306 FIRST VIEW OF THE TEMPLE OF DENDERA.

Egypt, erected, as it well deserved to be, in honour of the Goddess of Love. From the first glance I discovered that the noble propylon, which a few years ago excited the admiration of Hamilton, had recently been visited by the hand of the spoiler; but although much of the front has been thrown down, and the stones either broken or carried away, enough still remains to justify the praises which a refined taste has bestowed upon it. I could not pause, however, to examine minutely this inconsiderable fragment. Hastening forward across the dromos, I eagerly drew near the façade of Venus's temple; and if I had felt any toil or difficulty during the whole of my journey, the pleasure of that moment more than repaid it all. But much of the delight which, in common with many other travellers, I experienced at the first sight of the great temple of Tentyris, might be traced, both in them and me, to causes extremely foreign to the beauties of architecture; though we are apt, upon the spot, in the hurry and confusion of our feelings, to attribute all our satisfaction to the irresistible effect of beauty and harmonious propositions on the mind. The fables of the mythology, delightful because studied when every thing is so, have consecrated in the memory of all educated men the imaginary being who was here adored of old; and few are so steeled by their passage through the world, as not occasionally to experience, when the scenes which feasted their boyish fancies, with all the bright associations that cling to them, are again instantaneously spread before the mind, some touches of enthusiasm, warm and vivid in

VARIOUS NAMES OF VENUS.

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proportion as the studies to which they owe their birth have been more or less pursued. Other emotions also have their influence. The pleasure of beholding for yourself an object greatly celebrated, yet seen by comparatively few; a secret reference to the ages it has endured; the fact that it has outlived the religion and the race for whom it was erected; that it remains, almost solitary, in the midst of a city long ruined, as if the power in whose honour it was erected still protected its ancient fane from utter destruction.

CCXX. And what was this power? The same, I apprehend, to whom the Pyramids were erected, —Bhavani, Athor, Aphrodité, Venus, whose symbols were the cow, the lotus-flower, the cone, the triangle, the kteis or yoni; and who, under different names, was worshipped throughout the whole Pagan World. Isis, in the conception of the philosophers, was a personification of nature in general; Athor, of that principle by which homogeneous and congruous elements are attracted towards each other, and united for the generation of new beings; whence the universe is peopled with beautiful forms, which, under the influence of the primitive energy, successively transmit to other forms the imperishable essence of life, originally infused into them by Athor.* Such, it appears to me, was the idea which the Orientals anciently entertained of Venus. The Greeks, when their fancy peopled heaven and earth with gods, conceived this

Hence she is called the "Mother of Gods and Men."- Apul Met. 1. xi. Ovid. Fasti. iv. 99. sqq.

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EGYPTIAN VENUS.

plastic power of nature somewhat differently*; for I can by no means adopt the vulgar hypothesis that they borrowed their gods from the East. Observing the effect, among mankind, of beauty and a lively playful temper, they imagined a being endowed in the highest possible degree with those qualities, and placed her on Olympus, among the immortals, to preside over the delights of gods and men, the perpetuation of the human race, and of every thing which breathes the breath of life.

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CCXXI. Learned men, however, who love to entangle all subjects in the meshes of erudition, — as Vulcan once did in his net the beautiful limbs of Aphrodité herself, — have laboured with extreme earnestness to confuse our ideas respecting this goddess. Jablonski, upon the whole a judicious writer, in placing Athor at the head of all the gods of Egypt, as the Brahmins do Bhavani, seems to have been misled by the insufficient and equivocal testimony of antiquity; for if Neith, a form of Isis, signify Nature, as the inscription on her statue at Sais clearly proves, she must then, both in antiquity and importance, have preceded Athor, as the whole is greater and more ancient than a part. The grammarian Orion, cited by the author of the Etymologicum Magnum, identifies Athor with the Grecian Venus, and observes, that the third month of the Egyptian year was named after this goddess. Hesychius, whose testimony on

* Plutarch, in Vità Crassi.

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this point is also supported by Orion, insists that the word Athor, among the Egyptians, signified a cow as well as a month; but this can only be understood of the cow when regarded as a symbol of Venus. Jablonski, who had studied Egyptian mythology more closely than Orion, clearly discerned the great dissimilarity between the Venus of the Greeks and the Egyptian Athor, who, in many respects, he observes, rather resembled Juno; though, according to Herodotus, Juno was unknown to the Egyptians. Several of the ancients imagined that Athor was the same with the moon; while others, again, suppose her to have been the planet Venus, so highly venerated by the Arabs; and Jablonski, after a wonderful range of speculation, at length confounds her with Night, worshipped as a goddess among the Phoenicians, to whom temples were erected in ancient Greece, and who, according to Hesiod, was the mother of the gods. The Egyptians, also, regarded Night as the first principle of all things. In later times, they are said to have used the word Athor to signify winter and the moon. The temples erected in Egypt to this goddess, whatever she was, were exceedingly numerous; and cows, frequently milk-white, were usually fed in the sacred edifices, or in the adjoining meadows, exempt from labour, like the bulls of Siva in Hindoostan.*

Euterpe, c. 50. Selden, De Diis Syris. Synt. II. c. 2. 4. Vossius, De Idololatriâ, 1. ii. c. 20. 22. Euseb. i. 10. Pausanias, in Att. et Phoc. Theog. v. 123. Though Night be a goddess very friendly to

810 MORAL DESIGN OF THE ARCHITECT.

CCXXII. It would appear therefore that the great temple of Tentyris was dedicated to the Principle of Love, which, when combined with sentiment and affection, and divested of wings, all nations have embodied in the female form. And the architect who erected this fane, in the contrivance and arrangement of its several parts,-in the capitals, in the sculpture, in the distribution of light, seems to have had in view the awakening of a certain train of feelings, analogous in their moral character to those which are excited by the contemplation of living beauty. The cornices, the mouldings, contain the richest curves; the capitals of the columns consist of a woman's face, four times repeated, which appears to smile upon you from whatever side you regard it; the sculptures for the most part represent scenes of joy and pleasure, religious festivals, processions, groups charmed by the sounds of music, figures reclining on delightful couches, and women, all softness and benevolence, with infants of different ages at the breast. On the roof of the pronaos, where learned fancies have discovered astronomical signs, we observe a mythological representation of the birth of the universe from the bosom of Athor, whose outstretched arms appear to embrace the whole expanse of heaven. From her mouth issues the winged globe, emblematic

Venus, and quite undeserving of the epithet barren, bestowed on her by Spenser, we should by no means confound the one with the other. If Venus be the Queen of Love, Night may be regarded as her mother.Panth. Ægypt. 1. i. pp. 4. 27.