seems to me to denote his imperial power by supremest, and his
well-advisedness and discretion by Counsellor. They also oftentimes
describe this God by a hawk, because he exceeds in quickness of sight
and velocity in flying, and sustains himself with very little food. He
is also said to fly over the bodies of dead men that lie unburied, and
to drop down earth upon their eyes. Likewise, when he alights down upon
the bank of any river to assuage his thirst, he sets his feathers up on
end, and after he hath done drinking, he lets them fall again. Which he
plainly doth because he is now safe and escaped from the danger of the
crocodile; but if he chances to be catched, his feathers then continue
stiff as before. They also show us everywhere Osiris’s statue in the
shape of a man, with his private part erect, to betoken unto us his
faculty of generation and nutrition; and they dress up his images in a
flame-colored robe, esteeming the sun as the body of the power of good,
and as the visible image of intelligible substance. Wherefore we have
good reason to reject those that ascribe the sun’s globe unto Typhon,
to whom appertaineth nothing of a lucid or salutary nature, nor order,
nor generation, nor motion attended with measure and proportion, but
the clean contrary to them. Neither is that parching drought, which
destroys many animals and plants, to be accounted as an effect of the
sun, but of those winds and waters which in the earth and air are not
tempered according to the season, at which time the principle of the
unordered and interminate nature acts at random, and so stifles and
suppresses those exhalations that should ascend.
52. Moreover, in the sacred hymns of Osiris they call him up “who lies
hidden in the arms of the sun.” And upon the thirtieth day of the month
Epiphi they keep a certain festival called the Birthday of the eyes of
Horus, when the sun and the moon are in one direct line; as esteeming
not only the moon but also the sun to be the eye and light of Horus.
Likewise the three and twentieth day of the month Phaophi they make
to be the nativity of the staves of the sun, which they observe after
the autumnal equinox, intimating hereby that he now wants, as it were,
a prop and a stay, as suffering a great diminution both of heat and
light by his declining and moving obliquely from us. Besides this, they
lead the sacred cow seven times about her temple at the time of the
winter solstice. And this going round is called the seeking of Osiris,
the Goddess being in great distress for water in winter time. And the
reason of her going round so many times is because the sun finishes his
passage from the winter to the summer tropic in the seventh month. It
is reported also that Horus, the son of Isis, was the first that ever
sacrificed to the sun upon the fourth day of the month, as we find it
written in a book called the Birthdays of Horus. Moreover, they offer
incense to the sun three times every day; resin at his rising, myrrh
when it is in the mid-heaven, and that they call Kyphi about the time
of his setting. (What each of these means, I shall afterwards explain.)
Now they are of opinion that the sun is atoned and pacified by all
these.
But to what purpose should I heap together many things of this nature?
For there are some that scruple not to say plainly that Osiris is
the sun, and that he is called Sirius by the Greeks, although the
Egyptians, adding the article to his name, have obscured and brought
its sense into question. They also declare Isis to be no other than
the moon, and say that such statues of her as are horned were made
in imitation of the crescent; and that the black habit in which
she so passionately pursues the sun, sets forth her disappearings
and eclipses. For which reason they used to invoke the moon in
love-concerns; and Eudoxus also saith that Isis presides over
love-matters. Now these things have in them a show and semblance of
reason; whereas they that would make Typhon to be the sun deserve not
to be heard.
53. But we must again resume our proper discourse. Isis is indeed that
property of Nature which is feminine and receptive of all production;
in which sense she was called the nurse and the all-receiver by Plato,
and the Goddess with ten thousand names by the common sort, because
being transmuted by reason she receives all manner of shapes and
guises. But she hath a natural love to the prime and principal of
all beings (which is the good principle), and eagerly affects it and
pursues after it; and she shuns and repels her part of the evil one.
And although she be indeed both the receptacle and matter of either
nature, yet she always of herself inclines to the better of them, and
readily gives way to it to generate upon her and to sow its effluxes
and resemblances into her; and she rejoices and is very glad when she
is impregnated and filled with productions. For generation is the
production of an image of the real substance upon matter, and what is
generated is an imitation of what is in truth.
54. And therefore not without great consonancy do they fable that the
soul of Osiris is eternal and incorruptible but that his body is
often torn in pieces and destroyed by Typhon, and that Isis wanders
to and fro to look him out, and when she hath found him, puts him
together again. For the permanent being, the mental nature, and the
good, is itself above corruption and change; but the sensitive and
corporeal part takes off certain images from it, and receives certain
proportions, shapes, and resemblances, which, like impressions upon
wax, do not continue always, but are swallowed up by the disorderly
and tumultuous part, which is chased hither from the upper region and
makes war with Horus, who is born of Isis, being the sensible image
of the mental world. For which reason he is said to be prosecuted for
bastardy by Typhon, as not being pure and sincere,—like his father,
the pure absolute reason, unmixed and impassible,—but embased with
matter by corporeity. But he gets the better of him, and carries the
cause, Hermes (that is, reason) witnessing and proving that Nature
produces the world by becoming herself of like form with the mental
property. Moreover, the generation of Apollo by Isis and Osiris, while
the Gods were yet in Rhea’s womb, hints out unto us that, before
this world became visible and was completed by reason, matter, being
convinced by Nature that she was imperfect alone, brought forth the
first production. For which reason they also say, this deity was born
a cripple in the dark, and they call him the elder Horus; for he was
not the world, but a kind of a picture and phantom of the world to be
afterwards.
