a

We must also consign to the region of fable another circumstance related by the same author, on the authority of those who presided over the embalming of the ibis, viz. that the intestines of the animal are 96 cubits, or 130 feet long. The Academy of Sciences found them to be only 4 feet 8 inches. But this remark will not apply to what both Elian and Pliny tell us of the ibis washing itself with its beak. This is confirmed by the mechanism of its beak, which when shut appears perfectly round without, and within forms a channel of the same shape; and the two parts of it thus closed leave a small opening at the extremity for the discharge of the sea-water, with which it is said to wash itself.

In Bruce's Travels to discover the source of the Nile, Vol. v. p. 172, is a long article on the Abou Hannes, or ibis, abounding with errors, which the author would most probably have avoided, had he ever seen the description of that bird by the Academy of Sciences. He pretends (p. 176.) that there are none in Egypt; whereas the one sent by the Grand Signor to Louis XIV. came from that country. He also makes Herodotus to say, without however naming him, that the ibis destroys the vipers of Egypt (p. 175). Against this he enters his protest, remarking that the inundations of the Nile prevent vipers from inhabiting that country. Herodotus makes no mention of vipers; he simply says, (§ LXXV.) that in that part of Arabia adjoining to Egypt there is a plain enclosed by mountains; that in the beginning of spring the winged serpents endeavour to penetrate into Egypt through the defile; but that the ibis goes forth to meet them, and delivers the country from them.

It would have been an advantage had this traveller been better acquainted with the works of the ancients.

M. Camus does not say much of the ibis in his translation of Aristotle's History of Animals; but what he does say is correct: we feel, in reading it, that he had some knowledge of natural history, a knowledge of which Bruce seems wholly destitute.

LXXVII. Μνήμην ἀνθρώπων πάντων ἐπασκέοντες μάλιστα] Who of all men the most carefully cultivate. This passage has been ill translated: ἐπασκέω signifies, I exercise ; μάλιστα relates to ἀνθρώπων πάντων, and consequently the comma should be after μάλιστα. Nor is history at all meant in this passage, as the late M. Dupuy thought. See the notes of Wesseling and Valckenaer.

• Ælian. de Nat. Animal. lib. x. cap. xxix. Vol. i.

579.

P. Mém. de l'Acad. des Sciences, tom. iii. part. iii. p. 68.

Ælian, Hist. Nat. Animal. lib.ii. cap. xxxv. Vol. i. p. 105.

d Plin. Hist. Nat. lib. viii. cap. xxvii. Vol. i. p. 453.

• Mém. de l'Acad. des Sciences, tom. iii. part. iii. p. 65.

Mém. de l'Acad. des Belles Lettres, tom. xxxi. p. 22.

M. Bellanger was also mistaken, when he translated, exercise themselves in learning, or in writing, as well for their own instruction as for that of posterity, the actions of all men.' One is surprised, on referring to the Greek, to find scarcely a word of this long phrase, which is not only a paraphrase, but is in opposition to the author's meaning; as may be seen by my translation, which is nearly literal. See M. Bellanger's Essais de Critique, a work which has done him great honour, though it contains almost as many difficulties and contradictions as it clears up and rectifies.

Thoth was adored for having invented letters, which was a great relief to the memory. King Thamus, on the contrary, thought that this invention had rendered men negligent, and caused them to cultivate that faculty less carefully.

Υγιηρέστατοι πάντων ἀνθρώπων] There are no men so healthy. That was true before the time of Herodotus, and for a long while after him; but when they began to neglect the canals, the water beeame corrupted, the vapours which it exhaled rendered Egypt very unhealthy, malignant fevers soon began to appear, and became epidemic; and these vapours concentrating and becoming daily more pestilential, at length occasioned that fatal malady known by the name of the plague. This was not the case before the canals were constructed, nor whilst those canals were properly attended to. That part of Lower Egypt, however, which adjoins Elearchia, may never have been very healthy.

