4 -r* TRAVELS TO DISCOVER. 



Pagan nations were the patriarchs of the Old Teftamentv 

 With all refpeet to Sanchoniatho and his followers, I can • 

 no more believe that Ofiris, the firft king of Egypt, was a 

 real perfonage, and that Tot was his fecretary, than I can 

 believe Saturn to be the patriarch Abraham, and Rachel and 

 Leah, Venus and Minerva. I will not fatigue the. reader 

 with a detail of ufeleis reafons ; if Ofiris is a real perfonage, 

 if he was king of Egypt, and Tot his fecretary, they furely 

 travelled to very good purpofe, a* all the people of Europe 

 and Afia feem to be agreed, that in pcrfon they firft com- 

 municated letters and .the art of writing to them, but ax: 

 very different, and very diftant periods. 



Thebes was built by a colony of Ethiopians from Sire, 

 the city of Seir, or the Dog Star. Diodorus Siculus fays, 

 that the Greeks, by putting O before Siris, had made the 

 word unintelligible to the Egyptians : Siris, then, was Ofiris ; 

 but he was not the Sun, no more than he was Abraham, nor 

 was he a real perfonage. He. was Syrius, or the dog-ftar, 

 defigned under the figure of a dog, becaufe of the warning 

 he gave to Atbara, where the firft obfervations were made 

 at his heliacal rifing, or his difengaging himfelf from the 

 rays of the fun, fo as to be vifible to the naked eye. Lie 

 was the Latrator Anubis, and his firft appearance was figu- 

 ratively compared to the barking of a dog, by the warning 

 it gave to prepare for the approaching inundation. I be- 

 lieve, therefore, this was the firft hieroglyphic; and that 

 liis, Ofiris, and Tot, were all after inventions relating to it ; 

 and, in faying this, I am fo far warranted, becaufe there is 

 not in Axum (once a large city) any other hieroglyphic but 

 of the dog-ftar, as far as I can judge from the huge frag- 

 ments of figures of this animal, remains of which, in differ- 

 ent 



