in addition to the rites above-mentioned.

She strews flowers and

incense as prayers are chanted, and in these cases the breaking of the

egg is considered to be a symbol of sacrifice, since the taking of animal life is abhorrent to Hindus and Parsis alike.

Landseer (Sabean Res., pp. 81-83) describes a sacred egg in Cyprus as 30 ft. in circumference. The Phoenicians worshiped it, and the sacred bull was sculptured on it. on it. [This however-at Amathus -was apparently a stone "sea," in egg form.-ED.] Dr Schliemann found an alabaster egg deep down in the ruins of Troy. The Druid gleini-nadrædd, or "snake stones," among the Welsh, are the Roman "serpent eggs" (see Druids). The procession of Ceres in Rome, says Varro, was preceded by an egg. Christians bear eggs on Palm Sunday also at Rome (see Rivers of Life, ii, p. 138, fig. 55). Ostrich eggs were found in the Etruskan cemetery of Vulci, painted with winged camels (see Dennis, "Etruria "), and are noted by Diodorus (i, 27). Pausanias says that, in the temple of Hilākra and Phoibe, the egg of Leda (whence came Helen-the moon, and the twin brothers Castor and Pollux-day and night), hung from the roof wrapped in ribbons. Ostrich eggs are commonly hung also in Moslem mosks, as at Hebron above the tombs of the patriarchs.

Many coarse jokes about eggs belong to the Easter festivities. [In Italy, Easter eggs are coloured with coffee grounds a dark brown, and then adorned with designs scraped on them by nuns.—ED.] In Chinese temples, and Christian churches alike, they symbolise resurrection; and in Christian lands texts and mottoes are inscribed on them. The "material of being," as we have seen Plutarch to call the egg, is

about to be quickened at this season. "The entwined egg," says Pliny, is "a badge of distinction in Rome." Claudius Cæsar put a Roman to death for assuming it. Among modern Syrians eggs are a charm against the evil eye (see Eye).

Egypt. The Egyptian gods and beliefs will be found under special articles. The name Aiguptos, as given by Greeks, seems to mean "shore land of Kopts," as a native word. The native name Khemi is rendered "dark"-perhaps better "sun-burnt." The Semitic name Mişri, or Miṣraim, signifies "guarded places "—perhaps on account of the wall, or chain of forts, separating Egypt from the Asiatic tribes on her east frontier; whence the modern Arabic Musr. The original civilising race came apparently from Asia, before the age of the Pyramids. [The carved slates, supposed to be as old as the 1st dynasty (see Proc. Bib. Arch. Socy., May 1900, p. 135; November 1904, p. 262, papers by Mr F. Legge), represent hunting scenes,

and wars with negroes; and the writer regards them as showing invaders from Asia Minor: for they are armed with the double axe (the Labrus), of Karians and Kretans, found also on Hittite monuments, and at Behistun, as well as in Etruria, as used by Turanians. The native language, however, is closest, in grammar and in vocabulary alike, to Semitic speech.-ED.]

At the dawn of monumental history Egypt and Babylonia are equally found to be powerful and civilised. The building race spread from Memphis to Thebes, and yet further south and Menes (succeeding the mythical age of the 12 great gods), was traditionally the founder of Memphis. But cities and nomes (or provinces) jealously preserved their independence, and their distinct cults. Monotheism proper had no existence; but, in the fusion of various beliefs, Henotheism (the selection of one out of many gods), was usual, as it is to-day in India. Beast worship, according to Brugsch (Hist. Egypt, i, p. 32), appears at the earliest historic period (see Animal Worship); but religious texts are rare till the 12th dynasty. In the 18th century B.C. all the chief Egyptian gods are noticed, and pictured, with their legends, which are rarely mentioned earlier (Maspero, Hist. Egypt, i, p. 124). Beast worship came first, mythology followed with gods both phallic and solar, and philosophy developed later. people of Lukopolis ("wolf town"), propitiated the wolf that tore their sheep; other shepherds adored the bull and the ram. None ate the flesh of the beast sacred in their town, save on rare occasions of sacrifice. Yet the beasts' head (Amen's ram, Thoth's ibis, etc.), did not of necessity denote a totem of the tribe, but rather the divine attributes of power, fertility, or intelligence; the physical or moral peculiarities of gods.

