or signs expressing the same sounds, are in the alphabet not very numerous, not more on an average than two or three signs for every sound. The use of these homophones was a great convenience in monumental writing. Sometimes, in their inscriptions, the writer needed a horizontal, sometimes a perpendicular sign. Now and then a long figure would fit with advantage, and at other times a broad one, and from the collection of signs commonly employed it was easy to select those which would be likely to give beauty and effect to the various grouping of their words.

There is another class of signs belonging to the hieroglyphic writing of too much importance to be omitted, known as the determinatives. They are used to indicate the method in which the writing which they accompany is to be read. Thus, the characters which represent sounds are often followed by a picture of the object which they represent; or if the writing represents an action, by a picture of the action, or of something connected with it. The idea is thus given in picture, and then again in characters denoting sound. A certain symbol denotes water, and accompanies verbs signifying all the various states of liquids and the uses made of them, as freezing, boiling, washing, swimming, etc. The sycamore tree is the determinative sign of all trees, and the disk of the sun of all things in connexion with light.

With regard to numeration, the reader will perceive that our own system of signs for

numbers is ideographic, and not phonetic; the figures in use amongst us being signs, not of the names, but of the thing signified. In this respect our mode resembles the Egyptian. Their mode was in harmony with all their language. Cardinal numbers were expressed amongst them by the representation of the object itself, or by giving the object and following it by marks according to the number to be indicated, or by writing the number phonetically. Decimals and fractions were understood amongst them, as is manifest by the papyri, which contain long inventories and accounts kept by the priests. Ordinary dates were reckoned by the reign of the ruling Pharaoh, and for longer periods they observed astronomical cycles. The year was at first divided into lunar months, but perceiving afterwards the inadequacy of this reckoning, they adopted twelve solar months of thirty days each, making a year of three hundred and sixty days. Still observing a deficiency, five additional days were added to the last month, and subsequently, one day besides in every fourth year, after the fashion of our leap-year.

The foregoing statements will, it is hoped, be sufficient for our present purpose, which is merely to give a short, but clear indication of the nature of the Egyptian writing by hieroglyphics; a full development of the system can only be attained by a long and elaborate treatise.

CHAPTER V.

RELIGION OF THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS.

Origin of idolatry-Orders of gods in Egypt-Gods of the first order-Osiris and Isis-Animal worship and symbolismTheology and remnants of patriarchal doctrine-Sacred animals-Religious festivals-Opinions on a future state and the judgment to come-Process of embalming.

SUFFICIENT time elapsed from the flood to the dispersion of the nations, to allow of the development of idolatry in the race of man, the imagination of whose heart was evil from his youth. Faber and others have traced, with great probability, the origin of this idolatry to a perversion of the doctrine of a great Deliverer, who was to come as the Son of God, and yet also to be the seed of the woman. Mankind, through the perverted ingenuity of the human heart, in changing the highest good into some form of evil, passed from the adoration of the one supreme and eternal Jehovah into the foolish superstitions of hero worship. The next stage was that of Sabianism, the worship of the heavenly bodies, into which the souls of the departed were supposed to have passed, and which were looked upon as symbols of their

presence and influence. The attempt to erect the Tower of Babel was associated, either at its commencement or in the course of its progress, with idolatrous worship. Ambition and the idea of self-preservation may have chiefly prompted the daring exploit, to build a tower the top of which should reach to heaven, as indicated in the expressions, "Let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad," etc., Gen. xi. 4; but the pride which separated man from the true God soon led him to worship the creature rather than the Creator, and the Tower of Babel became a temple in honour of the sun. The first colonists of the land of the Nile were those who, after the dispersion of the nations, wandered westward from the plain of Shinar, and they brought with them an idolatry half formed, but in course of rapid development, retaining some of the truths God had given to their fathers, but making them increasingly vain by their traditions. The account of the rise of idolatrous notions and practices, as it is given by the apostle Paul to the Romans, in the latter part of the first chapter, is historically shown to be correct, and to the plains of Assyria is to be traced the commencement of the degrading and polluting rites of heathen idolatry. Man having withdrawn himself from the love and adoration of the one God, began, in all manner of perplexity and confusion, to deify his attributes and the laws of nature, which are only the expressions of his mind. Some of the noblest

of the Creator's works, the

sun, the moon, and

the stars, took the place of his glorious and perfect Self, and received the homage of his intelligent creatures. By some nations the worship of these heavenly bodies became combined with that of their representatives on the earth; and idols, having once come into use, gradually ceased to be symbolical, and though of man's own formation, received the undivided reverence of the multitude. The plains of Asia are to be regarded as the birthplace of the language, and also of the religion of Ancient Egypt.

That religion remained the same in substance from the commencement of the history of Egypt till the introduction of Christianity into the country, and the abandonment of the hieroglyphic alphabet. The oldest kings of Egypt were both kings and priests, and the union of Upper and Lower Egypt under the same inonarch, united together the religions of two classes of settlers, which, although similar, and the offshoots of the same stock, do not appear to have been identical. In the age of Abraham, the idolatry of Egypt was fully developed, and the same forms continued in use till the introduction of Christianity.

The

Herodotus tells us of three orders of gods as worshipped among the Egyptians, and Bunsen has taken pains clearly to distinguish and enumerate eight gods of the first order. first was Ammon of Thebes; the second, Khem of Panopolis; the third, Mut, goddess of Buto, in the Delta; the fourth, Kneph, or Chnubis, the ram-headed god of Upper Egypt; the fifth