a father (from Ab, Heb.), and Moou signified water, as Josephus informs us, it is evident that the strict interpretation is, the father of the waters. "To this last divinity," he proceeds, "this and two other chapels were particularly consecrated. He is called the father of the gods, and identified with the celestial Nile, Nenmoou, the primordial water, the great Nilus, whom Cicero calls the father of the principal divinities of Egypt, even of Ammon': which I have found attested also by monumental inscriptions." 2 This must have been Osiris in the character of Noah; for Hermes in that book, which professes to be a revelation of Egyptian secrets, declares that Osiris was the father of Spirits, i. e. the gods, and the head of every nation of mankind. When, therefore, we are told, that the wiser Egyptians denominated the Nile Osiris, and the sea Typhon, there is no way of explaining the story of the latter compelling the former to enter an ark, except by supposing the Nile to represent the man, who really was subjected to that necessity. And then too it is easy to understand

3

1 Cicero de Nat. Deor. 1. iii. c. 22.

2 Twelvth Letter from Egypt.

3 Ψυχῶν μὲν — ὁ πατὴρ

σωμάτων δὲ ἐκάστου ἔθνους ἡγεμών. — Κόρη Κόσμου. Fabric. Bib. Græc. vol. i. c. 7.

4 Plutarch de Is. et Osir. c. 33. Levesque was much perplexed by finding mariners mentioned in Herodotus among the Egyptian castes, and asks what they could be in a country which regarded the sea with horror, as the symbol of the evil principle Typhon, and had no navy after the time of Sesostris, whose existence may be doubted; for he considered Sesostris to be another name for Osiris and Dionusus. Etudes de l'Histoire Ancienne, i. 58. and 313.

They were Arkites.

2

why the Egyptians honoured their gods with tears, as well as with rejoicings; why the commemoration of his entering the Ark was solemnised with lamentations; why he was said to be born on the right side of the world, that is, at his exit from the Ark, and to have perished on the left, that is, at his entrance into it; and, finally, why a ship was borne in procession in the solemnities of Isis, when she was said to mourn for Osiris. Some notion of the real origin of these wailings so remarkable at a religious festival, seems to have been retained in a proverb handed down to us by Hermogenes "to weep after the manner of Annacus." The name, however, being also spelled Cannacus, and Nannacus, it is not unlikely that the first syllable was merely a prefix liable to change, and that the real word was Noachus; for he is said to have lived to the age of three hundred ages, and foreseeing the deluge, which afterwards destroyed mankind, commonly called the deluge of Deucalion, he assembled all the people to divine worship, and mingled tears with his supplications; tears, however, which could not be shed upon his own account 3; for an oracle had pronounced his exemption from a share in that catastrophe. Osiris, indeed, died,

1 Pausanias 1. x. c. 33.

2 Stephanus in 'Ixovov. Erasmus in Adagiis, p. 19. Suidas.

3

3 One account states that his neighbours had learned from an oracle that when he died all mankind would be destroyed; in this case his death must be understood figuratively of his interment in the Ark; for it is manifest, says Bryant, that Annacus, and Nannacus, and even Inachus relate to Noachus, or Noah. -- Analy. of Mythol. ii. 206.

and was mourned'; but his entrance into the Ark was death, and his continuance there the period of mourning. Hence the ark, like the receptacle for departed souls, was considered a place of confinement; and his name, under whichever form it may be viewed, conveys an allusion to this opinion; in either case, too, it is connected with the flood. Siris, we have already seen, was a name for the Nile, the Egyptian ocean; and Sira both in Syriac and Chaldee signified a prison. In the same spirit, the Celtic bard denominates the Ark the inclosure of Caer Sidi 2, and the prison of Kûd, and the prison of Gwair or the just one in Caer Sidi.

This serves to explain the history of the two constellations which are now called Canis Major and Canis Minor. One of them was the Dog of Isis, and consequently of Osiris; for they always go together, she being the female genius of the Ark, as he was the male; and as her ship was reverenced not only in Egypt but also in Greece and Italy, so he had a ship 230 cubits in length

1 ἀποθνήσκει θεὸς Αἰγύπτιοις και πενθεῖται.

Maximus Tyrius.

2 Taliessin's Spoils of the Deep, and the Triads. - Davies's Celtic Mythology, p. 404.

3 Communis unicuique Deo uterque sexus erat. - Selden de D. S. c. iii. p. 50. One of the most remarkable instances of this is the conversion of Orion into a female. Abdurrahmân Sûphi records an Arabian tradition, that Canopus, having broken the back of his wife Orion, fled away to the south pole, for fear of inquiry, and was followed across the galaxy by one of his dogs, who are also called his sisters, but were in fact his priests: and the murder, which he perpetrated, must have been the destruction of a ritual with which he was intimately connected. See Hyde's Syntagma Dissertatio-` num, i. 65.

dedicated to him at Thebes. The other dog was Osiris too, for Sirius was his ordinary name, which, according to the statement of Diodorus, was in more ancient times the name of Osiris.' But the Arabic names of both were Al Shira, which, if the Coptic meaning be supposed to have been retained, will signify that each of them was a son of the first king Ham, and consequently they will be Mizraim and Phut. But if the Syriac word be taken into account, we must add this further meaning, that they were the constellations in which the souls of those heroes were detained: hence chains and bolts were called, in Greek and Latin, Seira and Sera. In the next place, if the Theban form of spelling the name be examined, we shall find the very same allusions, for Shail in Arabic is a torrent, and Shalshall signifies not only the pouring out of water, but also includes the notion of chains; hence there is great reason to believe that Sheol used for Hades, or the place of departed spirits, was originally derived; for it has no natural connection with the root usually assigned to it, and Shir being the same in sense as Sira, Sheol may also be the same with Sil; at all events to this source we may certainly trace the name of a place in the Thebais, which is written Silsilis and Selseleh, where there was a great Speos or mystic cell, excavated in a mountain and dedicated to Ammon, and the Nile, and to Sevek, who is

3 Champollion's Eighth and Twelvth Letters from Egypt. Bel

Saturn with a crocodile's head, that is, the same personage who was fabled to have been saved by crossing a lake on a crocodile's back', and is also described as the most terrible form of Ammon. Hence, too, arose the name of the Selli, who dwelled round Dodona; for Homer expressly describes them as having their beds in the ground 2, because they reposed sometimes in those mystic excavations which are still found where the Celtic religion prevailed; and thence the Scilly Islands, formerly inhabited by the Silures, obtained their appellation. One of them is still called the Long, i. e. the ship. Mr. Ranking mentions some circular inclosures on the summits of the mountains between which the river Selé flows in the Commune de Breingues. On the rocks of the right bank there are several cavities or grottoes 300 metres above the river. It is true that bones were found there; but whether they were brought from the Roman amphitheatre at Cahors, or whether they are the remnants of Druidical sacrifices, as M. Delpon supposes, it is quite clear that the grottoes were not originally intended to receive them, but for far different purposes. They must

zoni speaks of the Silsili mountains, as having the name of the Chained mountains, but ridicules the common idea, that there ever was a chain stretched from one to the other across the Nile, ii. 106.

1 Hence the crocodile was revered in some towns of Egypt; but the Tintyrites, or people of Dendera, who devoted their worship to Isis, viewing him as the Typhonic power and the emblem of destruction, abhorred him and carried on an irreconcilable war against him. Etudes de l'Hist. Anc., par P. C. Levesque, i. 267. 2 Σελλοὶ χαμαιεῦναι. Hom. Iliad. II. 235. 3. Journal of Science, for 1828, p. 267.