which respect it differs from amber. It is insoluble in oil of turpentine or caustic eye."

The incense burnt in the temples before the altar was made into small balls, or pastiles, which were thrown by the hand into the censer. The latter generally consisted of an open cup of bronze (sometimes two), holding the fire, supported by a long handle, whose opposite extremity was ornamented with the head of a hawk; and in the centre of this was an

No. 472.

Fig. 1. Throwing the balls of incense into the fire.

2, 3. Censers. A cup for holding the incense balls.

b, c. The cup in which was the fire. In b are three flames of fire; inc only one.

4. A censer without a handle.

5, 6. Other censers with incense balls or pastiles within. These two last are from the tombs near the pyramids.

other cup, from which the pastiles were taken with the finger and thumb to be thrown upon the fire. Sometimes the incense was burnt in a cup without the handle, and some censers appear to have been made with a cover, probably pierced with holes to allow the smoke to escape, like those now employed in the churches of Italy.

SACRIFICES. VICTIMS.

When a victim was sought for the altar, it was carefully examined by one of the Sphragista * an order of priests to whom this peculiar office

*Herodot. ii. 38. Plut. de Is. s. 31.

belonged. According to Plutarch *, red oxen were alone selected for the purpose, and so scrupulous," he adds, "were they on this point, that a single black or white hair rendered them unfit for sacrifice, in consequence of the notion that Typho was of that colour. For in their opinion sacrifices ought not to be made of such things as are in themselves agreeable to the Gods, but rather of those creatures into which the souls of wicked men have been confined, during the course of their transmigration."

The same remark is made by Diodorus t; who not only states that it was lawful to offer red oxen, because Typho was supposed to be of that colour, but that red (or red-haired) men were formerly sacrificed by the Egyptian Kings at the altar of Osiris. This story is repeated by Athenæus, and by Plutarch‡, who states, on the authority of Manetho, that "formerly in the city of Idithya (Eilethya?), they were wont to burn even men alive, giving them the name of Typhos, and winnowing their ashes through a sieve to scatter and disperse them in the air; which human sacrifices were performed in public, at a stated season of the year, during the dog-days." But from its being directly contrary to the usages of the Egyptians, and totally inconsistent with the feelings of a civilised people, it is scarcely necessary to attempt a refutation of so improbable a

*Plut. s. 31.

Plut. s. 73. Athen. iv. p. 172.

+ Diodor. i. 88.

tale and Herodotus justly blames the Greeks * for supposing that "a people, to whom it was forbidden to sacrifice any animal, except pigs, geese, oxen, and calves, and this only provided they were clean, should ever think of immolating a human being.t"

Some have felt disposed to believe that in the earliest times (to which indeed Manetho and Diodorus confine those sacrifices), and long before they had arrived at that state of civilisation in which they are represented by the Bible history and the monuments, the Egyptians may have been guilty of these cruel practices and have sacrificed their captives at the altars of the Gods. The abolition of the custom was said to have taken place in the reign of Amosis ‡; and M. de Pauw, who is disposed to believe the statement, endeavours to excuse them by observing §, that "the famous act for burning heretics alive was only abrogated in England under the reign of Charles II.," as though it were analogous to a human sacrifice. Many even suppose the record of this ancient custom may be traced in the groups represented on the façades of Egyptian temples;

* It was a Greek custom in early times. were killed at the funeral of Patroclus, xi. 33.

Twelve Trojan captives
Menelaus was seized

by the Egyptians for sacrificing young children, with the Greek notion of appeasing the winds. (Herodot. ii. 119.)

Conf. "Sanguine placastis ventos, et virgine cæsa.'

Herodot. ii. 45.

Virg. Æn. ii, 116.

Certainly not the Amosis of the eighteenth dynasty.

Sur les Egyptiens et les Chinois, vol. ii. p. 113.

The men put to death in the ceremonies represented in the tombs

where the King occurs, as if in the act of slaying his prisoners in the presence of the God. But a strong argument against this being commemorative of a human sacrifice, is derived from the fact of the foreigners he holds in his hand not being bound, but with their hands free, and even holding their drawn swords *, plainly showing that it refers to them in a state of war, not as captives. It is therefore an allegorical picture, illustrative of the power of the King, in his contest with the enemies of his country.

Indeed, if from this any one were disposed to infer the existence of such a custom in former times, he must admit that it was abandoned long before the erection of any existing monument †, consequently ages prior to the accession of the Amosis, whose name occurs in the sculptures; long before the Egyptians are mentioned in sacred history; and long before they were that people we call Egyptians. For it is quite incompatible with the character of a nation, whose artists thought acts of clemency towards a foe worthy of record ‡,

66

of the kings appear to be either Neophytes, who were required to pass under the knife of the priest," previous to initiation, and a new life; or those condemned to a particular fate hereafter. Vide Vol. I. (1st Series) p. 267. * Vide Plate 81.

The learned Prichard (p. 363.) thinks that a subject described from the temple of Tentyra proves this custom to have existed in Egypt. But that temple is of late Ptolemaic and Roman date, and "the figure of a man, with the head and ears of an ass, kneeling, and bound to a tree, with two knives stuck into his forehead, two in his shoulders, one in his thigh, and another in his body," can scarcely be an argument in favour of a human sacrifice, unless men of that description were proved to have lived in those days.

Vide suprà, Vol. I. p. 392. and 398.

and whose laws were distinguished by that humanity which punished with death, the murder even of a slave.*

I have, therefore, no scruple in doubting this statement altogether, and in agreeing with the historian of Halicarnassus, respecting the improbability of such a custom among a civilised people. And when we consider how solemnly the Moslems declare the pillar of clay, now left at the mouths of the canals, when opened to receive the water of the inundation, to have been the substitute which the humanity of Amer adopted in lieu of the virgin annually sacrificed to the Nile at that season, (previous to the conquest of Egypt by the Arabs,) we may learn how much reliance is to be placed on tradition, and what is stated to be recorded fact. For, though Arab historians lived very near to the time when that sacrifice is said to have been abolished, though the pillar of earth is still retained to commemorate it, and though it bears the name of Haróoset e'Neel, "the bride of the Nile,”—all far stronger arguments than any brought forward respecting the human sacrifices of early Egypt, — we are under the necessity of disbelieving the existence of such sacrifices in a Christian country, at the late period of A. D. 638, when the religion of Islam supplanted that of the cross on the banks of the Nile.

That red-haired men were treated with great contempt by the Egyptians, is perfectly true. But however much their prejudices were excited

*Vide suprà, Vol. II. p. 36.