55. This Horus is terminate and complete of himself, yet hath he not
quite destroyed Typhon, but only taken off his over great activity and
brutal force. Whence it is they tell us that at Copto the statue of
Horus holds fast in hand the privities of Typhon; and they fable that
Mercury took out Typhon’s sinews and used them for harp-strings, to
denote unto us that, when reason composed the universe, it made one
concord out of many discords, and did not abolish but accomplish[28]
the corruptible faculty. Whence it comes that this power, being weak
and feeble in the present state of things, blends and mixes with
passible and mutable parts of the world, and so becomes in the earth
the causer of concussions and shakings, and in the air of parching
droughts and tempestuous winds, as also of hurricanes and thunders.
It likewise infects both waters and winds with pestilential diseases,
and runs up and insolently rages as high as the very moon, suppressing
many times and blackening the lucid part, as the Egyptians believe.
They relate that Typhon one while smote Horus’s eye, and another while
plucked it out and swallowed it up, and afterwards gave it back to the
sun; intimating by the blow the monthly diminution of the moon, and by
the blinding of him its eclipse, which the sun cures again by shining
presently upon it as soon as it hath escaped from the shadow of the
earth.
56. Now the better and more divine nature consists of three; or of the
intelligible part, of matter, and of that which is made up of both,
which the Greeks call Cosmos (that is _trimness_) and we the world.
Plato therefore uses to name the intelligible part the form, the
sample, and the father; and matter the mother, the nurse, and the seat
and receptacle of generation; and that again which is made up of both,
the offspring and the production. And one would conjecture that the
Egyptians called it the most perfect of triangles, because they likened
the nature of the universe principally to that; which Plato also in
his Commonwealth seems to have made use of to the same purpose, when
he forms his nuptial diagram. Now in that triangle the perpendicular
consists of three parts, the base of four, and the subtense of five,
its square being equal in value with the squares of the two that
contain it. We are therefore to take the perpendicular to represent
the male property, the base the female, and the subtense that which is
produced by them both. We are likewise to look upon Osiris as the first
cause, Isis as the faculty of reception, and Horus as the effect. For
the number three is the first odd and perfect number, and the number
four is a square, having for its side the even number two. The number
five also in some respects resembles the father and in some again the
mother, being made up of three and two; besides, πάντα (_all things_)
seems to be derived from πέντε (_five_), and they use πεμπάσασθαι
(which is _telling five_) for counting.[29] Moreover, the number five
makes a square equal to the number of letters used among the Egyptians,
as also to the number of years which Apis lived. They are also used to
call Horus Min, which signifieth as much as _seen_; for the world is
perceptible to sense and visible. And Isis they sometimes call Muth,
and sometimes again Athyri, and sometimes Methyer. And by the first of
these names they mean mother, by the second Horus’s mundane house (as
Plato calls it, the place and receptacle of generation); but the third
is compounded of two words, the one whereof signifies full, and the
other the cause; for the matter of the world is full, and it is closely
joined with the good and pure and well ordered principle.
57. And it may be, Hesiod also, when he makes the first things of all
to be chaos, earth, hell, and love, may be thought to take up no other
principles than these, if we apply these names as we have already
disposed them, to wit, that of earth to Isis, that of love to Osiris,
and that of hell to Typhon; for he seems to lay the chaos under all,
as a kind of room or place for the world to lie in. And the subject we
are now upon seems in a manner to call for Plato’s tale, which Socrates
tells us in the Symposium about the production of Eros (or Love),
where he saith, that once on a time Poverty, having a mighty desire
of children, laid her down by Plenty’s side as he was asleep, and
that she thereupon conceiving by him brought forth Eros, who was of a
nature both mixed and various, as coming of a father that was good and
wise and had sufficiency of all things, but of a mother that was very
needy and poor; and that by reason of her indigence she still hankered
after another, and was eagerly importunate for another. For this same
Plenty is no other than the first amiable, desirable, complete, and
sufficient being; and matter is that which he called Poverty, she being
of herself alone destitute of the property of good, but when she is
impregnated by it, she still desires and craves for more. Moreover, the
world (or Horus) that is produced out of these two, being not eternal,
nor impassible, nor incorruptible, but ever a making, does therefore
machinate, partly by shifting of accidents and partly by circular
motions, to remain still young and never to die.
58. But we must remember that we are not to make use of fables as if
they were doctrinal throughout, but only to take that in each of them
which we shall judge to make a pertinent resemblance. And therefore,
when we treat of matter, we need not (with respect to the sentiments
of some philosophers) to conceit in our minds a certain body void of
soul and of all quality, and of itself wholly idle and unactive. For
we use to call oil the matter of an unguent, and gold the matter of a
statue, though they are not destitute of all quality. And we render
the very soul and mind of a man as matter to reason, to be dressed up
and composed into science and virtue. There have been some also that
have made the mind to be a receptacle of forms and a kind of imprimary
for things intelligible; and some are of opinion again that the
genital humidity in the female sex is no active property nor efficient
principle, but only the matter and nutriment of the production. Which
when we retain in our memories, we ought to conceive likewise that this
Goddess, which always participates of the first God and is ever taken
up with the love of those excellencies and charms that are about him,
is not by nature opposite to him; but that, as we are used to say of a
good natured woman, that, though she be married to a man and constantly
enjoys his embraces, yet she hath a fond kind of longing after him, so
hath she always a strong inclination to the God, though she be present
and round about him, and though she be impregnated with his most prime
and pure particles.
