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Ch. II.] 



EGYPTIAN COSMOGONY 



13 





Egyptians believed the world to be subject to occasional 

 conflagrations and deluges, whereby the gods arrested the 



om 



After each regeneration, mankind were in a state of virtue 



from 



into vice and immorality. From this Egyptian doctrine, the 

 poets derived the fable of the decline from the golden to the 



iron age. 



The sect 



m 



of catastrophes destined at certain intervals to destroy the 

 world. These they tanght were of two kinds ;— the Cataclysm 

 or destruction by water, which sweeps away the whole human 

 race, and annihilates all the animal and vegetable productions 

 of nature ; and the Ecpyrosis, or destruction by fire, which 



dissolves the globe itself. 



om 



Egyptians also they 



derived the doctrine of the gradual debasement ol man trom 

 a state of innocence. Towards the termination of each era 

 the gods could no longer bear with the wickedness of men, 

 and a shock of the elements or a deluge overwhelmed them ; 

 after which calamity, Astrea again descended on the earth, 



to renew the golden age."* 



The connection between the doctrine of successive catas- 

 trophes and repeated deteriorations in the moral character of 

 the human race is more intimate and natural than might at 

 first be imagined. For, in a rude state of society, all great 

 calamities are regarded by the people as judgments of God 

 on the wickedness of man. Thus, in our own time, the 

 priests persuaded a large part of the population of Chili, and 

 perhaps believed themselves, that the fatal earthquake of 1822 

 was a sign of the wrath of Heaven for the great political 

 revolution just then consummated in South America. In 

 like manner, in the account given to Solon by the Egyptian 

 priests, of the submersion of the island of Atlantis under the 

 waters of the ocean, after repeated shocks of an earthquake, 

 we find that the event happened when Jupiter had seen the 

 moral depravity of the inhabitants. f Now, when the notion 



had once gained ground, whether from causes before sug- 



gested or not, that the earth had been destroyed by several 



* Prichard's Egypt. Mytliol. p. 193. 



t Plato's Timseus. 



