THE SOURCE OF THE NILE. 417 



influence the fun has over them. Jamblichus * records, 

 that this crofs, in the hand of Tot, is the name of the divine 

 Being that travels through the world. Sozomen t thinks it 

 means the life to come, the fame with the ineffable image 

 of eternity, Others, ftrange difference ! fay it is the phal- 

 lus, or human genitals, while a later \ writer maintains 

 it to be the mariner's compafs. My opinion, on the con- 

 trary is, that, as this figure was expofed to the public 

 for the reafon I have mentioned, the Crux Anfata in his 



hand was nothing elfe but a monogram of his own name 



o 

 TO, and TT lignifying TOT, or as we write Almanack upon 



a collection published for the fame purpofe. 



The changing of thefe emblems, and the multitude of 

 them, produced the necefhty of contracting their fize, and this 

 again a confequential alteration in the original forms ; and 

 a ftile, or imall portable inftrument, became all that was 

 neceffary for finifhing thefe fmall 7'ots i initead of a large 

 graver or carving tool, employed in making the large ones. 

 But men, at laft, were fo much ufed to the alteration, as to 

 know it better than under its primitive form, and the en- 

 graving became what we may call the iirft elements, or 

 root, in preference to the original. 



The reader will fee, that, in my hiftory of the civil wars 

 in Abyffinia, the king, forced by rebellion to retire to the 

 province of Tigre, and being at Axum, found a flone cover- 

 ed with hieroglyphics, which, by the many inquiries I made 



Vol. I. 3 G after 



* Jamblich. de Myfl. fed*. 8. cap. 5. f Sozomen, Eccles. Hift. lib. 7. cap. 15. 

 % Herw. theolog. Ethnica, p. 1 u 



