THE EGYPTIAN SCARAB^US. Ill 



and breathing the perfumed air of summer. The other, in 

 form dark and repulsive, in habits dull and laborious ; its abode 

 beneath the earth, or within the loathsome substances which 

 cumber earth's surface, and its favourite atmosphere one of 

 steaming fetidity thence exhaled. 



Yet this, the Scara&teus sacer, or Sacred Beetle, was the 

 creature which the wise and civilized Egyptians imaged on 

 their sepulchral monuments, enclosed with their embalmed 

 bodies, carved on their lofty columns, inscribed on their astro- 

 nomical tables, looked on as symbolic of the world, and of the 

 glorious sun, nay, adored as a visible deity ! 



What lamentable darkness ! we are ready to exclaim, look- 

 ing back with contemptuous pity on the beclouded ignorance 

 from whence we have emerged ; even though the learned tell 

 us that under the above and other seemingly the most absurd 

 of Egyptian superstitions, was veiled a hidden wisdom. The 

 priest-ridden, hood-winked " million '' saw, however, it is pro- 

 bable, nothing more in their Apis, their Ibis, and their Scara- 

 bseus, than a beast, bird, or insect god, so regarded on account 

 of some beneficial or formidable quality, exciting gratitude or 

 terror ; the priests themselves only viewing them in a more 

 refined sense as symbols of the Deity, in one or other of His 

 divine attributes. In the Scarabseus the male insect closely 

 resembles the female, and, contrary to insect usage, is accus- 

 tomed to participate in her labours. On these accounts it has 

 been supposed that the Egyptians, not distinguishing between 



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