CHAP. XII. GODS WITH HEADS OF ANIMALS. I7I 



mystery which has been traced in the rehgion of 

 Egypt. 



That the images of the Egyptian Deities were not 

 supposed to indicate real beings, who had actually 

 existed on earth, is abundantly evident from tlie 

 forms under which they were represented; and the 

 very fact of a God being figured with a human 

 body and the head of an ibis, might sufficiently 

 prove the allegorical character of Thoth, or Mer- 

 cury, the emblem of the communicating medium 

 of the divine intellect, and suggest the impossibility 

 of any other than an imaginary or emblematic ex- 

 istence ; in the same manner as the sphinx, with a 

 lion's body and human head, indicative of physical 

 and intellectual power, under which the Kings of 

 Egypt were figured, could only be looked upon as 

 an emblematic representation of the qualities of 

 the monarch. But even this evident and well- 

 known symbol did not escape perversion ; and 

 the credulous bestowed upon the sphinx the cha- 

 racter of a real animal. 



It signified little, in the choice of a mere emblem, 

 whether it was authorised by good and plausible 

 reasons ; and if, in process of time, the symbol was 

 looked upon with the same veneration as the Deity 

 of whom it was the representative, the cause of 

 this corruption is to be ascribed to the same kind 

 of superstition whicli, in all times and in many re- 

 ligions, has invested a relic with a multiplicity of 

 supposed virtues, and obtained for it as high a 

 veneration as the person to whom it belonged, or 

 of whom it was the type. 



