CHAP. XIII. FIVE GREEK MERCURIES. 11 



and also from Hermes Trismegistus, whom I shall 

 have occasion to mention presently. 



The circumstance of the God Lunus being the 

 dispenser of time, and represented noting off years 

 upon the palm branch, appears to argue that the 

 Egyptians, in former times, calculated by lunar 

 instead of solar years ; and the hieroglyphic of a 

 month, which is a lunar crescent, shows their 

 months to have been originally regulated by the 

 course of the moon. * 



I have once met with the figure of an Ibis-headed 

 Deity as a female t, but I am uncertain respecting 

 the character and office of that Goddess, nor is it 

 certain that the name of Thoth was applied to her. 



Thoth at the temple of Samneh appears to be 

 styled the son of Neph. 



According to Cicero t, the Greeks reckoned in 

 their mythology five Mercuries ; " one the son of 



Heaven and the Day Another of Valens 



and Phoronis, the same who is beneath the Earth, 

 and called Trophonius. A third the son of the third 

 Jupiter and Maia, and who is said to have begotten 

 Pan by Penelope. A fourth the son of the Nile, 

 whom the Egyptians consider it unlawful to name. 

 A fifth, worshipped by the Pheneatse, who is said 

 to have slain Argus, and on that account to have 

 fled to Egypt, and to have given laws and letters 

 to the Egyptians. He was styled by them Thoyth, 

 and bore the same name as the first month of their 



* Vide supra. Vol. I. (2d Series) p. 13. 



f A green porcelain figure in the possession of Chevalier Kestner, the 

 Hanoverian minister at Rome. 

 X Cicero de Nat. Deor. iii. 22. 