59. But where Typhon falls in and touches upon her extreme parts, it
is there she appears melancholy, and is said to mourn, and to look
for certain relics and pieces of Osiris, and to array them with all
diligence; she receiving all things that die and laying them up within
herself, as she again brings forth and sends up out of herself all such
things as are produced. And those proportions, forms, and effluxes of
the God that are in the heaven and stars do indeed continue always
the same; but those that are sown abroad into mutable things, as into
land, sea, plants, and animals, are resolved, destroyed, and buried,
and afterwards show themselves again very often, and come up anew in
several different productions. For which reason the fable makes Typhon
to be married to Nephthys, and Osiris to have accompanied with her by
stealth. For the utmost and most extreme parts of matter, which they
call Nephthys and the end, is mostly under the power of the destructive
faculty; but the fecund and salutary power dispenses but a feeble and
languid seed into those parts, which is all destroyed by Typhon, except
only what Isis taking up doth preserve, cherish, and improve.
60. And in general, Typhon is the prevailing power, as both Plato and
Aristotle insinuate. Moreover, the generative and salutary part of
nature hath its motion towards him, in order to procure being; but the
destroying and corruptive part hath its motion from him, in order to
procure not-being. For which reason they call the former part Isis,
from going (ἴεσθαι) and being borne-along with knowledge, she being a
kind of a living and prudent motion. For her name is not of a barbarous
original; but, as all the Gods have one name (θεός) in common, and that
is derived from the two words, θέων (_running_) and θεατός (_visible_);
so also this very Goddess is both from motion and science at once
called Isis by us and Isis also by the Egyptians. So likewise Plato
tells us, that the ancients called οὐσία (_being_) ἰσία (_knowledge_),
as also that νόησις (_intelligence_) and φρόνησις (_prudence_) had
their names given them for being a φορά (_agitation_) and motion of
νοῦς (_mind_), which was then, as it were, ἱέμενος and φερόμενος
(_set in motion_ and _borne-along_); and the like he affirmeth of
συνιέναι (_to understand_), that it was as much as to say “to be in
commotion.”[30] Nay he saith, moreover, that they attribute the very
names of ἀγαθόν (_good_) and ἀρετή (_virtue_) to the ideas of _running_
(θέω) and of _ever-flowing_ (ἀεὶ ῥέω)[31] which they imply; as
likewise, on the other hand again, they used terms opposite to motion
by way of reproach; for they called what clogged, tied up, locked up,
and confined nature from agitation and motion κακία (_baseness_ or
_ill motion_), ἀπορία (_difficulty_ or _difficult motion_), δειλία
(_fearfulness_ or _fearful motion_) and ἀνία (_sorrow_ or _want of
motion_).
61. But Osiris had his name from ὅσιος and ἱερός (_pious_ and _sacred_)
compounded; for he is the common idea of things in heaven and things in
the lower world, the former of which the ancients thought fit to style
ἱερά, and the latter ὅσια. But the principle which discloses things
heavenly, and which appertains to things whose motion tends upwards
(ἄνω), is called Anubis, and sometimes he is also named Hermanubis,
the former name referring to things above, and the latter to things
beneath. For which reason they also sacrifice to him two cocks, the
one whereof is white and the other of a saffron color, as esteeming
the things above to be entire and clear, and the things beneath to be
mixed and various. Nor need any one to wonder at the formation of these
words from the Grecian tongue; for there are many thousand more of this
kind, which, accompanying those who at several times removed out of
Greece, do to this very day sojourn and remain among foreigners; some
whereof when poetry would bring back into use, it hath been falsely
accused of barbarism by those men, who love to call such words strange
and outlandish. They say, moreover, that in the so-called books of
Hermes there is an account given of the sacred names; and that power
which presides over the circulation of the sun is called Horus, and by
the Greeks Apollo; and that which is over the winds is by some called
Osiris, and by others Serapis, and by others again in the Egyptian
tongue Sothi. Now the word Sothi signifies in Greek _to breed_ (κύειν)
and _breeding_; and therefore, by an obliquation of the word κύειν,
the star which they account proper to the Goddess Isis is called in
Greek κύων, which is as well _dog_ as _breeder_. And although it be
but a fond thing to be over contentious about words, yet I had rather
yield to the Egyptians the name of Serapis than that of Osiris, since
I account the former to be foreign, and the latter to be Greekish, but
believe both to appertain to one God and to one power.
62. And the Egyptian theology seems to favor this opinion. For they
oftentimes call Isis by the name of Minerva, which in their language
expresseth this sentence, “I came from myself,” and is significative
of a motion proceeding from herself. But Typhon is called (as hath
been said before) Seth, Bebon, and Smu, which names would insinuate
a kind of a forcible restraint, and an opposition or subversion.
Moreover, they call the loadstone Horus’s bone, and iron Typhon’s bone,
as Manetho relates. For as iron is oftentimes like a thing that is
drawn to and follows the loadstone, and oftentimes again flies off and
recoils to the opposite part; so the salutary, good, and intelligent
motion of the universe doth, as by a gentle persuasion, invert, reduce,
and make softer the rugged and Typhonian one; and when again it is
restrained and forced back, it returns into itself, and sinks into its
former interminateness. Eudoxus also saith that the Egyptian fable of
Jupiter is this, that being once unable to go because his legs grew
together, he for very shame spent all his time in the wilderness; but
that Isis dividing and separating these parts of his body, he came to
have the right use of his feet. This fable also hints to us by these
words, that the intelligence and reason of the God, which walked before
in the unseen and inconspicuous state, came into generation by means of
motion.
