified and just of the
size of his body, he brought it to a certain banquet. And as all were
wonderfully delighted with so rare a sight and admired it greatly,
Typhon in a sporting manner promised that whichsoever of the company
should by lying in it find it to be of the size of his body, should
have it for a present. And as every one of them was forward to try, and
none fitted it, Osiris at last got into it himself, and lay along in
it; whereupon they that were there present immediately ran to it, and
clapped down the cover upon it, and when they had fastened it down with
nails, and soldered it with melted lead, they carried it forth to the
river side, and let it swim into the sea at the Tanaitic mouth, which
the Egyptians therefore to this day detest, and abominate the very
naming of it. These things happened (as they say) upon the seventeenth
of the month Athyr, when the sun enters into the Scorpion, and that was
upon the eight and twentieth year of the reign of Osiris. But there are
some that say that was the time of his life, and not of his reign.
14. And because the Pans and Satyrs that inhabited the region about
Chemmis were the first that knew of this disaster and raised the
report of it among the people, all sudden frights and discomposures
among the people have been ever since called panics. But when Isis
heard of it, she cut off in that very place a lock of her hair, and
put on a mourning weed, where there is a town at this day named Kopto;
others think that name signifies bereaving, for that some use the
word for depriving. And as she wandered up and down in all places,
being deeply perplexed in her thoughts, and left no one she met withal
unspoken to, she met at last with certain little children, of whom
also she enquired about the ark. Now these had chanced to see all that
had passed, and they named to her the very mouth of the Nile by which
Typhon’s accomplices had sent the vessel into the sea; for which reason
the Egyptians account little children to have a faculty of divination,
and use more especially to lay hold on their omens when they play in
sacred places or chance to say any thing there, whatever it be. And
finding afterwards that Osiris had made his court to her sister, and
through mistake enjoyed her instead of herself, for token of which she
had found the melilot garland which he had left hard by Nephthys, she
went to seek for the child; for her sister had immediately exposed it
as soon as she was delivered of it, for fear of her husband Typhon.
And when with great difficulty and labor she had found it, by means
of certain dogs which conducted her to it, she brought it up; and he
afterwards became her guardsman and follower, being named Anubis, and
reported to guard the Gods as dogs do men.
15. Of him she had tidings of the ark, how it had been thrown out by
the sea upon the coasts of Byblos, and the flood had gently entangled
it in a certain thicket of heath. And this heath had in a very small
time run up into a most beauteous and large tree, and had wrought
itself about it, clung to it, and quite enclosed it within its trunk.
Upon which the king of that place, much admiring at the unusual bigness
of the plant, and cropping off the bushy part that encompassed the now
invisible chest, made of it a post to support the roof of his house.
These things (as they tell us) Isis being informed of by the divine
breath of rumor, went herself to Byblos; where when she was come she
sate her down hard by a well, very pensive and full of tears, insomuch
that she refused to speak to any person, save only to the queen’s
women, whom she complimented and caressed at an extraordinary rate, and
would often stroke back their hair with her hands, and withal transmit
a most wonderful fragrant smell out of her body into theirs. The queen,
perceiving that her women’s bodies and hair thus breathed of ambrosia,
greatly longed to become acquainted with this new stranger. Upon this
she being sent for, and becoming very intimate with the queen, was at
last made nurse to her child. Now the name of this king (they tell
us) was Malcander; and the queen, some say, was called Astarte, and
some Saosis, and others Nemanun (which in Greek is as much as to say
Athenaïs).
16. Isis nursed the child by putting her finger into his mouth instead
of the breast; and in the night-time she would by a kind of lambent
fire singe away what was mortal about him. In the mean while, herself
would be turned to a swallow, and in that form would fly round about
the post, bemoaning her misfortune and sad fate; until at last, the
queen, who stood watching hard by, cried out aloud as she saw her child
all on a light flame, and so robbed him of immortality. Upon which
the Goddess discovered herself, and begged the post that held up the
roof; which when she had obtained and taken down, she very quickly
cropped off the bushy heath from about it and wrapping the trunk in
fine linen and pouring perfumed oil upon it, she put it into the hands
of their kings; and therefore the Byblians to this very day worship
that piece of wood, laying it up in the temple of Isis. Then she threw
herself down upon the chest, and her lamentations were so loud, that
the younger of the king’s two sons died for very fear; but she, having
the elder in her own possession, took both him and the ark, and carried
them on shipboard, and so took sail. But the river Phaedrus sending
forth a very keen and chill air, it being the dawning of the morn, she
grew incensed at it, and dried up its current.
17. And in the first place where she could take rest, and found herself
to be now at liberty and alone, she opened the ark, and laid her cheeks
upon the cheeks of Osiris, and embraced him and wept bitterly. The
little boy seeing her came silently behind her, and peeping saw what it
was; which she perceiving cast a terrible look upon him in the height
of her passion; the fright whereof the child could not endure, and
immediately died. But there are some that say it was not so, but that
in the fore-mentioned manner he dropped into the sea, and was there
drowned. And he hath divine honors given him to this very day upon the
Goddess’s account; for they assure us that Maneros, whom the Egyptians
so often mention in their carols at their banquets, is the very same.