But this did not appear to M. Goguet, who perpetually opposes to the testimony of the ancients that of modern writers; as if the Egypt of the present day resembled that country in the time of the Greeks, or even of the Romans,

Où yàp ... ǎμжeλo] They have no vines. M. Dupuy perceived clearly enough, that Herodotus, in this place, spoke only of that part of Egypt appropriated to the culture of grain. To the examples which this writer quotes from Herodotus, to show that there were vines in Egypt, may be added the following, which is much anterior to our historian. "And wherefore have ye made us to come up out of Egypt, to bring us in unto this evil place? It is no place of seed, or of figs, or of vines, or of pomegranates; neither is there any water to drink." Hellanicus says, that the vine was originally discovered in the

Essais de Critique sur les écrits de Rollin, p. 152.

Plato in Phædro, Vol. iii. p. 275. A. De l'Origine des Loix, des Arts et des Sciences, tom. ii. pp. 244, 245.

d Mém. de l'Acad. des Inscript. tom.

xxxi. p. 20, &c.

Numbers, chap. xx. verse 5.

f Athen. Deipnosoph. lib. i. cap. xxv. p. 34. A. In this passage I read párny instead of πρώτῃ,

territory of Plinthine. This city was not far from Mareotis, renowned for the goodness of its wine. See also § XXXVII. note 11.

Oivų ek кpiléwv] Beer. As wine was scarce in Egypt, at least in that part allotted to the culture of grain, they had substituted for this liquor a drink made from barley, and which for this reason I have called 'beer.' The hop-plant being unknown in this country, the Egyptians added portions of the chervil and the lupin, which gave it a bitterness, as also the root of a plant which came from Assyria, which Salmasius believes to be the gingidium: as is seen in the following verses of Columella:

Jam siser, Assyrioque venit quæ semine radix,
Sectaque præbetur madido satiata lupino,

Ut Pelusiaci proritet pocula zythi.

Strabo, however, does not say, as M. De Pauw imputes to him," that the manner of brewing beer varied greatly in Egypt; but that beer was a liquor common to many nations, and that each had their own particular method of making it.

This wine of barley, or beer, was called in Greek, by a single word, Bpúros, as we learn from Athenæus, who quotes a verse from the Triptolemus of Sophocles, a tragedy now lost, in which that word is frequently employed.

Diodorus Siculus also informs us, that the Egyptians made from barley a drink which was called 'zythus,' the agreeable odour of which was little inferior to wine. Eschylus had made the same remark in his tragedy entitled the Supplices, as well as Hecateus of Miletus, both of them anterior to Herodotus."

The grain which Herodotus a little before calls 'olyra,' appears to me, after a careful examination of a number of passages of the ancients, to be the 'épautre,' (spelt,) and I have accordingly so translated it. It is very certain that it is not rice, as Mr. Shaw' imagined, and that that plant was not known in Egypt till many centuries after the time of Herodotus. The loaves which the Egyptians made of it terminated in a point, as Pollux says, (Αἰγύπτιοι δὲ τοὺς εἰς ὀξὺ ἀνηνεγμέ νους ἄρτους καλλιστείς (lege ex Herodot. κολλήστις) φνόμαζον), and

• Columell. lib. x. de Cultu Hortor. verse 114.

Salmas. Exercitat. ad Solin. cap, liii.

p. 820.

Recherches Philosophiques sur les Egyptiens et les Chinois, tom. i. iii. p.149, Strab. Geograph. lib. xvii. p. 1179. C, D.

Athen. lib. x. cap. xiv. p. 447. B. Diodor. Sic. lib. i. § xxxiv. Eschyl.in Supplicibus Mul. vs. 960. * Athen. lib. x. cap. xiv. p. 447. C. iShaw's Travels, Vol. ii. p. 171. * Jul. Poll. Onomast. lib. vi. cap. xi. segm. 73. Vol. i. p. 609.

Athenæus, corrected from Pollux by Casaubon, Book 111. chap. XXIX. p. 114. C. It is therefore difficult to conjecture why M. De Pauw makes these two authors to say, that to this bread was added a considerable quantity of fermented paste, which communicated to it an acid taste.

"Axuns] In brine.

"The Egyptians look upon the sea to be Typhon, and the Nile, which is lost and dispersed in it, as Osiris. The priests, for this reason, hold the sea in abhorrence; and salt, which they call the foam of Typhon, is amongst the number of forbidden things." They however made use of mineral salt; for Plutarch, in another place, asserts, that the priests used no salt with their food during the intervals when they observed continency: it should seem, then, that they did use it at other times; and as they held the seasalt in abhorrence, it must have been some other species of salt which they used.