[The great gods may be classed as follows:

The

The Messenger

Dawn and Sunset

Shu, Tefnut.

Thoth, Anubis.

Hathor and Nephthys.-ED.]

M. Maspero classifies the deities as (1st) Gods of the DeadOsiris, Isis, Horus, Nephthys, Sokaris: (2nd) Elemental gods-Seb, Nut, and others: (3rd) Solar gods-Ra, Amen, Ptah, and others, with

their enemies Set, Typhon, etc. The great myth of Osiris relating his feud with Set is, says Renouf, "as old as Egyptian civilisation," belonging, says Maspero, to the 1st dynasty, though the details are known to us only from much later texts.

The Egyptians, like the Hindus, seem to have scorned ordinary chronology, and spanned time by great astronomical cycles, like the Sothic cycle (1461 years), depending on the "heliacal rising" of the dog star. [It should be remembered that there is no monumental chronology at all in Egypt. All that we know of actual early dates is, that Amenophis IV corresponded with Burnaburias of Babylon about 1430 B.C., that Thothmes III reigned 54 years, and Amenophis III 36 years. The two copies of the Abydos tablet (found in 1818 and 1864), in which 75 kings precede Seti I, and his son Rameses II -the 12th dynasty immediately preceding the 18th-have no dates : nor has the Sakkara list published by Mariette in 1863. The "Turin Papyrus" is a mere fragment, though it once contained a chronology made out in a late age, and attributing reigns of 70 to 95 years to kings of the 1st and 2nd dynasties. All systems of chronology rest on the statements of Manetho (about 250 B.C.), as extant in a hopelessly corrupt condition, according to copies by Eusebius (4th century A.C.), and George the Syncellus (about 800 A.c.), these conflicting as to names and numerals with the Turin papyrus for early kings, and with the list of Eratosthenes (born 276 B.C.), the librarian of Ptolemy Euergetes, for Theban kings. It is uncertain whether early dynasties were successive or contemporary, and Manetho relates mythical stories of the earlier kings, and is hopelessly confused as to the great 18th and 19th dynasties. Mahler's dates rest on an attempted calculation from certain notices of the heliacal rising of Sothis (Sirius), but are vitiated by the fact that the orbit of the earth is not in the same plane with the movement of Sirius, so that the rate of difference in the rising is not constant. The uncertainty in these calculations as to dates about the time of the 18th dynasty amounts to some 200 years, and calculations of the sun's position have also been mistaken (see Aries). Dates therefore are better fixed by aid of Babylonian chronology (see Babylon), than by any calculation of the difference between the Egyptian vague year of 365 days (which was ancient, and, perhaps, continuously retained), and the sidereal year.—ED.]

By about the 4th century B.C. the ancient Egyptian cults admitted at Alexandria-the free thought of Greece, the teaching of Grove and Stoa, the positivism as well as the mysticism of Greek rulers. The later accounts of Plutarch are tinged with contemporary foreign colouring, and untrustworthy in consequence. The monuments

and the ritual alone are true guides. Agnosticism, Theism, Pantheism, invaded Egypt in Greek and Roman times. The secret rites of the Serapeum superseded Osiris by a foreign god-Serapis-brought from Pontus. The Gnostiks framed their systems from ancient Egyptian and later Greek or Jewish philosophers. Buddhism also was known, at least as early as 250 B.C., to the Ptolemies (see Buddha); and the Therapeutai ("healers ") appeared as ascetiks in Egypt (see Essenes), followed by Christian hermits. In study of the religion, as of the history, we are confused rather than helped by Greek accounts.

