and Inhabitants of the Gold Coast: 83 



bidden food according to Moses. In Egypt to kill a sacred 

 animal designedly, was death ; accidentally, a fine to the priests; 

 such is the custom in these countries also, and the head of the 

 hycena is wrapped in white cloth, and buried, which is curious 

 when we recollect, that the Egyptians never eat the head of an 

 animal, and that the sacred animals had funerals. The vulture 

 (though it does not appear to be the Percnopterus,) is sacred 

 in Ashantee for the same reason as it was in Egypt, because it 

 consumes all the offal of the neighbourhood. Juno also was 

 worshipped under the form of a vulture in the upper Thebais. 



In Ashantee some families do not eat mutton, some abstain 

 from fowl, others from goats* flesh, others from beef. We read 

 in the accounts of Egypt, " And the shepherds lived upon 

 cows* flesh, which made them a separate people." Herodotus 

 says also, that some of the Egyptians did not eat beef, others 

 did not eat mutton, others spared goats. Mr. Bruce observed, 

 that some of the Abyssinians would not eat fowl, others never 

 touched veal. Mr. Hutchison observes in his diary, (p. 412.) 

 " Thus many of them are so particular they will not stay where 

 eggs are, another shuns a fowl, ones hates beef, and many 

 mutter a charm if they meet a pig." Pigs were abhorred in 

 Egypt, and many avoided all connexion with those who tended 

 that animal. 



Diodorus is particularly struck with the peculiarity of the 

 Egyptian custom, " that those who wish to exercise the calling 

 of thieves, are secretly registered by the superior of the fra- 

 ternity, to whom they carry all their spoil ; so that on the 

 losers' going to him, and particularizing their property, they 

 receive it again, on paymg one quarter of the value/* The fol- 

 lowing passage is from my chapter on the superstitions of 

 Ashantee. '* The inferior class of priests pursue their various 

 occupations in society, assist in customs and superstitious ce- 

 remonies, and are applied to as fortune-tellers or conjurors are 

 in Europe, especially in cases of theft, when from a secret 

 system of espionage, and a reluctance frequently amounting to 

 a refusal to discover the culprit, or to do more than replace 

 the property whence it was taken, they are generally successful." 



G2 



