VOL. I. The Sphinx. NOVEMBER, 1899. Sphinx Religion. No. 5. [James Bonwick, F. R. G. S. "Egyptian Belief and Modern Thought." London, 1878.] THE recent progress of Egyptian discovery, particularly under the regime of Mariette Bey, appears to throw new light upon the subject of sphinx religion. A votive pyramid of immense antiquity has been recovered from Saqqarah, on one side of which is a dedication to Harmachus, the sphinx deity. At the foot of the three pyramids of Gizeh is some curious hieroglyphics. When read, the following remarkable announce ment came:— "The place of the sphinx of Hor-em-Khou (Armachus) is to the south of the temple of Isis, rectress of the Pyramid, and at the north (of the temple) of Osiris, Lord of Rosatou. The paintings of the god of Hor-em-Khou are conformed to the prescriptions." It further states that king Cheops restored the sphinx. This clearly identifies the Great Sphinx with Egyptian deities. As a doubt may arise in some minds as to the age of this curious stone tablet, Mariette Bey judiciously remarks: "Whether the stone be a contemporary of Cheops or belongs to a posterior date, it is not less certain that Cheops (builder of the Great Pyramid) restored a temple already existing, assigned to it revenues in sacred offerings, and renewed the personnel of the statues of gold, silver, bronze, and wood, which ornamented the sanctuary." A tablet recovered from a well gives express particulars of Suphis, identified as Cheops, doing all that Mariette describes, and, particularly, repairing the sphinx. This structure, then, is doubtless older than the Great Pyramid itself, and is associated 257 with a temple and various divinities honored at that epoch. But where were the temples which Cheops restored and adorned? Where, above all, was the temple of Hor-em-Khou, of the sphinx? A few years ago Mariette Bey had the good fortune to drop upon this temple, long buried in the sand, close to the sphinx, near the Great Pyramid. Of all the wonders of Gizeh witnessed by the writer, that of the so-called sphinx temple was not the least important and suggestive. Lepsius writes, "It is named Har-em-chu, Horus in the Horizon,' that is to say, the sun-god, the type of all things, and Harmachus, in a Greek inscription before the sphinx." The sphinx then is the god Harmachus, or Horus in the Horizon, a form, it may be, of Ra, the sun-god, and it means the risen god. But the German savant goes on to say, "The dipus for this king of all sphinxes is yet wanting. Whoever would drain the immeasurable sand which buries the tombs themselves, and lay open the base of the sphinx, the ancient temple path, and the surrounding hills, could easily describe it." "O blessed Ra On the tablets we read prayers like these: Harmachus self-sprung!" Brugsch, in speaking of Harmachus, says: "The great bearded sphinx of the Pyramids of Gizeh is its symbol; the same as each Egyptian Pharaoh who bore, in the inscriptions, the name of "living form of the solar sphinx upon the earth." St. Hilaire, the friend of Thiers, wrote from Egypt: "It appears certain that the sphinx was an idol." Prof. Smyth calls it an idol, having "symptoms typifying the lowest mental organization," and "positively reeks with idolatry throughout its substance," inasmuch as its stone beard was found "full of the impure Egyptian gods." [To be continued.] The Duration of Life. How easy it is to acquire a national, if an ephemeral, reputation in America. All that is necessary is to say or do something extraordinary in the most public manner possible. The ubiquitous reporter will at once chronicle your words or describe your deed and twenty-four hours later you will find your name in every newspaper, and, if there happens to be a lack of other news during the next few days, you may also find that your words or deed have become the theme of a symposium, to which all who are supposed, rightly or wrongly, to have any knowledge of the subject at issue, have been invited to contribute. Such a symposium has recently occupied several columns in many of the leading daily papers of the country. The questions, which the contributors were invited to answer, were two: first, Has a physician any right to shorten the life of a patient, who is supposed to be mortally ill and who longs for death? and, second, is a physician bound under all circumstances to do his utmost to keep a patient alive as long as possible, even though the patient may be in agony, and practically at death's door? It was a reputable jurist who started this journalistic ball rolling by his expression of doubt as to the desirability of retaining life in those patients who, owing to some mortal malady, were debarred from enjoying life, and his words were in a measure endorsed by an outspoken Connecticut physician, who insisted that it is permissible to confer the boon of death upon patients whose recovery is impossible. The replies to these questions were just what might have been expected. With few exceptions, all who took part in the discussion doctors, lawyers, clergymen, financiers — maintained that the jurist and the Connecticut physican were wrong. In the arguments advanced by them there was nothing new. That human life is sacred, that the duty of a physician is to heal and not to destroy, that a mortal illness does not always or neces |