CHAP. XII. WHAT AUTHORITIES ADMITTED. 227 



The works of Plato and other more ancient writers 

 evidently contain much that owes its origin to the 

 knowledge they acquired from the Egyptians, and 

 Pythagoras imitated many notions of his instructors 

 with scrupulous precision. Such authorities are of 

 the greatest use in the examination of the dogmas 

 of this j^eople, and they had the advantage of stu- 

 dying them at a time and place, in which religion 

 was not exposed to fanciful innovations. But w^hen 

 it had been encumbered with the superstructure 

 of arbitrary fancy, which the schools of Alexandria 

 heaped upon it, the original form became distorted, 

 meanings were attached to various symbols which 

 they never possessed, and the attributes of one 

 Deity were ignorantly assigned to another of a to- 

 tally different character, I have already had oc- 

 casion to notice the misconceptions of the Greeks 

 and Romans on the most ordinary subjects con- 

 nected with the religion of Egypt ; and little 

 reliance can be placed upon their information re- 

 specting the abstruse and recondite speculations of 

 the Egyptian philosophers, when they changed the 

 very forms of well-known Deities, and mistook the 

 attributes of those which were presented to them 

 on every monument. 



I now proceed to compare the statements of 

 Herodotus and others with data derived from the 

 monuments. If it be true that the number of the 

 great Gods of the Egyptians was limited to eight, 

 we may suppose them to be — 



1. Neph, or Kneph. 3. Phthah, or Ptiiah. 



2. Amun, or Amun-Re. 4. Khem. 



Q 2 



