THE SOURCE OF THE NILE. 415 



myfteries and hidden meanings, moral and philofophical 

 treatifes, as the mbjeels of thefe hieroglyphics. A fceptre, 

 they fay, is the hieroglyphic of a king. But where do we 

 meet a fceptre upon an antique Egyptian monument ? or 

 who told us this was an emblem of royalty among the E- 

 gyptians at the time of the firft invention of this figurative 

 writing ? Again, the ferpent with the tail in its mouth de- 

 notes the eternity of God, that he is without beginning and 

 without end. This is a Ghriftian truth, and a Chriftian be- 

 lief, but no where to be found in the polytheifm of the in- 

 ventors of hieroglyphics. Was Cronos or Ouranus without 

 beginning and without end ? Was this the cafe with Ofiris 

 and Tot, whofe fathers and mothers births and marriages 

 are known ? If this was a truth, independent of revelation, 

 and imprinted from the beginning in the minds of men ; 

 if it was deftined to be an eternal truth, which muft have 

 appeared by every man finding it in his own breait, from 

 the beginning, how unnecefFary muft the trouble have been 

 to write a common known truth like this, at the expence 

 of fix weeks labour, upon a table of porphyry or granite. 



It is not with philofophy as with aitronomy ; the older 

 the obfervations, the more ufe they are of to posterity. A 

 lecture of an Egyptian prieft upon divinity, morality, or 

 natural hiftory, would not pay the trouble, at this day, of 

 engraving it upon ftone ; and one of the reafons that I think 

 no fuch fubjects were ever treated in hieroglyphics is, that 

 in all thofe I ever had an opportunity of feeing, and very 

 few people have feen more, I have conftan-tly found the fame 

 figures repeated, which obvioufly,and without difpute, allude 

 to the hiftory of the Nile, and its different periods of increafe, 

 the mode of meafuring t, u.e Et^fian winds ; in fliort, fuch 



1 obfervations 