The date of Menes' accession is very variously estimated, according as the dynasties are considered to have been contemporary or otherwise. The results are as various as those for the date of Adam (see Bible), the best known students being disagreed as follows:-Dr Birch gives 5895 B.C. for Menes, Champollion 5870, Mariette 5004, Lenormant 4915, Petrie 4777, Lepsius 3892, Renouf 3000, Wilkinson 2691 B.C. All we can say is that by 3000 B.C., and perhaps before 5000 B.C., Egypt was a country of settled government and civilised manners, recognising the principles of law and ethiks, skilled in metallurgy, architecture, art, and irrigation. Brugsch relates how a medical work on leprosy was found hidden in a writing case, buried under a statue of Anubis at Sakhur, in the days of Rameses II; and ethikal treatises go back much earlier than this. The dry climate of Egypt has preserved for us mummy cloths, and papyri, some 4000 years old. Compared with their texts all writings, save those of Babylonian tablets, are but as of yesterday. Renouf says of the Prisse papyrus that it was written (like Hammurabi's laws) "centuries before the Hebrew lawgiver was born, by a writer of the 5th dynasty." In the British Museum we can still read the will of Amen-em-hat I, of the 12th dynasty. Works on religion, history, medicine, with travels, fiction, and poetry, belong to the 19th and 20th dynasties (1400 to 1200 B.C.). The oldest known book in the world is that of Prince Ptah-hotep, belonging to the reign of Assas in the 5th dynasty. A text in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford belongs to the 2nd dynasty, and Dr Isaac Taylor (Alphabet, i) says of the script that "it was even then an extremely ancient graphic system, with long ages of previous development stretching out, behind it, into a distant past of almost inconceivable remoteness, and far older than the pyramids❞—or some 7000 to 8000 years ago (pp. 57 to 64). When Plato visited the schools and libraries of Heliopolis they were perhaps at least 2000 years old. Egyptian civilisation, about 3000 B.C. or earlier, is considered. to have been equal to that of many European countries during the 18th century of our era. Go back as far as we may there is not, says

Renouf, a "vestige of a state of barbarism, or even of patriarchal life, anterior to the monumental period. The earliest monuments present the same fully developed civilisation, and the same religion, as the later. The systems of notation, the decimals, the calendar, the political divisions into nomes-each with its principal deity-most of the gods still known to us, certainly all the great ones; the nature and offices of the priesthood, all are as old as the pyramids. Much of the above belonged to the 1st and 2nd dynasties yet descended to Christian times." [Deductions of recent years from the supposed discovery of the tomb of Menes-which is not generally accepted as proven and of certain Libyan remains, which-however rude-may yet be contemporary with higher art, cannot be held to modify this statement. ED.]

Dr Birch (Introduction to Anct. Hist. of Egypt) says of Egyptian law: "Crimes were punished according to their enormity. . . Treason, murder, adultery, theft, and the practice of magic, were crimes of the deepest dye, and punished accordingly." In domestic life the Egyptian was attached to his wife and children; and equality of the sexes was well marked, the woman appearing as the equal and companion of her father, brethren, or husband.

The Nuter, or "deity," in Egypt was the "mighty one one" who (says Brugsch) is, in some inscriptions, "the only one, and alone; none other is with him. He is the One who has made all." He is "the One alone with many hands," according to the Hymn to Amen, of whom there is "no true image in any temple." But like other ancient peoples the Egyptian was a Henotheist-he selected Amen from many other gods-and by the time of the 19th dynasty the Pantheistic stage was reached. If Amen was the "one" at Thebes, so was Ra at On, or Ptah at Memphis. Vast galleries were cut in solid rock for the mummies of the Apis bulls. Apis was the symbol of the "god of gods," and symbolised also all gods: he was "the second life of Ptah," as the goat of Mendes was the soul of Osiris, of Shu, and of Khepra the creator. To the philosophic "the one was Ptah, but the masses loved the plurality of solar, lunar, phallic, and fire symbols. The priestly Pantheist preached in vain that, as Renouf says: "All individual things are only the modifications of the One and All the Eternal and Infinite God-World, and the universal force in Nature, eternal and unchangeable though varied in form." Do the masses among ourselves understand such truths? Yet the priests inscribed on the walls of Amen's temple in the Libyan desert: "The Lord, the Supreme One, reveals himself in all that is; and has names in everything from hill to stream. Each god assumes his