But others say that the boy was named Palaestinus or Pelusius, and that
the city of that name was so called from him, it having been built by
the Goddess. They also relate that this Maneros, so often spoken of
in their songs, was the first that invented music. But some there are
that would make us believe that Maneros was not the name of any person,
but a certain form of speech, made use of to people in drinking and
entertaining themselves at feasts, by way of wishing that all things
might prove auspicious and agreeable to them; for that is the thing
which the Egyptians would express by the word Maneros, when they so
often roar it forth. In like manner they affirm that the likeness of a
dead man, which is carried about in a little box and shown at feasts,
is not to commemorate the disaster of Osiris, as some suppose, but
was designed to encourage men to make use of and to enjoy the present
things whilst they have them, since all men must quickly become such as
they there see; for which reason they bring it into their revels and
feasts.
18. But when Isis came to her son Horus, who was then at nurse at
Buto, and had laid the chest out of the way, Typhon, as he was hunting
by moonshine, by chance lighted upon it, and knowing the body again,
tore it into fourteen parts, and threw them all about. Which when Isis
had heard, she went to look for them again in a certain barge made
of papyrus, in which she sailed over all the fens. Whence (they tell
us) it comes to pass, that such as go in boats made of this rush are
never injured by the crocodiles, they having either a fear or else
a veneration for it upon the account of the goddess Isis. And this
(they say) hath occasioned the report that there are many sepulchres
of Osiris in Egypt, because she made a particular funeral for each
member as she found them. There are others that tell us it was not
so, but that she made several effigies of him and sent them to every
city, taking on her as if she had sent them his body; so that the
greater number of people might pay divine honors to him, and withal,
if it should chance that Typhon should get the better of Horus, and
thereupon search for the body of Osiris, many bodies being discoursed
of and shown him, he might despair of ever finding the right one. But
of all Osiris’s members, Isis could never find out his private part,
for it had been presently flung into the river Nile, and the lepidotus,
sea-bream, and pike eating of it, these were for that reason more
scrupulously avoided by the Egyptians than any other fish. But Isis, in
lieu of it, made its effigies, and so consecrated the phallus for which
the Egyptians to this day observe a festival.
19. After this, Osiris coming out of hell to assist his son Horus,
first labored and trained him up in the discipline of war, and then
questioned him what he thought to be the gallantest thing a man could
do; to which he soon replied, to avenge one’s father’s and mother’s
quarrel when they suffer injury. He asked him a second time, what
animal he esteemed most useful to such as would go to battle. Horus
told him, a horse; to which he said that he wondered much at his
answer, and could not imagine why he did not rather name a lion than
a horse. Horus replied, that a lion might indeed be very serviceable
to one that needed help, but a horse would serve best to cut off and
disperse a flying enemy. Which when Osiris heard, he was very much
pleased with him, looking upon him now as sufficiently instructed for a
soldier. It is reported likewise that, as a great many went over daily
unto Horus, Typhon’s own concubine Thueris deserted also; but that a
certain serpent, pursuing her close at the heels, was cut in pieces
by Horus’s men, and that for that reason they still fling a certain
cord into the midst of the room and then chop it to pieces. The battle
therefore continued for several days, and Horus at last prevailed;
but Isis, although she had Typhon delivered up to her fast bound, yet
would not put him to death, but contrariwise loosed him and let him go.
Which when Horus perceived, he could not brook it with any patience,
but laid violent hands upon his mother, and plucked the royal diadem
from off her head. But Hermes presently stepped in, and clapped a cow’s
head upon her instead of a helmet. Likewise, when Typhon impeached
Horus for being a bastard, Hermes became his advocate, and Horus was
judged legitimate by all the Gods. After this, they say that Typhon
was worsted in two several battles. Isis had also by Osiris, who
accompanied with her after his decease, Harpocrates, who came into the
world before his time and was lame in his lower parts.
20. These then are most of the heads of this fabular narration, the
more harsh and coarse parts (such as the description of Horus and the
beheading of Isis) being taken out. If therefore they say and believe
such things as these of the blessed and incorruptible nature (which
is the best conception we can have of divinity) as really thus done
and happening to it, I need not tell you that you ought to spit and to
make clean your mouth (as Aeschylus speaks) at the mentioning of them.