63. The sistrum likewise (or _rattle_) doth intimate unto us, that
all things ought to be agitated and shook (σείεσθαι), and not to be
suffered to rest from their motion, but be as it were roused up and
awakened when they begin to grow drowsy and to droop. For they tell us
that the sistrum averts and frights away Typhon, insinuating hereby
that, as corruption locks up and fixes Nature’s course, so generation
again resolves and excites it by means of motion. Moreover, as the
sistrum hath its upper part convex, so its circumference contains the
four things that are shaken; for that part of the world also which is
liable to generation and corruption is contained by the sphere of the
moon but all things are moved and changed in it by means of the four
elements, fire, earth, water, and air. And upon the upper part of the
circumference of the sistrum, on the outside, they set the effigies of
a cat carved with a human face; and again, on the under part, below
the four jingling things, they set on one side the face of Isis, and
on the other the face of Nephthys; symbolically representing by these
two faces generation and death (for these are changes and alterations
of the elements), and by the cat representing the moon, because of the
different colors, the night-motion and the great fecundity of this
animal. For they say that she brings forth first one, then two, and
three, and four, and five, and so adds one until she comes to seven; so
that she brings eight and twenty in all, which are as many as there are
days in each moon; but this looks more like a romance. This is certain,
that the pupils of her eyes are observed to fill up and grow large
upon the full of the moon, and again, to grow less upon its decrease.
And the human face of the cat shows how the changes of the moon are
governed by mind and reason.
64. To sum up all then in one word, it is not reasonable to believe
that either the water or the sun or the earth or the heaven is Osiris
or Isis; nor, again, that the fire or the drought or the sea is Typhon;
but if we simply ascribe to Typhon whatever in all these is through
excesses or defects intemperate or disorderly, and if on the other
hand we reverence and honor what in them all is orderly, good, and
beneficial, esteeming them the operations of Isis, and as the image,
imitation, and discourse of Osiris, we shall not err. And we shall
besides take off the incredulity of Eudoxus, who makes a great question
how it comes to pass that neither Ceres hath any part in the care of
love affairs (but only Isis), nor Bacchus any power either to increase
the Nile or to preside over the dead. For we hold that these Gods are
set over the whole share of good in common, and that whatever is either
good or amiable in Nature is all owing to these, the one yielding the
principles, and the other receiving and dispensing them.
65. By this means we shall be able to deal with the vulgar and more
importunate sort also, whether their fancy be to accommodate the things
that refer to these Gods to those changes which happen to the ambient
air at the several seasons of the year, or to production of fruit and
to the times of sowing and earing, affirming that Osiris is then buried
when the sown corn is covered over by the earth, and that he revives
again and re-appears when it begins to sprout. Which they say is the
reason that Isis is reported, upon her finding herself to be with
child, to have hung a certain amulet or charm about her upon the sixth
day of the month Phaophi, and to have been delivered of Harpocrates
about the winter solstice, he being in the first shootings and sprouts
very imperfect and tender. And this is the reason (say they) that,
when the lentils begin to spring up, they offer him their tops for
first-fruits. They also observe the festival of her child-birth after
the vernal equinox. For they that hear these things are much taken
with them and readily give assent to them, and presently infer their
credibility from the obviousness and familiarness of the matter.
66. Nor would this be any great harm either, would they save us these
Gods in common, and not make them to be peculiar to the Egyptians, nor
confine these names to the river Nile, and only to that one piece of
ground which the river Nile waters; nor affirm their fens and their
lotuses to be the subject of this mythology, and so deprive the rest
of mankind of great and mighty Gods, who have neither a Nile nor a
Buto nor a Memphis. As for Isis, all mankind have her, and are well
acquainted with her and the other Gods about her; and although they had
not anciently learned to call some of them by their Egyptian names, yet
they from the very first both knew and honored the power which belongs
to every one of them. In the second place, what is yet of greater
consequence is, that they take a mighty care and fear lest, before they
are aware, they change and dissolve the divine beings into blasts of
winds, streams of water, sowings of corn, earings of land, accidents of
the earth, and changes of seasons; as those who make Bacchus to be wine
and Vulcan to be flame. Cleanthes also somewhere saith that Proserpine
(or Persephone) is the breath of air which is carried (φερόμενον)
through the corn and then dies (φονεύομενον); and again, a certain poet
saith of reapers,
Then when the youth the legs of Ceres cut.
For these men seem to me to be nothing wiser than such as would take
the sails, the cables, and the anchor of a ship for the pilot; the yarn
and the web for the weaver; and the bowl or the mead or the ptisan
for the doctor. And they over and above produce in men most dangerous
and atheistical opinions, while they give the names of Gods to those
natures and things that have in them neither soul nor sense, and that
are necessarily destroyed by men who need them and use them.
67. No man can imagine these things can be Gods in themselves. And
therefore nothing can be a God to men that is either without soul or
under their power. But yet by means of these things we come to think
them Gods that use them themselves and bestow them upon us, and that
render them perpetual and continual. And those are not some in one
country and others in another, nor some Grecians and others barbarians,
nor some southern and others northern; but as the sun, moon, land, and
sea are common to all men, but yet have different names in different
nations, so that one discourse that orders these things, and that one
forecast that administers them, and those subordinate powers that are
set over every nation in particular, have assigned them by the laws
of several countries several kinds of honors and appellations. And
those that have been consecrated to their service make use, some of
them of darker, and others again of clearer symbols, thereby guiding
the understanding to the knowledge of things divine, not without much
danger and hazard. For some not being able to reach their true meaning,
have slid into downright superstition; and others again, while they
would fly the quagmire of superstition, have fallen unwittingly upon
the precipice of atheism.
