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writing down the good deeds of the deceased, and the result of his acquittal 
or condemnation. I am much obliged to Mr. Titcomb for bringing this 
picture. 
Mr. I. T. Prichard. — I cannot throw much light upon the subject, but 
having been in India, may be able to give a little evidence from modern 
times in reference to the very peculiar veneration that the natives of India 
have for serpents, even the most venomous. The kind of cobra that 
Mr. Cooper has mentioned is very common in India, and even the most 
venomous serpents that we find occasionally in the gardens or in the houses it 
is impossible to get any of the natives of the lower classes to touch. They will 
not kill them, but are desperately afraid of them, because a bite is generally 
death, though with proper measures life can be saved. I have often inquired 
the reason, but they never give any — they merely say it is against their reli- 
gion. They have some religious objection against injuring these creatures, 
and it would certainly seem as if some kind of tradition had been handed 
down from early times that these reptiles had a sort of sanctity about them, 
and hence the people are afraid of touching them, even in self-defence. I 
speak from the experience of very recent years. 
Mr. Cooper. — The common Egyptians likewise never touched the serpent : 
they had too much reverence for it. They always carried it in an ark borne 
by four priests, and only occasionally exhibited it to the vulgar eye. 
Rev. S. Wainwright, D.D. — I presume that paragraph 4, section 43, 
is to be regarded as only giving the result of Mr. Cooper’s inquiries in 
Egyptian Mythology apart from the Bible, because it refers to a point which 
neither he nor we recognize as belonging to Revealed Religion — I allude to the 
words, “ In the abstract, both good and evil were directly produced by 
one Supreme Being.” Another point I wish to mention is that to which 
Mr. Titcomb referred — the Scandinavian Mythology, to show that there 
too, there was an account of a boat on. a lake — it occurred to me to suggest 
that perhaps that idea of the boat which we find existing in lands so far 
remote, may be a sort of floating tradition of the ark. 
Mr. Cooper. — In common with all the Hamitic races, there is no flood 
tradition in Egypt.* 
'* There is no quarter of the globe where modern discovery can play a 
more important part than in Africa, as comparatively little is known about 
it. In regard to Mr. Cooper’s statement, I find a well-known modern writer 
on geology says,- — u There seems to exist no such definite outline of the 
Egyptian tradition referred to by Josephus as that preserved of the Chaldean 
one. Even in Egypt, however, the recollection of the Deluge seems to have 
survived, though it lay entangled amid what seem to be symbolized memories 
of unusual floodings of the river Nile.” The “ Noah of Egypt,” says Pro- 
fessor Hitchcock, “ appears to have been Osiris, and it is a curious fact that 
he embarked on the 17th* day of the month Athyr, the very day, most 
probably, when Noah entered the ark.” I may add that, as regards the 
Chaldean account of the flood, Mr. G. Smith has recently found the fragments 
of an Assyrian tablet from Nineveh, in the British Museum ; the inscription, 
