90 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 



them on each side of the hawk in their processions ; 

 and explained the meaning to be, that these com- 

 pelled the sun (the hawk) to keep his course with- 

 in the zodiac. In the surgical capacity, they were 

 represented hy the embalming priests, who wore 

 masks of black dogs' heads before their faces. In 

 that of watching, the dog was Anubis,* Sothis, As- 

 trocyon, Ailurus or Sirius, the dog-star; the riser 

 whose appearance warned the public of the approach- 

 ing inundation of the Nile. In the character of 

 nurse, Theba (the bitch) was the ark, the preserv- 

 ing and renovating asylum of man. This doctrine 

 spread through all the systems of initiation, classi- 

 cal as well as barbarian, as far as the British Druids, 

 whose canine denomination is mentioned in a for- 

 mer page. The Egyptians also testified their fear 

 and abhorrence of the Scythic, or shepherd con- 

 querors, after their expulsion, by sacrificing to 

 Typhon (Taiphune), red-haired men, oxen, and 

 red dogs. The Greeks, who were more attracted 

 by the poetry, than by the abstract meanings of 

 their own or their neighbours' religious emblems, 

 after placing Cerberus to watch the gates of their 

 infernal regions, notice them mostly in hunting 



* Anubis was also the personification of human science (from 

 Anub, gold ?) He was gilded in his character of Thot ; but 

 as Hermanubis or Mercury, conductor of the dead, he was 

 painted black, and hence his image was occasionally made 

 half yellow and half black. See Jablonski Anubis, and Creut- 

 zer Rel. de I'Antiquitd His statue was distinguished by an 

 amiculus thrown over the back. 



