with me, that no allusion to those ornaments can be apparently more direct, and no description of the images themselves more accurate, than the following in Ezekiel. Under the character of ABOLIBAH, an abandoned prostitute, does JEHOVAH thus parabolically stigmatise the idolatrous devotion of the apostate Judah. She doated upon the Assyrians, her neighbours; captains and rulers, clothed most gorgeously. And, when she saw men pourtrayed upon the walls, the images of the Chaldeans pourtrayed with vermilion, girded with girdles upon their loins, exceeding in dyed attire upon their heads, all of them princes to look to, after the manner of the Babylonians of Chaldea, the land of their nativity; then, as soon as she saro them with her eyes, she doated upon them, and sent messengers unto them unto Chaldea. And, again, towards the close of the same chapter, it is said: "Moreover this they have done unto me:

WHEN THEY HAD SLAIN THEIR CHILDREN TO

THEIR IDOLS; then they came, the same day, unto my sanctuary to profane it. And, farthermore, ye have sent for men to come from far, unto whom a messenger was sent ;" and, lo! they came, for whom THOU DIDST WASH THYSELF, (that is, perform ablutions,) PAINTEDST

THINE EYES, AND DECKEDST THYSELF WITH

ORNAMENTS. And sattest upon a stately bed,

with a TABLE (that is, an altar) PREPARED

BEFORE IT, WHEREUPON THOU HAST SET MINE INCENSE AND MINE OIL. And a voice of a multitude, being at ease, was with her, and with the men of the common sort were brought Sabians (that is, worshippers of the planets) from the wilderness WHICH PUT BRACE

*

LETS UPON THEIR HANDS, AND BEAUTIFUL

CROWNS UPON THEIR HEADS." +

We have now travelled through the caverns of the Thebais, those most antient and sacred retreats, successively the mansions of the illustrious living and the repositories of the mighty dead we have explored their inmost recesses, and examined their ornamental sculptures. We have, in the course of our progress, purposely omitted to take any very particular notice of those numerous and superb structures in their neighbourhood, whose height and majesty, even in ruins, awe the astonished spectator, because it is our intention to devote a future chapter of this work entirely to the consideration of that stupendous species of massy architecture and hieroglyphic decoration, which alike distinguish antient

* The term SABIAN is derived from SABA, a host: that is,

THE HOST OF HEAVEN.

+ Ezekiel, chap. xxiii. ver. 14, 15.

Egypt

Egypt and antient India. The Greeks, who possessed no quarries in such abundance, and had a more correct taste, in this walk of science alone rejected the model of their

masters.

This survey finished, the only remaining subject of investigation is, by what channel the Greeks arrived at so intimate a knowledge of the mythology of India, as their paintings, their emblematical sculptures, and their sacred fables, for the most part borrowed from that country, prove them to have acquired? Was it by means of the commercial intercouse which was opened with the latter country by the conquests of Alexander, and carried on under the government of, the Ptolemies, his successors, in Egypt? That period is surely too late in the annals of time, since the vast and complicated system of the Greek mythology was formed, and vigorously flourished, previously to the invasion of Alexander. We must search for the origin of the connection, as well as the source of this analogy, in æras far more remote, even at that distant period when the philosophers and theologists of Greece successively resorted to the colleges of Upper Egypt, and imbibed the principles of wisdom and science at its supposed fountain-head, amidst the gloom and solitude

solitude of those sacred caverns which Pocock and Norden have so accurately described.

That, even at this distant period, their acquaintance with the literature and mythology of the Higher Asia did by no means commence, though the result of their knowledge might be then first formed into a regular system, will hereafter be made clear to the reader in a future chapter upon the pure original theology of Asia and the Oriental Triads of Deity; since the Phoenician Taut and the Thracian Orpheus, whose respective systems will be extensively considered, and both of whom flourished before the Trojan war, doubtless laid the foundation-stone of the fabric of Grecian science and theology. Thales, however, being universally considered as the father of the Grecian philosophy, it will be sufficient, in this place, to trace the vestigia of that venerable sage in his expedition to Egypt. Our historical review of the doctrines and travels of Pythagoras and Plato, in which the preceding assertions will be more amply verified, must be reserved for a future portion of this work.

This first and wisest of the

renowned

Zopo of Greece was born at Miletus, and flourished at the beginning of the sixth century before Christ, and consequently near three hundred

VOL. II.

A a

hundred years previous to the irruption of the Macedonians into India. From the circumstance of his having invented the constellation of the Little Bear, some antient authors, and among them Hyginus and Suidas,* supposed Thales to have been a Phoenician, but the fact itself of his having first formed into a constellation the stars of the Ursa Minor is exceedingly doubtful, since the Phoenician navigators, in their daring expeditions to the most distant regions of the globe, during ages far anterior to that of Thales, could scarcely have performed those remote voyages without the help of the guiding ray, shed by the pole-star, from the very centre of the Arctic circle. Its name of Cynosura is undoubtedly Grecian, being compounded of xuvos and spa, the tail of a dog; but its more antient name was Phoenice, which immediately points to its inventors, the old Phoenicians. All that can be allowed is, that he brought this asterism from Phoenicia, whither it is acknowledged he travelled, into Greece. The expedition of Thales into Phoenicia, according to Laertius, his geo

* See Suidas in voce Thales, and Hyginus in Astronom, lib. ii. P. 126

† Diogenes Laertius in Vita Thalis, p. 58.

grapher,