39? On: Eg¥,pt and the' Nile 



but they are confidsred as united fo intimately, that each firms either^ and 

 they are often held to b& ©ne individual deity. As twirivbrothers, the two 

 Dasras or Cuma'ras, are evidently the Diofcori of the Greeks-, but, when 

 reprefented as an individual, they feem to be /Esculapius, which my 

 Pandit fupptofes to be Aswiculapa, or Chief of the race of Afwi; that 

 epithet might, indeed, be applied to the Sun i and /Esculapius, accord- 

 ing to fome of the weftern Mythologies* was a form of the Sun himfelf. 

 IPhe' adoption of the twins by. Brahma", whole favourite bird was the 

 phcenicopteros, which the Europeans changed into a fwan, may have given 

 rife to the fable of Leda; but we cannot wonder at the many diverfities 

 in the old Mythological fyftem, when we find in the Purdnas themfelves 

 very different genealogies of the fame divinity and very different accounts 

 #£ the fame adventufe, 



. ^sgulapius, ©ip Asglepius, was a fon of Apollo, and his mother, 

 according to the Phenicians^ was. a Goddefs, that is, a form of De'vi'j 

 le too was abandoned by his parents, and educated by Autolaus, the fon of 

 Arc as (a). The Afwkuia pas , ox ' Afc/epiades, had extenfive fettlements in 

 Thejfaly ($), and, I believe, in Meffenia. The word Jfwini feems to have, 

 given a name to the town of Afphynis % now Asfun, in upper Egypt-; for 

 #^», a horf^h indubitably changed by the Perjians into, Aft? ox Afpy but 

 4fwi~Ji y hdn was probably the town of Abydusifi, the Thesis* and might 

 have been fo named from Abhida, a contraction of Abhimatada; for Stra- 

 ng. inform us, that it was anciently, a very large city, the fecond in Egypt 

 after Thebes^ that it flood about feven miles and a half to the weft of the 

 Nile; that a celebrated temple of Osiris was near it, and a magnificent edi- 



(a) Paufan. B. 7. C. 23. (i) Paufan. B. 3. C. 25. 





