AND LOWER EGYPT. 287 



died in a house, a natural death (for if any one 

 killed a cat, though involuntarily, he could not 

 escape death), the owner of the house shaved his 

 eyebrows only ; but if a dog died, he shaved his 

 head and the whole body*. They carried into 

 consecrated houses the cats which happened to 

 die, and after having embalmed them, interred 

 them at Bubastis-|~, a considerable city of Lower 

 Egypt, now called Basta. 



These honours, these prerogatives, were not a 

 matter of taste merely ; they had a grand political 

 object in view, the interest, nay the very subsistence 

 of a whole people. It was necessary to put under 

 the immediate protection of the laws, a species of 

 animals, whose protection was itself indispensable, 

 against the prodigious multitudes of rats and mice, 

 with which Egypt is infested. Apotheosis appeared, 

 to the priests, the surest means for procuring respect 

 from the people for objects which they had the 

 greatest interest to preserve. What difference, in 

 fact, does it make, in the case of idolatrous reli- 

 gions, whether you worship a man or a cat, a 

 woman or an onion ? Are they not all at an equal 

 distance from the Deity ? Since men will be super- 

 stitious, is it not best that they should be usefully 

 so ? Happy the nations whose superstition tends 



* Herodotus, book ii. § 6. Larcher's translation. 

 f Id. ibid. § 67. 



toward 