с

We learn from Arrian, that the country of Ammon produced a mineral salt which the priests of Ammon carried into Egypt. The Egyptians used this salt in their sacrifices, because it is purer than that of the sea. I am inclined to believe that Herodotus here speaks of this species of salt.

LXXVIII. 'Ανὴρ νεκρὸν ἐν σορῷ ξύλινον] A cofin with a wooden figure. Plutarch speaks also of this custom; but he asserts that it was less with a view to exhort the guests to drink and enjoy themselves that this figure was presented to them, than to incite them to love one another, and not expose themselves to those evils which make life, short as it is, appear too long. But I am inclined to appre hend that Plutarch, who was a serious and virtuous man, discovered in this custom a moral end, which never entered into the thoughts of its inventors.

The idea of death, amongst the ancients, was not so revolting as it has since become. "Life," says Anacreon, "runs on like a rapid chariot. In a short time, we shall be but a heap of dust. Why, then, pour on the earth vain libations? Rather perfume me whilst I am yet alive, crown me with roses, and call hither my mistress." It is under this view that we must look at the Egyptian custom;

• Recherches Philosophiques sur les Egyptiens et les Chinois, sect. iii. p. 148. Plutarch. de Iside et Osiride, p. 363. D, E.

Id. ibid. p. 352. F.

4 Arrian. de Expedit. Alex. lib. iii. cap. iv. vi. & viii. p. 187.

Plutarch. in Sept. Sapient. Convivio, p. 148. B.

✔ Plutarch calls it a dried corpse, oKEλετὸν σῶμα. We cannot however call it a skeleton, for a skeleton is an assemblage of the bones of the human system divested of all their covering. Galen was the first who gave to this assemblage the name of Σκελετός.

Anacr. Od. iv.

and the following passage from the festival of Trimalchio proves that such was the spirit of it. "Potantibus ergo," et accuratissime nobis lautitias mirantibus, larvam argenteam attulit servus, sic aptam, ut articuli ejus vertebræque laxatæ in omnem partem flecterentur. Hanc cum super mensam semel iterumque abjecisset, et catenatio mobilis aliquot figuras exprimeret, Trimalchio adjecit :

Heu, heu nos miseros, quam totus homuncio nil est!
Sic erimus cuncti, postquam nos auferet Orcus.
Ergo vivamus, dum licet esse bene."

These detestable maxims had insinuated themselves amongst the people of God in the time of Solomon, the wisest of kings, more than 1000 years before our era. Thus did the libertines then express themselves, as we read in the Book of Wisdom, chap. 11. verses 2. 6, and following: "Ex nihilo nati sumus, et post hoc erimus tanquam non fuerimus... Venite ergo et fruamur bonis quæ sunt, et utamur creaturâ tanquam in juventute celeriter. Vino pretioso et unguentis nos impleamus: et non prætereat nos flos temporis. Coronemus nos rosis, antequam marcescant: nullum pratum sit, quod non pertranseat luxuria nostra." For we are born at all adventure and we shall be hereafter as though we had never been..... Come on therefore, let us enjoy the good things that are present; and let us speedily use the creatures like as in youth. Let us fill ourselves with costly wine, and ointments, and let no flower of the spring pass by us. Let us crown ourselves with rosebuds before they be withered. Let none of us go without his part of our voluptuousness.'

"Would to Heaven!" exclaims the virtuous and eloquent Father de Neuville," that this seductive language had never been heard but amongst the heathen, or by unfaithful Israel! but it now rings in our own ears, here in the very bosom of Christianity. Philosophers, disowned alike by reason and religion, pompously set forth maxims which strike at all modesty and decorum; these they make the moral of their conversation, and of their books-of their theory as of their practice; they would even erect a school of licentious voluptuousness here amongst these very tombs, on which the Holy Spirit bids us to read lessons of wisdom and of holiness."

LXXIX. Xpeúvevo vóμoiai] Content with the songs. This applies only to the songs of the Egyptians, and amongst others to their Maneros; vópos therefore cannot be understood of their laws, but must be confined to their songs, as Gale very clearly explains in his

notes.

• Petronii Satyric. cap. xxxiv. sub finem. the Thoughts of Death, p. 18.

In his sermon for Ash-Wednesday, on