68. And for this reason we should here make most use of the reasonings
from philosophy, which introduce us into the knowledge of things
sacred, that so we may think piously of whatever is said or acted
in religion; lest—as Theodorus once said that, as he reached forth
his discourses in his right hand, some of his auditors received them
in their left—so what things the laws have wisely constituted about
the sacrifices and festivals we should take otherwise than as they
are meant, and thereby fall into most dangerous errors and mistakes.
That therefore we are to construe all these things by reference to
reason, we may easily perceive by the Egyptians themselves. For upon
the nineteenth day of the first month they keep a solemn festival to
Hermes, wherein they eat honey and figs, and withal say these words,
“Truth is a sweet thing.” And that amulet or charm which they fable
Isis to hang about her is, when interpreted into our language, “A
true voice.” Nor are we to understand Harpocrates to be either some
imperfect or infant God, or a God of pulse (as some will have him),
but to be the governor and reducer of the tender, imperfect, and
inarticulate discourse which men have about the Gods. For which reason,
he hath always his finger upon his mouth, as a symbol of talking little
and keeping silence. Likewise, upon the month of Mesore, they present
him with certain pulse, and pronounce these words: “The tongue is
Fortune, the tongue is God.” And of all the plants that Egypt produces,
they say the Persea is the most sacred to the Goddess, because its
fruit resembles the heart, and its leaf the tongue. For there is
nothing that man possesses that is either more divine, or that hath a
greater tendency upon happiness, than discourse, and especially that
which relates to the Gods. For which reason they lay a strict charge
upon such as go down to the oracle there, to have pious thoughts in
their hearts and words of good omen in their mouths. But the greater
part act ludicrous things in their processions and festivals, first
proclaiming good expressions, and then both speaking and thinking words
of most wicked and lewd meaning, and that even of the Gods themselves.
69. How then must we manage ourselves at these tetrical, morose, and
mournful sacrifices, if we are neither to omit what the laws prescribe
us, nor yet to confound and distract our thoughts about the Gods
with vain and uncouth surmises? There are among the Greeks also many
things done that are like to those which the Egyptians do at their
solemnities, and much about the same time too. For at the Thesmophoria
at Athens the women fast sitting upon the bare ground. The Boeotians
also remove the shrines of Achaea (or Ceres), terming that day the
afflictive holiday, because Ceres was then in great affliction for her
daughter’s descent into hell. Now upon this month, about the rising
of the Pleiades, is the sowing time; and the Egyptians call it Athyr,
the Athenians Pyanepsion; and the Boeotians Damatrios (or the _month
of Ceres_). Moreover Theopompus relates, that those that live towards
the sun-setting (or the Hesperii) believe the winter to be Saturn, the
summer Venus, and the spring time Proserpine; and that they call them
by those names, and maintain all to be produced by Saturn and Venus.
But the Phrygians, being of opinion that the Deity sleeps in the winter
and wakes in the summer, do, in the manner of ecstatics, in the winter
time sing lullabies in honor of his sleeping, and in the summer time
certain rousing carols in honor of his waking. In like manner the
Paphlagonians say, he is bound and imprisoned in the winter, and walks
abroad again in the spring and is at liberty.
70. And the nature of the season gives us suspicion that this tetrical
sort of service was occasioned by the absenting of the several sorts
of fruits at that time of the year; which yet the ancients did not
believe to be Gods, but such gifts of the Gods as were both great and
necessary in order to preserve them from a savage and bestial life.
And at what time they saw both the fruits that came from trees wholly
to disappear and fail, and those also which themselves had sown to be
yet but starved and poor, they taking up fresh mould in their hands
and laying it about their roots, and committing them a second time to
the ground with uncertain hopes of their ever coming to perfection or
arriving to maturity, did herein many things that might well resemble
people at funerals and mourning for the dead. Moreover, as we use to
say of one that hath bought the books of Plato, that he hath bought
Plato, and of one that hath taken upon him to act the compositions
of Menander, that he hath acted Menander; in like manner they did
not stick to call the gifts and creatures of the Gods by the names
of the Gods themselves, paying this honor and veneration to them for
their necessary use. But those of after times receiving this practice
unskilfully and ignorantly, applying the accidents of fruits, and the
accesses and recesses of things necessary to human life, unto the Gods,
did not only call them the generations and deaths of the Gods, but
also believed them such, and so filled themselves with abundance of
absurd, wicked, and distempered notions; and this, although they had
the absurdity of such a monstrous opinion before their very eyes. And
therefore Xenophanes the Colophonian might not only put the Egyptians
in mind, if they believed those they worshipped to be Gods, not to
lament for them, and if they lamented for them, not to believe them to
be Gods; but also that it would be extremely ridiculous at one and the
same time to lament for the fruits of the earth, and to pray them to
appear again and make themselves ripe, that so they may be over again
consumed and lamented for.
