6 
INTRODUCTION. 
the bullock of agriculture, the bee of indus¬ 
try. The spider was symbolical of the art of 
weaving, the sphinx became the emblem of 
subtility, a crocodile represented the land of 
Egypt, and a merchant was described by a 
man holding a purse. 
The hierogrammatists, or holy registers 
who had the care of the sacred hieroglyphics 
in Egypt, made use of symbols only known 
to themselves. They were always near the 
person of the king, and they bore a kind of 
sceptre in the form of a ploughshare. But 
after Egypt became a Roman province, these 
offices sunk into neglect, and the phoenix, their 
hieroglyphic of the sun, set to rise no more 
in their symbolical writings. In the height of 
Egyptian prosperity, moral reflections as well 
as public events were represented by pictures, 
as is shewn by the celebrated inscription on 
the temple of Minerva at Sais, where an in¬ 
fant, an old man, a hawk, a fish, and a river- 
horse, are made to express this sentence : 
