26 NOTES ON WEST AFRICAN CATEGORIES 



closely related to the animal world than does his 

 civilised fellow creature, he still looks upon it as an 

 inferior world to his a place for brutes that good 

 men dislike and fear. Egyptian gods taking advan- 

 tage of this fear are said to have turned themselves 

 into beasts to keep men in order. 



" The adoration and worship of beasts among the 

 Egyptians," says Diodorus, " seems justly to many a 

 most strange and unaccountable thing and worthy 

 enquiry : for they worship some creatures even above 

 measure, when they are dead as well as when they are 

 living ; as cats, ichneumons, dogs, kites, the bird Ibis, 

 wolves, and crocodiles, and many other such like." 



He informs us of the extraordinary expense and 

 care to which the priests put themselves when providing 

 for the living animals, and even still more extravagant 

 labour to which they went in observing the obsequies 

 of the sacred animals. He says : " No similar worship 

 was to be found among any of the ancient people. 

 . . . ." Evidently in some way all these ceremonies 

 point to some occult relation or conception of some 

 common derivation between man and beast, which is 

 not apparent but must be deduced from concomitant 

 circumstances. 



Diodorus hints " that the first gods were so few, 

 and men so many above their number, and so wicked 

 and impious, that they were too weak for them, and 

 therefore transformed themselves into beasts and by 

 that means avoided their assaults and cruelty. But 

 afterwards they say that the kings and princes of 

 the earth (in gratitude to them for the first authors of 