71. But now this in its true intention is no such thing. But they
make their lamentation for the fruits; and their prayers to the Gods,
who are the authors and bestowers of those fruits, that they would
be pleased to produce and bring up again other new ones in the place
of them that are gone. Wherefore it is an excellent saying among
philosophers, that they that have not learned the true sense of words
will mistake also in the things; as we see those among the Greeks who
have not learned nor accustomed themselves to call the brazen and stone
statues and the painted representations of the Gods their images or
their honors, but the Gods themselves, are so adventurous as to say
that Lachares stripped Minerva, that Dionysius cropped off Apollo’s
golden locks, and that Jupiter Capitolinus was burned and destroyed in
the civil wars of Rome. They therefore, before they are aware, suck in
and receive bad opinions with these improper words. And the Egyptians
are not the least guilty herein, with respect to the animals which they
worship. For the Grecians both speak and think aright in these matters,
when they tell us that the pigeon is sacred to Venus, the serpent
to Minerva, the raven to Apollo, and the dog to Diana, as Euripides
somewhere speaks:
Into a bitch transformed you shall be,
And be the image of bright Hecate.
But the greater part of the Egyptians worshipping the very animals
themselves, and courting them as Gods, have not only filled their
religious worship with matter of scorn and derision (for that would be
the least harm that could come of their blockish ignorance); but a dire
conception also arises therefrom, which blows up the feeble and simple
minded into an extravagance of superstition, and when it lights upon
the more subtle and daring tempers, outrages them into atheistical and
brutish cogitations. Wherefore it seems not inconsonant here to recount
what is probable upon this subject.
72. For that the Gods, being afraid of Typhon, changed themselves
into these animals, and did as it were hide themselves in the bodies
of ibises, dogs, and hawks, is a foolery beyond all prodigiousness
and legend. And that such souls of men departed this life as remain
undissolved after death have leave to be reborn into this life by these
bodies only, is equally incredible. And of those who would assign some
political reason for these things, there are some that affirm that
Osiris in his great army, dividing his forces into many parts (which
we in Greek call λόχοι and τάξεις), at the same time gave every of
them certain ensigns or colors with the shapes of several animals upon
them, which in process of time came to be looked upon as sacred, and to
be worshipped by the several kindred and clans in that distribution.
Others say again, that the kings of after times did, for the greater
terror of their enemies, wear about them in their battles the golden
and silver heads and upper parts of fierce animals. But there are
others that relate that one of these subtle and crafty princes,
observing the Egyptians to be of a light and vain disposition and
very inclinable to change and innovation, and withal, when sober and
unanimous, of an inexpugnable and irrestrainable strength by reason of
their mighty numbers, therefore taught them, in their several quarters,
a perpetual kind of superstition, to be the ground of endless quarrels
and disputes among them. For the various animals which he commanded
different cities to observe and reverence being at enmity and war with
one another, and desiring one another for food, each party among them
being upon the perpetual defence of their proper animals and highly
resenting the wrongs that were offered them, it happened that, being
thus drawn into the quarrels of their beasts, they were, before they
were aware, engaged in hostilities with one another. For at this very
day, the Lycopolitans (or Wolf-town-men) are the only people among the
Egyptians that eat the sheep, because the wolf, which they esteem to be
a God, doth so too. And in our own times, the Oxyrynchites (or those of
Pike-town), because the Cynopolitans (or those of Dog-town) did eat a
pike, catched the dogs and slew them, and ate of them as they would do
of a sacrifice; and there arising a civil war upon it, in which they
did much mischief to one another, they were all at last chastised by
the Romans.
73. And whereas there are many that say that the soul of Typhon himself
took its flight into these animals, this tale may be looked upon to
signify that every irrational and brutal nature appertains to the share
of the evil Daemon. And therefore, when they would pacify him and speak
him fair, they make their court and addresses to these animals. But
if there chance to happen a great and excessive drought which, above
what is ordinary at other times, brings along with it either wasting
diseases or other monstrous and prodigious calamities, the priests then
conduct into a dark place, with great silence and stillness, some of
the animals which are honored by them; and they first of all menace and
terrify them, and if the mischief still continues, they then consecrate
and offer them up, looking upon this as a way of punishing the evil
God, or at least as some grand purgation in time of greatest disasters.
For, as Manetho relateth, they were used in ancient times to burn live
men in the city of Ilithyia, entitling them Typhonian; and then they
made wind, and dispersed and scattered their ashes into the air. And
this was done publicly, and at one only season of the year, which was
the dog-days. But those consecrations of the animals worshipped by
them which are made in secret, and at irregular and uncertain times
of the year as occasions require, are wholly unknown to the vulgar
sort, except only at the time of their burials, at which they produce
certain other animals, and in the presence of all spectators throw them
into the grave with them, thinking by this means to vex Typhon and to
abate the satisfaction he received by their deaths. For it is the Apis,
with a few more, that is thought sacred to Osiris; but the far greater
part are assigned to Typhon. And if this account of theirs be true, I
believe it explains the subject of our enquiry as to such animals as
are universally received and have their honors in common amongst them
all; and of this kind is the ibis, the hawk, the cynocephalos, and the
Apis himself; ... for so they call the goat which is kept at Mendes.
74. It remains yet behind, that I treat of their beneficialness to man,
and of their symbolical use; and some of them participate of some one
of these, and others of both. It is most manifest therefore that they
worship the ox, the sheep, and the ichneumon for their benefit and use;
as the Lemniotes did the lark, for finding out the locusts’ eggs and
breaking them, and the Thessalians the storks, because that, as their
soil bred abundance of serpents, they at their appearance destroyed
them all, for which reason they enacted a law that whoever killed a
stork should be banished the country. Moreover the Egyptians honored
the asp, the weasel, and the beetle, observing in them certain dark
resemblances of the power of the Gods, like those of the sun in drops
of water. For there are many that to this day believe that the weasel
engenders by the ear, and brings forth by the mouth, and is therein
a resemblance of the production of speech; and that the beetle kind
also hath no female, but that the males cast out their sperm into a
round pellet of earth, which they roll about by thrusting it backwards
with their hinder feet,—and this in imitation of the sun, which, while
itself moves from west to east, turns the heaven the contrary way.
