fignifies most fruitful (g). That his productive power might plainly be denoted, they confecrated the goat to him, the living image of the god it reprefented, and fed it in the temple of Mendes. The people of the Mendefian province held festivals in its honour, wore mourning at its death, and paid it veneration fo extraordinary that decency will not permit me to cite what Herodotus, Pindar, Plutarch, and others, have written. So much may fuperftition bewilder feeble humanity! The father of history (b), deceived by this adoration, fuppofed Mendes really fignified a goat, and feveral of the Greek writers have adopted the error. Others have found and remarked that Mendes was the fymbolic deity of fecundity; the goat its living emblem, and the fun the principle. Suidas afferts, "The Egyptians adore

:

the goat because it is confecrated to gene"rative virtue (i)." Diodorus (k) and Horapollo (7) are of the fame opinion.

(g) Jabloniki, Pantheon Egyptiacum, tom. I (b) Herod. lib. 2.

(i) Suidas fub voce Mendes.

(4) Diod. lib. 1.

(4) Hieroglyph. lib. 4.

The

The Greeks pictured Pan with horns, and the feet and tail of a goat, and fuppofed an analogy between him and the Egyptian god, wherefore they called Mendes Pan, and the city of Chemmis Panopolis, now Achmim, where Mendes had a temple. This refemblance was but apparent; Pan, the guardian of woods, caverns, and mountains, was a demi-god, while that of Egypt was in the number of the eight grand deities. "Her"cules, Bacchus, and Pan (m) have lately "been received in the temples of Greece. "Pan (i. e. Mendes) is the most ancient of "the eight grand gods of Egypt."--" The "Egyptians honour Pan (n) with a parti"cular worship, his ftatue is in most of "their temples, and the priests who fucceed σε to the facred office are firft initiated into "his mysteries."

Thefe paffages authorize us to suppose Mendes the firft emblem of the fun, and this is but rational; for, before aftronomers had imagined the tropics, the equator, and observed the various phenomena produced by

(m) Herodotus.

(n) Diod. Sic. lib. 1.

VOL. II.

A a

the

the fun's revolution, the Egyptians muft have remarked his productive virtue. Fully to depict it they created an emblematic deity and named him Mendes, most prolific, of which the goat was the image; for this reafon Diodorus (0) declares Mendes and Ofiris are the fame; and, in fact, they both de noted the fun, but each meant different attributes. What gives this truth a farther degree of evidence is that the phallus, the fymbol of generátion, and, especially, of Mendes, adorned all the deities I have fpoken of, and the facerdotal habits of the priests.

I have enumerated the various denominations under which the fun was adored in ancient Egypt: by the famous name of Ofiris they held him to be the author of time; Ammon marked his paffage to the equator, announced spring and reviving light; Hercules denoted his benevolent power; the glorious reign of Horus meant the fummer figns, and informed the people of the expulfion of the fouth winds, and the progress of the inundation; Serapis fignified his return from the

(0) Lib. I.

Equinoctial

Equinoctial to the tropic of Cancer; Harpocrates the flowness of his course, when at the winter folftice; and, laftly, Mendes was the symbol of his generative virtue. From these attributes, thus personified, the priests formed a fabulous theology; which, the people, holding this facred; were led to worship chimerical gods. I shall next speak of Ifis and the correspondent deities: you will every where find the fame fyftem, and perceive the priests ftudying nature, aftronomy, obferving phyfical effects, and veiling their discoveries from the vulgar.

I have the honour to be, &c.

A a 2

LET

LET TER XXV.

OF ISIS OR THE MOON.

The Egyptians first adored the moon under her proper name Iob, which worship, brought to

Greece, gave birth to the fable of Io. Obferving her influence, they named her Ifis, ...the cause of plenty, and attributed the inundation to the tears of the deity, i. e. the de of which he was the reputed mother. The Copts fill pretend the dew, during the folftice, ferments the waters, and makes them overflow.

To M. L. M.

Grand Cairo.

THE Egyptians were unbounded in theis

veneration for the Moon; which, from the highest antiquity, they honoured as the queen of Heaven (p). They firft adored her under her proper name of Iob (q). Inachus, the (p) Jeremiah.

Jablonski, Pantheon Ægypt, tom. II.