appear during the Moon's revolutions. "And though," he adds, "such things may appear to carry an air of fiction with them, yet it may be depended upon, that the pupils of her eyes seem to fill up, and to grow larger, upon the full of the Moon, and to decrease again and diminish in their brightness on its waning."

The notion of the cat having been emblematic of the Moon was probably owing to the Greeks supposing Pasht or Bubastis, the Egyptian Diana, to be related to the Moon, as in their own mythology. That it was erroneous is evident, from the fact of the Moon being represented in the Egyptian Pantheon by the God Thoth; but it may be more readily pardoned than many of the misconceptions of the Greeks.

According to the fable which pretended to derive the worship of animals from the assumption of their various shapes by the Gods, when striving to elude the pursuit of Typho, or the wicked attacks of mankind, the Goddess Diana was said to have taken the form of a cat.

* Diodor. i. 86. Conf. Plut. de Is. s. 72. Ovid. Met. v. 323. – "donec fessos Ægyptia tellus

Ceperit, et septem discretus in ostia Nilus.

Huc quoque terrigenam venisse Typhoëa narrat,

Et se mentitis Superos celâsse figuris :

Duxque gregis, dixit, fit Jupiter; unde recurvis

Nunc quoque formatus Libys est cum cornibus Ammon.

Delius in corvo, proles Semeleïa capro,

Fele soror Phoebi, niveâ Saturnia vaccâ,

Pisce Venus latuit, Cyllenius Ibidis alis."

THE LION.

The worship of the Lion was particularly regarded in the city of Leontopolis*; and other cities adored this animal as the emblem of more than one Deity. It was the symbol of strength †, and therefore typical of the Egyptian Hercules. With this idea the Egyptian sculptors frequently represented a powerful and victorious Monarch accompanied by it in battle; though, as Diodorus ‡ says of Osymandyas, some suppose the King to have been really attended by a tame lion on those occasions.

Macrobius, Proclus, Horapollo ¶, and others, state that the Lion was typical of the Sun; an assertion apparently borne out by the sculptures, which sometimes figure it borne upon the backs of two lions. ** It is also combined with other emblems appertaining to the God Rê.tt In the connection between the Lion and Hercules, may be traced the relationship of the Sun and the God of Strength; Hercules, or the Dom of Egypt, being, as already observed ‡‡, "the power of the Deity, and the force of the Sun."

I have had occasion to mention a God, and several Goddesses, who bore the head of a lion§§, independent of the Egyptian Diana, Pasht, or Bu

*Diodor. i. 84. Strabo, xvii. Porphy. de Abstin. iv. 9. Ælian, Hist. An. xii. 7. Plin. v. 10.

+ Clem. Strom. lib. v.

Macrob. Saturn. i. 26.

Diodor. i. 48.

Proclus de Sacrific. "Some animals are Solar, as lions and cocks."

Horapollo, i. 17.

** Vide Plate 29. fig. 6.

‡‡ Vide suprà, p. 16.

bastis. This Deity had the head of a Cat, or of a lioness; and the demonstrative sign following her name was sometimes the latter, in lieu of the Cat, her peculiar emblem. Hence it is evident that the Egyptians not only included those two animals in the same family, but considered them analogous types. This, however, seems only to apply to the female, and not to have extended to the male lion, which was thought to partake of a different character, more peculiarly emblematic of vigour and strength.

Macrobius pretends that the Egyptians employed the Lion to represent that part of the heavens where the Sun, during its annual revolution, was in its greatest force, "the sign Leo being called the abode of the Sun;" and the different parts of this animal are reputed by him to have indicated various seasons, and the increasing or decreasing ratio of the solar power. The head he supposes to have denoted the "present time‡;" which Horapollo interprets as the type of vigilance; and the fire of its eyes was considered analogous to the fiery look which the Sun constantly directs towards the world.

In the temple of Dakkeh, the Lion is represented upon the shrine or sacred table of the Ibis, the bird of Hermes; and a monkey, the emblem of the same Deity, is seen praying to a Lion with the disk of the Sun upon its head.

Some also believed the Lion to be sacred to the

* Vide suprà, Vol. I. (2d Series) p. 278. Macrob. Saturn. i. 25.

+ Macrob. Saturn. i. 26. Macrobius also says the Sun is the "heart of heaven," and the "mind of the world" (i. 20.). Besides other names, he has that of Phanes (i. 18.).

Egyptian Minerva*; and Ælian says the Egyptians consecrated it to Vulcant, "attributing the fore part of this animal to fire, and the hinder parts to

water."

Sometimes the Lion, the emblem of strength, was adopted as a type of the King, and substituted for the more usual representative of royal power, the sphinx; which, when formed by the human head and lion's body, signified the union of intellectual and physical strength.

In Southern Ethiopiat, in the vicinity of the modern town of Shendy, the lion-headed Deity seems to have been the chief object of worship. He holds a conspicuous place in the great temple of Wady Owáteb, and on the sculptured remains at Wady Benat; at the former of which he is the first in a procession of Deities, consisting of Rê, Neph, and Pthah, to whom a Monarch is making offerings. On the side of the propylæum tower is a snake with a lion's head and human arms, rising from a lotus; and in the small temple at the same place, a God with three lions' heads and two pair of arms holds the principal place in the sculptures. This last appears to be peculiarly marked as a type of physical strength; which is still farther expressed by the choice of the number three §, indicative of a material or physical sense. The Lion

* Vide suprà, Vol I. (2d Series) p. 286.

Ælian, Nat. An. xii. 7. "(Ægyptii) animantes etiam, earumque partes ad naturam referunt . . . . attribuunt igni hujus animalis (leonis) anteriora, aquæ vero posteriora." Tr.

‡ Vide suprà, Vol. I. (2d Series) p. 241.

§ Vide suprà, Vol. I. (2d Series) p. 195., on the Numbers.

also occurs in Ethiopia, devouring the prisoners or attacking the enemy, in company with a King, as in the Egyptian sculptures.

According to Plutarch*, "the Lion was worshipped by the Egyptians, who ornamented the doors of their temples with the gaping mouth of that animal, because the Nile began to rise when the Sun was in the constellation of Leo." Horapollot says, Lions were placed before the gates of the temples, as the symbols of watchfulness and protection. And "being a type of the inundation, in consequence of the Nile rising more abundantly when the Sun is in Leo, those who anciently presided over the sacred works, made the waterspouts and passages of fountains in the form of lions. The latter remark is in perfect accordance with fact, many water-spouts terminating in lions' heads still remaining on the temples. Ælian§ also says, that "the people of the great city of Heliopolis keep lions in the vestibules or areas of the temple of their God (the Sun), considering them to partake of a certain divine influence, according to the statements of the Egyptians themselves; ' "and temples are even dedicated to this animal.” But of this, and the statement of Horapollo respecting the Deity at Heliopolis, under the form of a lion, I have already spoken. ||

* Plut. de Is. s. 38. Vide also Pliny, xviii. 18., and Plut. Sympos. iv. 5., where he speaks of the Egyptian fountains ornamented with lions' heads for the same reason.

+ Horapollo, i. 19.

Elian, Nat. Hist. xii. 7.

Horapollo, i. 21.

Vide suprà, Vol. I. (2d Series) p. 296, 297.