214 THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS. CHAP. XII. 



form the sea and earth, from which fish and animals 

 were produced, nearly in the same manner as we 

 still see in Egypt, where an infinity of insects and 

 other creatures come forth from the mud, after it 

 has been inundated by the waters of the Nile. * 

 *' Eusebius," as the Abbe Banier remarks, ** has 

 justly observed that this system, as well as that of 

 the Phoenicians, w^hicli is derived from the same 

 source, gives to the Creator no part in the form- 

 ation of the universe. To confirm his opinion, 

 he quotes a passage of Porphyry, who, in his 

 epistle to Anebo, an Egyptian priest, writes, that 

 Chaeremont and others had thought that nothing 

 was anterior to this visible world ; that the planets 

 and stars were the real Gods of the Egyptians, and 

 that the sun ought to be looked upon as the guar- 

 dian of the universe ; and it may be remarked, that 

 the summary of Egyptian theology given by 

 Dioixenes Laertius from Manetho and Hecataeus 

 is in the same spirit, which considers that matter 

 was the first principle, and the Sun and Moon the 

 first Deities, of that people. It has, however, been 

 shown from Eusebius, that the Egyptians believed 

 in an intelligent Being called Cneph, who presided 

 over the formation of the world. Porphyry states 

 that they represented him under the figure of a 

 man holding a girdle and a sceptre, with large 

 feathers on his head, from whose mouth an egg 

 proceeded, out of which another Deity came, 

 called by them Phtha, and by tiie Greeks Vulcan : 



* Conf. Ovid. Met. i. 8., v. i22. ; and Plin. ix. 58. 

 f Vide Cory, p. 287. 



