towns. Two species of jerboa inhabit the country. They are the same which Pliny and Ælian* mention as "mice walking on two legs," "using," as the latter observes, "their fore feet for hands," and "leaping, when pursued, upon their hind legs."

Those with bristles, like the hedgehog, described by Pliny t, are still common in Egypt, principally in the desert, where their abode is among stones and fallen rocks.

The mummies of mice and rats are said to have been found in the tombs of Thebes.

The rat is figured in the paintings among the animals of Egypt; and at Beni Hassan it is very consistently placed near its natural enemy, the cat. The number of these destructive animals in some parts of Egypt is beyond belief. The fields, the banks of the river, and the boats themselves, swarm with rats, frequently of immense size; and even in the deserts, I have occasionally found a small kind, which Nature enables to live, though far removed beyond the reach of water, and apparently with very little means of subsistence.

The porcupine is also represented in the Egyptian paintings among the wild animals of the desert. But it does not appear whether, like the modern Italians and others, the ancient Egyptians ate its flesh; and there is no evidence of its having been sacred, or even kept by them, and embalmed after death.

* Ælian, xv. 26.

+ Plin. x. 65. Egyptiis muribus durus pilus, sicut herinaceis. Iidem bipedes ambulant." Those which walk on two legs should be distinct from the bristly-haired mice.

The hare was probably lawful food to the Egyptians, though forbidden to the Jews; and it is frequently shown by the sculptures to have been among the game caught by their chasseurs. It differs in appearance from our own; and though frequently exaggerated by the Egyptian artists, the length of its ears and general form show it to be distinct from the European species. Some idea may be formed of it from the paintings in the tombs, one of which is preserved in the British Museum. Though not sacred, it was admitted as an emblem of some of the Genii, or lower order of Gods, who were figured in the funereal subjects with the head of this animal. In the hieroglyphics it signified "to open," as Horapollo tells us,- being the beginning or principal part of the word ouôn.

ELEPHANT.

The Elephant is represented in the sculptures, together with the bear, among the presents brought by an Asiatic nation to the Egyptian King. Ivory is also frequently shown to have been sent to Egypt from Ethiopia and the interior of Africa; and the Ptolemies, at a subsequent period, established a hunting place on the confines of Abyssinia, for the chase of the elephant.

It does not appear at any time to have held a post among the sacred animals of the country; even at the island of Elephantine, which took its name from it, nothing indicates the worship of

*Levit. xi. 6. "And the hare, because he cheweth the cud and divideth not the hoof; he is unclean unto you."

the Elephant. It only occurs there in the name of the place, which in hieroglyphics* is styled "the Land of the Elephant."

Nor does

it appear as an object of adoration in the numerous subjects which cover the walls of the neighbouring island, Philæ, where, had it been sacred in the vicinity, it would not have been omitted; and the only instance of it is in a side entrance to the front court of the temple of Isis, where the God Nilus brings an Elephant, among the presents to be offered for the King to the Deity of the place.

In Ethiopia, the Elephant is once found in a temple at Wady Benát, near Shendy, with various Deities and sacred devices; but there is no evidence of its having been worshipped there, or even ranked among the sacred animals of that country.

HIPPOPOTAMUS.

The Hippopotamus was sacred to the God Mars, and worshipped at Papremis. In former times it seems to have been a native of Egypt, and to have lived in the northern part of the Nile. The city where it is reputed to have been principally honoured, stood in the Delta; and Herodotust, Diodorus ‡, and others, mention it among

* Vide Plates of R. S. of Literature, Plate 59.

+ Herodot. ii. 59. and 63. and 67.

Diodor. i. 35. Aristot. Hist. An. ii. 7.

the animals of Egypt. But it is now confined to the upper parts of Ethiopia; being seldom known to come into Nubia, or that part lying between the second and first cataract; and if ever it is seen in Egypt, its visit is purely accidental, and as contrary, as I have already had occasion to remark*, to its own expectations, as to those of the astonished natives who witness its migration. I have also mentioned the mode of catching it, and the uses to which its hide were applied, both in ancient and modern times. †

Herodotus says, that though the Hippopotamus is sacred in the Papremitic nome, they have not the same respect for it in the rest of Egypt; and, according to Plutarch, "it was reckoned amongst the animals emblematic of the Evil Being. At Hermopolis," he adds, "is shown a statue of Typho, which is a river-horse with a hawk upon its back, fighting with a serpent; the river-horse signifying Typho, and the hawk that power and sovereignty which he frequently gets into his hands by violence, and then employs in works of mischief, both to his own annoyance and to the prejudice of others. So, again, those sacred cakes offered in sacrifice upon the seventh day of the month Tybi, when they celebrate the return of Isis from Phoenicia, have the impression of a river-horse bound stamped upon them." From the representations of this animal in the sculptures both in Upper and Lower Egypt, it is evident that the respect paid

* Suprà, Vol. III. p. 74.

+ Suprà, Vol. III. p. 69

to it was far from being general in the country; and figures of a Typhonian character in religious subjects on the monuments are frequently portrayed with the head of a hippopotamus.* Even the Cerberus, or monster of Amenti, is sometimes represented under the form of this animal. I have nowhere found a male Deity with the head of a hippopotamus, or accompanied by it as an emblem, in any of the sculptures of Egypt; and the only instances of a hippopotamus-headed God are in some figures of blue pottery, probably from the vicinity of Papremis, to which, as Herodotus observes, its worship was confined.

According to Plutarch, the "river-horse" was the emblem of "impudence." This he endeavours to show by a hieroglyphic sentence in the porch of the temple of Saïs, composed of an infant, an old man, a hawk, a fish, and a hippopotamus, which he thus interprets, "Oh! you who are coming into the world, and who are going out of it (that is, young or old), God hateth impudence." And, indeed, if the reason he gives ‡ for its having been chosen as this symbol were true, or even believed by the Egyptians, we ought not to be surprised that he was considered sufficiently unamiable to be a Typhonian animal. Clemens substitutes the crocodile for the hippopotamus in this sentence, which he gives§ from

* Vide suprà, 88.; and Vol. I. (2d Series) p. 429, 430.

+ Plut. de Is. s. 32.

Conf. Ælian. An. vii. 19.

Clem. Strom. v. p. 159.