CHAP. Xlir. WORSHIP OF ISIS IN LATER TIMES. 379 



in his office of Judge of the dead : as Ceres, in 

 a similarly mysterious character, enjoyed greater 

 honours among the Greeks than other Deities 

 who hekl a far higher rank in their Pantheon. It 

 appears that she enjoyed a more general worship 

 at a late period, than in the early Pharaonic ages : 

 and the almost exclusive repute she obtained 

 among the Greeks may liave been partly owing to 

 their attributing to her many of the honours which 

 really belonged to other Deities, as I have already 

 observed.* This last may also have been from 

 her mysterious character then acquiring more 

 general celebrity ; from the great ambition felt 

 by numerous individuals to be admitted to the 

 mysteries ; and from tlie readiness of the Egyptian 

 priests to flatter the prejudices and ignorance of 

 those strangers who showed a desire to uphold 

 the worship of their Gods, and build temples in 

 their honour. For since no Egyptian discouraged 

 the wish to erect a shrine to Isis or Osiris, on 

 the score of the right of other Deities, these two, 

 who were ahmost the only Deities known to the 

 Greeks, supplied at length the place of others ; 

 and few temples in late times were erected or en- 

 dowed by the Greeks in honour of any other than 

 Isis or Osiris, except to some particular Deity who 

 had been for ages the patron of the city where that 

 monument happened to be erected. 



The worship of Isis was, indeed, universal 

 throughout Egypt t at all times ; and, according 



* Vide p. 280. 282. 289. f Herodot. ii. 42. 