For you are sufficiently averse of yourself to such as entertain such
wicked and barbarous sentiments concerning the Gods. And yet that these
relations are nothing akin to those foppish tales and vain fictions
which poets and story-tellers are wont, like spiders, to spin out of
their own bowels, without any substantial ground or foundation for
them, and then weave and wire-draw them out at their own pleasures, but
contain in them certain abstruse questions and rehearsals of events,
you yourself are, I suppose, convinced. And as mathematicians do assert
the rainbow to be an appearance of the sun so variegated by reflection
of its rays in a cloud, so likewise the fable here related is the
appearance of some doctrine whose meaning is transferred by reflection
to some other matter; as is plainly suggested to us as well by the
sacrifices themselves, in which there appears something lamentable and
very sad, as by the forms and makes of their temples, which sometimes
run out themselves into wings, and into open and airy circs, and at
other times again have under ground certain private cells, resembling
vaults and tombs. And this is most plainly hinted to us by the opinion
received about those of Osiris, because his body is said to be interred
in so many different places. Though it may be they will tell you that
some one town, such as Abydos or Memphis, is named for the place where
his true body lies; and that the most powerful and wealthy among the
Egyptians are most ambitious to be buried at Abydos, that so they may
be near the body of their God Osiris; and that the Apis is fed at
Memphis, because he is the image of Osiris’s soul, where also they will
have it that his body is interred. Some also interpret the name of this
city to signify the haven of good things, and others, the tomb of
Osiris. They add, that the little island at Philae is at other times
inaccessible and not to be approached to by any man, and that the very
birds dare not venture to fly over it nor the fish to touch upon its
banks; yet upon a certain set time the priests go over into it, and
there perform the accustomed rites for the dead, and crown his tomb,
which stands there shaded over by a tree called methida, exceeding any
olive in bigness.
21. But Eudoxus saith that, though there be in Egypt many tombs
reported to be his, yet his true body lies at Busiris, for that was
the place of his birth; neither can there be any room for dispute
about Taphosiris, for that its very name bespeaks it, Osiris’s tomb.
I pass by their cleaving of wood, their peeling of flax, and the wine
libations then made by them, because many of their secret mysteries are
therein contained. And it is not of this God only, but of all others
also that are not ungotten and incorruptible, that the priests pretend
that their bodies lie buried with them and are by them served, but
their souls are stars shining in heaven; and they say that the soul of
Isis is by the Greeks called the Dog, but by the Egyptians, Sothis; and
that of Horus, Orion; and that of Typhon, the Bear. They also tell us,
that towards the support of the animals honored by them all others pay
the proportion assigned them by the laws, but that those that inhabit
the country of Thebais are the only men that refuse to contribute any
thing, because they believe in no mortal God, but in him only whom they
call Cneph, who is ungotten and immortal.
22. They therefore who suppose that, because many things of this
sort are both related and shown unto travellers, they are but so
many commemorations of the actions and disasters of mighty kings and
tyrants who, by reason of their eminent valor or puissance, wrote the
title of divinity upon their fame, and afterwards fell into great
calamities and misfortunes,—these, I say, make use of the most ready
way of eluding the story, and plausibly enough remove things of harsh
and uncouth sound from Gods to men. Nay, I will add this farther,
that the arguments they use are fairly enough deduced from the things
themselves related. For the Egyptians recount, that Mercury was, in
regard to the make of his body, with one arm longer than the other, and
that Typhon was by complexion red, Horus white, and Osiris black, as if
they had been indeed nothing else but men. They moreover style Osiris
a commander, and Canopus a pilot, from whom they say the star of that
name was denominated. Also the ship which the Greeks call Argo—being
the image of Osiris’s ark, and therefore, in honor of it, made a
constellation—they make to ride not far from Orion and the Dog; whereof
the one they believe to be sacred to Horus, and the other to Isis.
23. But I fear this would be to stir things that are not to be stirred,
and to declare war not only (as Simonides speaks) against length of
time, but also against many nations and families of mankind, whom
a religious reverence towards these Gods holds fast bound like men
astonished and amazed. And this would be no other than going about
to remove so great and venerable names from heaven to earth, thereby
shaking and dissolving that worship and persuasion that hath entered
into almost all men’s constitutions from their very birth, and opening
vast doors to the Atheists’ faction, who convert all divine matters
into human, giving also a large license to the impostures of Euhemerus
the Messenian, who out of his own brain contrived certain memoirs of a
most incredible and imaginary mythology, and thereby spread all manner
of Atheism throughout the world. This he did by describing all the
received Gods under the style of generals, sea-captains, and kings,
whom he makes to have lived in the more remote and ancient times,
and to be recorded in golden characters in a certain country called
Panchon, with which notwithstanding never any man, either Barbarian
or Grecian, had the good fortune to meet, except Euhemerus alone, who
(it seems) sailed to the land of the Panchoans and Triphyllians, that
neither have nor ever had a being.
24. And although the actions of Semiramis are sung among the Assyrians
as very great, and likewise those of Sesostris in Egypt, and the
Phrygians to this very day style all illustrious and strange actions
_manic_, because Manis, one of their ancient kings (whom some call
Masdes) was a brave and mighty person; and although Cyrus enlarged the
empire of the Persians, and Alexander that of the Macedonians, within
a little matter of the world’s end; yet have they still retained the
names and memorials of gallant princes. And if some, puffed up with
excessive vain-glory (as Plato speaks), having their minds enflamed
at once with both youthful blood and folly, have with an unruly
extravagancy taken upon them the style of Gods and had temples erected
in their honor, yet this opinion of them flourished but for a short
season, and they afterwards underwent the blame of great vanity and
arrogancy, conjoined with the highest impiety and wickedness; and so,