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OBSERVATIONS ON THE SERPENT MYTHS OF 
ANCIENT EGYPT* Illustrated with Explanatory 
Figures from Egyptian Monuments and Ancient Gems. By 
W. R. Cooper, Esq., F.R.S.L., Secretary of the Society 
of Biblical Archceology. 
W HILE much has been done for the elucidation of the 
Ophiolatry of India, Greece, and Rome by many most 
able scholars, yet the. serpent myths of Egypt, — the oldest, 
most abundant, and best preserved of them all, have been but 
little attended to since the time of Champollion and Wilkinson. 
On the Continent it is true that MM. Pierret, Brugsch, and 
Lenormantf have published a few isolated papers upon parts of 
the legends of hieroglyphy, but these have never been trans- 
lated into English, and even the originals are but little known. 
This is both a subject of regret and of surprise, for no one 
who considers the very early connection between Egypt and 
Israel in Biblical times can fail to have noticed that there were 
many allusions and restrictions in the ceremonial laws of the 
latter nation, which only by a reference to the customs of their 
contemporary neighbours could be duly understood. While the 
Romans doubted, and the Greeks ridiculed, their gods, the 
nobler and more primitive Egyptians loved, and were supposed 
to be beloved, by them. The profane and the impure divinities 
of the Grecian Olympus, the debaucheries of Silenus and of 
Pan, the fraudulent Mercury, and the unchaste Yenus, find no 
counterpart in the Egyptian Pantheon. Not till the irruption 
of the semi-greek Psammetici does Theban worship become 
obscene, and Theban sculpture gratuitously indecent ; and it 
may be safely asserted, without fear of contradiction, that 
there is, morally and scientifically, more to disgust in the 
Odes of Horace or The Bays and Weeks of Hesiod, than in the 
whole vast range of ancient Egyptian literature. 
. * Those aware of some of the tendencies of modern thought will recog- 
nize the value of this paper. Since it was read the author has kindly taken 
the opportunity of adding such new matter as the most recent investigations 
on the subject afford, in order that it might be as complete a statement of 
the serpent myths of ancient Egypt as could be at present published. The 
engravings have been carefully done on the graphotype process by Mr. John 
Allen. — Ed. 
t Mostly in the Revue Archeologique , of Paris, and the Zeitschrift fur 
-ZEgyptische Sprache, of Berlin. England as yet possesses no journal wholly 
devoted to exegetical archaeology. 
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