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HIEROGLYPHICS. 



Senjiramis, Atarogatis, Tauropolus, and to that o 

 Cybele. In the rudest times of antiquity, young 

 girls were sacrificed as victims in the worship o 

 this goddess, who required the most beautiful first- 

 lings. Afterwards, female slaves were substituted, 

 who were either presented to the great goddess 01 

 heaven and nature, for her temple hulls and pleasure 

 groves, or were purchased by her ministers. These 

 were obliged, in her honour, to surrender themselves 

 on the annual festivals, to the desires of the pilgrims 

 and worshippers of the goddess. The male hierodu- 

 loi were youths who lacerated themselves with jug- 

 gling fanaticism, and, in a fury, whirled round in 

 circles, like the Turkish and Indian fakirs. Strabo 

 speaks of 6000 hieroduloi, male and female, in the 

 sacred environs of the temple of the Comanian god- 

 dess of nature, in Cappadocia. In every temple of 

 the Phoenician-Carthaginian Urania, even in the 

 temples of the Ephesian and Phrygian Diana, there 

 were female slaves, who were called, in the Phoenician 

 language, benoth (i. e., young maidens), whence the 

 name Venus is said to have been derived. The wor- 

 ship of that goddess was imported from Asia into 

 Greece, and here, as well as in the famous temple of 

 Venus, on mount Eryx in Sicily, we find troops of 

 hieroduloi who were courtesans, and had to add all 

 that they acquired by their mercenary charms to the 

 treasury of the temple. More than one temple of 

 Venus (among others, that in Samos) was built by 

 funds thus acquired. We still possess, on the frag- 

 ments of the frieze of a temple, and on two trian- 

 gular candelabra vases, representations of these 

 servants of Venus, which were formerly considered 

 Spartan dancers, but in which the acuteness of Zoega 

 detected the true hieroduloi. They are represented 

 in a graceful attitude, standing on their toes, in a 

 dancing position, both arms gracefully raised, and 

 turning their slender bodies to the seducing move- 

 ments of their sacred dance. Their dress con- 

 sists only of a short garment gathered with a girdle, 

 and is composed of the most delicate and transparent 

 byssus, hardly reaching the knee. The arms and 

 legs are entirely naked ; on their feet they have 

 sandals lightly laced ; and, on their hair, bound to- 

 gether in a simple knot, they have a wreath, curious- 

 ly woven of long, straight, radiating leaves or stalks, 

 which, differing altogether from the head attire of the 

 Grecian women, seems to indicate a foreign, Asiatic 

 origin. Though the term hieroduloi was, perhaps, 

 still unprofaned in the earliest times of Greece, when 

 Locrian maidens were sent to Ilium as a tribute for 

 the worship of Pallas, it subsequently denoted those 

 well known servants of Venus, with whom Ionia and 

 Cyprus supplied Greece Proper. 



HIEROGLYPHICS (from the Greek U s y*.a<f> n , 

 sacred engraving) was applied by ancient writers 

 exclusively to the sculpture and inscriptions on public 

 monuments in Egypt, because it was thought that 

 they were intelligible only to the priests, and those 

 who were initiated in their mysteries ; but, in mo- 

 dern times, the word has been used for any picture- 

 writing; any mode of expressing a series of ideas by 

 the representations of visible objects. Thus we 

 speak of Mexican hieroglyphics, waving the idea of 

 sacred, which the name implies according to its 

 etymology. In this article, however, we shall treat 

 only of Egyptian hieroglyphics, intending to return to 

 the general subject in the article Writing. We shall 

 also there speak of the interesting Mexican hierogly- 

 phic, the original of which is in the Escurial, and a 

 Spanish version of which was translated into Eng- 

 lish by Purchas (History of the Empire of Mexico, 

 ith Notes and Explanations, in part iii. of Purchas's 

 Pilgrimages); yet it will be necessary to mention 

 cursorily some of the principal stages in the devel- I 



opment of that most admirable art, writing, in order 

 to understand to which of them the Egyptian art of 

 writing (hieroglyphics) belongs. 



Man loves the past. Whether prosperous or ad- 

 verse events have marked the course of his life, he 

 wishes to remember them, and wishes them to be 

 remembered by his children. This feeling is one of 

 those innate desires which Providence implanted 

 deep in the human mind, which elevates man above 

 the brutes, and which is intimately connected with 

 the consciousness that he does not stand alone, but 

 belongs to a human society, and not only to the pre- 

 sent, but also to the past and the future. Who is so 

 stupid as not to desire to know what his parents did, 

 and to inform his children of what he has done ? 

 What was, then, the expedient which at first offered 

 itself to man to enable him to commemorate events, 

 to fix, as it were, the evanescent act ? We answer, 

 the picture, the physical representation of the event. 

 What can be more natural, for instance, than a rude 

 delineation of water, and persons drowning, if men 

 wish to record a great inundation ? This mode of 

 writing, mixed with very few symbolical or conven- 

 tional signs, is, to the present day, in use among 

 the Indians of North America. Witness their 

 descriptions of battles on buffalo skins, or the direc- 

 tions which one hunting party gives to others, or 

 their inscriptions upon graves, explaining why and 



when certain persons were slain. Picture-writing 



we mean here actual pictures, executed, however, 

 for the purpose of commemorating an event, and not 

 as works of art exists among all but the most sav- 

 age tribes, as ancient and modern writers amply 

 prove. But it is plain, that, if certain events occur 

 often, a certain sign, simpler than a complete pictor- 

 ial representation of the event, will be adopted ; for 

 instance, to designate a battle, only a few dead bodies, 

 and, in course of time, perhaps, only two arrows 

 will be drawn ; or, to indicate a victory, the head of 

 the conquered general will be represented at the feet 

 of the conqueror, with a plant peculiar to the con- 

 quered country (as is the case in the Mexican hiero- 

 glyphics above-mentioned). Thus men would soon 

 arrive at symbolical and conventional hieroglyphics, 

 as a matter of convenience, if for no other reason ; 

 but, as their ideas enlarge, they become desirous to 

 represent invisible things, ideas ; for instance, in 

 order to reckon time, the natural month would pro- 

 bably be designated by a moon (in many languages 

 the words month and moon are related), and the 

 number of them by points. But man goes farther ; 

 tie wishes to express abstract ideas, such as power; 

 and what is more natural than that he should desig- 

 nate this idea by some familiar object, which most 

 strongly suggests the notion of strength or power, as, 

 for instance, the picture of a lion ? Thus he arrives 

 at the symbolical hieroglyphics. 



The art of writing takes the same course which 

 we suppose language to have previously taken; that 

 is, it begins with concrete objects, and goes on to 

 abstractions a course which can be traced, in 

 many instances, in all original languages. Lan- 

 guage is first concrete, then symbolical, then abstract. 

 All nations at a certain stage of their existence, 

 speak symbolically ; and the language of poetry, in 

 all ages, is symbolical. How many instances do we 

 not find in the language of the Old Testament ? And 

 if Pythagoras, when he says, " During the storm, go 

 and worship the echo,' ' means Retire to solitude dur- 

 'ng civil contention, the whole phrase is symbolical. 

 This circumstance, which springs, at the same time, 

 from disposition and necessity (because the human 

 mind cannot elevate itself immediately to abstraction, 

 but can reach it only by gradual generalization), is ot 

 great assistance to man when his efforts to expres. 





