4 THE ANCIENT EGYmANS. CHAP. XIII. 



arising from their use. Thus it liappens tliat you, 

 who are the father of letters, through the bene- 

 volence of your disposition, have affirmed just the 

 contrary of what letters are able to effect. For 

 these, causing the memory to be neglected, will 

 produce oblivion to the mind of the learner; be- 

 cause men, trusting to the external marks of 

 writing, w^ill not exercise the internal powers of 

 recollection. So that you have not discovered the 

 medicine of memory, but of admonition. You will 

 likewise deliver to your disciples an opinion of 

 wisdom, and not truth.' " 



Psellus confounds Thoth w ith Hermes Trisme- 

 gistus, whom he makes posterior to Moses, and 

 imagines to be the Argeiphontes of the Greeks. 

 But he applies to Trismegistus the characteristics of 

 Mercury, instead of to Thoth. This Argeiphontes 

 Macrobius supposes to be the Sun, at whose rising 

 the hundred eyes of Argus, or the light of the 

 fixed stars, were put out. 



The first month of the Egyptian year, says the 

 former writer, was called after Thoth, as also the city 

 of Hermopolis ; where, as we learn from the sculp- 

 tures of the Portico, the Cynocephalus shared with 

 this Deity, of whom he was the type, the honours 

 of the temple. The few columns which remained 

 of the Portico at Oshmooncin, or Hermopolis iNIagna, 

 were thrown down in IS'2'2 by tlie Turks, and burnt 

 for lime; suffering the same fate as the ruins at An- 

 tinopolis, and other limestone relics: and though 

 strictly forbidden by ]\Iohammed Ali, many sand- 

 stone monuments have been since used as con- 



