204 TRAVELS TO DISCOVER 
it has followed, that there are many of each clafs ‘that 
know not whether they are clean or not; and a wonderful 
confufion and uncertainty has followed through ignorance 
or miftake, being unwilling to violate the law in any one 
‘inftance through not underftandin 8 it. 
Tue abhorrence of the wld iKesriiaii ee the bean is well 
known, and many filly reafons have been afligned for it; 
but that which has. moft met the approbation of the moft 
learned men is, in my humble opinion, the weakeft of them 
all. They fay, the averfion to the, bean arofe from its re- 
fembling the phallus; but the crux anfata, or the crofs 
with the handle to it, which is put in the hand of every 
Egyptian hieroglyphic of Ifis, Ofiris, or whatever the priefts 
have called them, is likewife agreed by. the learned to -re- 
prefent the phallus; and the figure of thefe nudities, with- 
out vail or concealment, is plain in all their ftatues. Now, 
I would afk, What is the reafon why they abhor-a bean be- 
caufe it reprefents thefe parts which, at the fame time, 
by their own option or choice, are expofed in the hand or 
perfon of every figure which they exhibit to public view? 
The bean, however, is not cultivated in Abyffinia, neither is 
it in Egypt; lupines grow up in both, and lupines in both 
are eradicated like a weed, ae lupines were what is’. called 
faba A gyptiaca, 
Tuoucu I cannot pretend to know. the true reafon of 
this, yet I will venture to give a guefs :—The origin of great 
part of religious obfervances of Egypt began with the wor- 
fhip of the Nile, and probably at the head of it. The coun- 
try of the Agows, as well where the Nile rifes as in parts 
more diitant, is all a honey country ; ; not only their whole 
‘ | fuftenance, . 