They also compared the asp to a star, for being always young, and for
performing its motions with great ease and glibness, and that without
the help of organs.
75. Nor had the crocodile his honor given him without a show of
probable reason for it; but it is reported to have been produced by a
representation of God, it being the only animal that is without tongue.
For the divine discourse hath no need of voice, but “marching by still
and silent ways, it guides mortal affairs by equal justice.”[32]
Besides, they say he is the only animal that lives in water that hath
his eye-sight covered over with a thin and transparent film, descending
down from his forehead, so that he sees without being seen himself by
others, in which he agrees with the first God. Moreover, in what place
soever in the country the female crocodile lays her eggs, that may be
certainly concluded to be the utmost extent of the rise of the river
Nile for that year. For not being able to lay in the water, and being
afraid to lay far from it, they have so exact a knowledge of futurity,
that though they enjoy the benefit of the approaching stream at their
laying and hatching, they yet preserve their eggs dry and untouched
by the water. And they lay sixty in all, and are just as many days a
hatching them, and the longest lived of them live as many years; that
being the first measure which those that are employed about the heavens
make use of. But of those animals that were honored for both reasons,
we have already treated of the dog; but now the ibis, besides that he
killeth all deadly and poisonous vermin was also the first that taught
men the evacuation of the belly by clysters, she being observed to
be after this manner washed and purged by herself. Those also of the
priests that are the strictest observers of their sacred rites, when
they consecrate water for lustration, use to fetch it from some place
where the ibis has been drinking; for she will neither taste nor come
near any unwholesome or infectious water. Besides, with her two legs
standing at large and her bill, she maketh an equilateral triangle; and
the speckledness and mixture of her feathers, where there are black
ones about the white, signify the gibbousness of the moon on either
side.
76. Nor ought we to think it strange that the Egyptians should
affect such poor and slender comparisons, when we find the Grecians
themselves, both in their pictures and statues, make use of many such
resemblances of the Gods as these are. For example, there was in Crete
an image of Jupiter having no ears, for he that is commander and
chief over all should hear no one. Phidias also set a serpent by the
image of Minerva, and a tortoise by that of Venus at Elis, to show
that maids needed a guard upon them, and that silence and keeping at
home became married women. In like manner the trident of Neptune is
a symbol of the third region of the world, which the sea possesses,
situated below that of the heaven and air. For which reason they also
gave their names to Amphitrite and the Tritons. The Pythagoreans also
honored numbers and geometric figures with the names of Gods. For they
called an equilateral triangle Minerva Coryphagenes (or _crown-born_)
and Tritogeneia, because it is equally divided by perpendiculars drawn
from the three angles. They likewise called the unit Apollo; the number
two, contention and also audaciousness; and the number three, justice;
for, wronging and being wronged being two extremes caused by deficiency
and excess, justice came by equality in the middle. But that which
is called the sacred quaternion, being the number thirty-six, was
(according to common fame) the greatest oath among them, and was called
by them the world, because it is made up of the first four even numbers
and the first four odd numbers summed up together.
77. If therefore the most approved of the philosophers did not think
meet to pass over or disesteem any significant symbol of the Divinity
which they observed even in things that had neither soul nor body,
I believe they regarded yet more those properties of government and
conduct which they saw in such natures as had sense, and were endued
with soul, with passion, and with moral temper. We are not therefore
to content ourselves with worshipping these things, but we must
worship God through them,—as being the more clear mirrors of him, and
produced by Nature,—so as ever worthily to conceive of them as the
instruments or artifices of that God which orders all things. And it
is reasonable to believe that no inanimate being can be more excellent
than an animate one, nor an insensible than a sensible; no, though one
should heap together all the gold and emeralds in the universe. For
the property of the Divinity consists not in fine colors, shapes, and
slicknesses; but, on the contrary, those natures are of a rank below
the very dead, that neither did nor ever can partake of life. But now
that Nature which hath life and sees, and which hath the source of her
motion from her own self, as also the knowledge of things proper and
alien to her, hath certainly derived an efflux and a portion of that
prudence which (as Heraclitus speaks) considers how the whole universe
is governed. Therefore the Deity is no worse represented in these
animals, than in the workmanships of copper and stone, which suffer
corruptions and decays as well as they, and are besides naturally void
of sense and perception. This then is what I esteem the best account
that is given of their adoration of animals.
78. As to the sacred vestments, that of Isis is party-colored and of
different hues; for her power is about matter, which becomes every
thing and receives every thing, as light and darkness, day and night,
fire and water, life and death, beginning and ending. But that of
Osiris has no shade, no variety of colors, but one only simple one,
resembling light. For the first principle is untempered, and that which
is first and of an intelligible nature is unmixed; which is the reason
why, after they have once made use of this garment, they lay it up
and keep it close, invisible and not to be touched. But those of Isis
are used often. For sensible things, when they are of daily use and
familiar to us, afford us many opportunities to display them and to
see them in their various mutations; but the apprehension of what is
intelligible, sincere, and holy, darting through the soul like a flash
of lightning, attends but to some one single glance or glimpse of its
object. For which reason both Plato and Aristotle call this part of
philosophy by the name of the epoptic or mysterious part, intimating
that those who by help of reason have got beyond these fanciful, mixed,
and various things mount up to that first, simple, and immaterial
being; and when they have certainly reached the pure truth about it,
they believe they have at last attained to complete philosophy.
