SACKIFICES. 
393 
were borrowed from those of the more distant inhabit- 
ants of Egypt, the features, as far as can be gathered, 
being so identical in both. 
According to Porphyry, “ the Egyptians either con- 
sidered animals the real deities, or represented them 
(their gods) with the heads of oxen, birds, and other 
creatures, in order that the people might abstain from 
eating them and each town or district had its own 
especial one, who was supposed to preside over its 
interests. Now what are the intermediatory agents of 
the West Afiicans to this time? Are they not animals 
held in various degrees of veneration and respect, or 
their rudely-carved representatives ? Thus, — the sacred 
crocodile of a portion of the Intas, the snakes of 
Dahomey and of Brass River, the shark of Noav 
Calabar, the iguana of Bonny, &c. ; and there is scarcely 
a tribe of A¥estern Africa that has not one or more 
of these figuring at the head of their religious observ* 
ances; and so far from destroying or using them as 
food, it is one of the most serious crimes to injure 
them. 
In tracing the coincidence still further, it appears 
not a little singular, that the Coptic priests should 
have made use of exactly the same animals, in their 
oblations to the deities, as still obtain among most of 
the negro races of West Africa, viz., goats, sheep, ga- 
zelles, and white fowls, which were the sacrificial animals ; 
and the blood and heads of these were considered the 
