MYTHOLOGY. 15 
all things, and therefore refrained from eat- 
ing it. 
The Mongolian races have a tradition that a 
mystic bird laid an egg on the bosom of one of 
their deities, there to be hatched. He let it 
fall into the water and it broke; the upper part 
then became the sky, the lower the earth; the 
liquid white formed the sun, the yolk the moon, 
and fragments of the shell became stars. 
The Egyptians saw in the egg an emblem of 
the restoration of mankind after the deluge, and 
venerated it accordingly. It often appears in 
their hieroglyphics. 
The egg and tongue of architecture is thought — 
to be a relic of the head of Isis, representing a 
necklace of the mundane egg, and the tongue of 
the serpent of immortality. 
The Jews found in the egg a symbol of bon- 
dage and wonderful deliverance, and used it as 
a type of their departure from Egypt, and it 
appeared on the Passover table. 
The modern Hebrews still use eggs at the 
Passover season, as an emblem of the rolling 
fate of Israel. 