79. And that which the present priests do darkly hint out and insinuate
to us, though with much obscurity, great shyness, and precaution,—that
this God is the governor and prince of those that are dead, and that he
is no other than he who is called by the Greeks Hades and Pluto,—being
not taken in its true sense, disturbs the minds of the greater part,
while they suspect that the truly holy and good God Osiris lives within
and beneath the earth, where the bodies of those who are supposed to
have an end lie hid and buried. But he himself is at the remotest
distance from the earth imaginable, being unstained and unpolluted
and clean from every substance that is liable to corruption and death.
But men’s souls encompassed here with bodies and passions, have no
communication with God, except what they can reach to in conception
only, by means of philosophy, as by a kind of an obscure dream. But
when they are loosed from the body, and removed into the unseen,
invisible, impassible, and pure region, this God is then their leader
and king; they there as it were hanging on him wholly, and beholding
without weariness and passionately affecting that beauty which cannot
be expressed or uttered by men. This the Goddess Isis is always
caressing, affecting, and enjoying, according to the old tales, and
by that means she fills this lower world with all those goodly and
excellent things which partake of generation.
80. This then is that account of these things which best suits the
nature of the Gods. And if I now must, according to my promise, say
something concerning those things they daily offer by way of incense,
you are in the first place to understand this, that these people
make the greatest account imaginable of all endeavors that relate
to health; and more especially in their sacrifices, purgations, and
diets, health is no less respected than devotion. For they think it
would be an unseemly thing to wait upon that nature that is pure and
every way unblemished and untouched, with crazy and diseased minds or
bodies. Whereas, therefore, the air that we most use and live in hath
not always the same disposition and temperament, but in the night-time
grows condense, compresses the body, and contracts the mind into a kind
of melancholy and thoughtful habit, it becoming then as it were foggy
and dozed, they therefore, as soon as they are up in the morning, burn
rosin about them, refreshing and clearing the air by its scattered
particles, and fanning up the native spirit of the body, which is now
grown languid and dull; this sort of scent having something in it that
is very impetuous and striking. And perceiving again at noon-time that
the sun hath drawn up by violence a copious and gross exhalation out
of the earth, they by censing mix myrrh also with the air; for heat
dissolves and dissipates that puddled and slimy vapor which at that
time gathers together in the ambient air. And physicians are also found
to help pestilential diseases by making great blazes to rarefy the air;
but it would be much better rarefied, if they would burn sweet-scented
woods, such as cypress, juniper, and pine. And therefore Acron the
physician is said to have gained a mighty reputation at Athens, in the
time of the great plague, by ordering people to make fires near to the
sick; for not a few were benefited by it. Aristotle likewise saith that
the odoriferous exhalations of perfumes, flowers, and sweet meadows are
no less conducing to health than to pleasure; for that their warmth and
delicacy of motion gently relax the brain, which is of its own nature
cold and clammy. And if it be true that the Egyptians in their language
call myrrh bal, and that the most proper signification of that word
is _scattering away idle talk_, this also adds some testimony to our
account of the reason why they burn it.
81. Moreover, that they call Kyphi is a kind of a composition made up
of sixteen ingredients, that is, of honey, wine, raisins, cyperus,
rosin, myrrh, aspalathus, seseli, mastich, bitumen, nightshade, and
dock; to which they add the berries of both the junipers (the one
whereof they call the greater, and the other the lesser sort), as
also calamus and cardamom. Neither do they put them together slightly
or at a random rate; but the sacred books are read to the perfumers
all the while they are compounding them. As for the number of the
ingredients (sixteen),—although it may appear important, being the
square of a square, and making the only square surface which has
a periphery equal to its area,—yet I must needs say that this
contributes but very little here. But it is the contained species (most
of which are of aromatic properties) that send up a sweet fume and
an agreeable exhalation, by which the air is changed; and the body,
being moved by the breath, sinks into a calm and gentle sleep, and
retains a temperament conducive to sleep; and without the disorders of
drunkenness, as it were, it loosens and unties, like a sort of knots,
the doziness and intenseness of the thoughts by day-time; and the
fantastic part and that which is receptive of dreams it wipes like a
mirror and renders clearer, with no less efficacy than those strokes of
the harp which the Pythagoreans made use of before they went to sleep,
to charm and allay the distempered and irrational part of the soul. For
we find that strong scents many times call back the failing sense, but
sometimes dull and obstruct it, their wasted parts diffusing themselves
by their great fineness and subtilty through the whole body; like as
some physicians tell us that sleep is produced when the fumes of meat,
by creeping gently about the inwards, and as it were groping every
part, cause a certain soft titillation.
They also use this Kyphi both for a drink and for a medicinal potion;
for when drunk it is found to cleanse the inwards, it being a loosener
of the belly. Besides all this, rosin is the creature of the sun,
and they gather myrrh as the trees weep it out by moonlight; but now
of those ingredients that make up Kyphi, there are some that delight
more in the night, as those whose nature it is to be nourished by cool
blasts, shades, dews, and humidities. For the light of day is one thing
and simple; and Pindar saith, the sun is then seen