CHAP. XIII. CHANGE OF FEELING TOWARDS HIM. 425 



punished for their supposed neglect of tlie interests 

 of their votaries. * But it is evident that it could 

 not date at the early period of the Exodus, since 

 the temple of Uenieses III. alone suffices to sliow 

 he was in fav^our long after that event. 



Whether owing to a change in the religious fan- 

 cies of the Egyptians, or to any other cause, it is 

 not a singular instance. We have already noticed 

 the erasure and substitution of hieroglyphics in the 

 name of Amun : and though the Egyptians were 

 great conservatives in their religious institutions, 

 some innovations were introduced during the long 

 period of their history. Nor can any one sup- 

 pose that the accessories of their religion under- 

 went no modifications, that the simplicity of the 

 early worship had not many new ideas engrafted 

 upon it, and that speculative theories did not from 

 time to time increase the number of the Egyptian 

 Gods, t 



I am even disposed to think that a change of this 

 kind might proceed from another cause : that good 

 and bad, which were viewed abstractedly at one 

 period, were afterwards treated literally; nothing 

 then remaining but the mere opposition of Osiris 

 and Typho, the positively good and the positively 

 bad Being, — the one all that was beneficial, the 

 other all that was noxious to mankind. If the 

 one was the Nile, which fertilised the country; the 



* Like the modern Italian saints. Witness San Gennaro and otliers. 

 This was also the case in Ei,'ypt, as Plntarch tells us, with the 

 sacred animals. Pint, de Is. s. 73. Vide infra, on the Sacred Animals, 

 Chap. xiv. 



\ Vide siijjri), p. IGj. "il2. 



