also busily taken impressions in paper, wet | been sent twice to Egypt, (in this country, paper it is to be inferred, a very reckless we regret to say, the government is supproceeding with the more delicate calca- posed to direct its attention to higher matreous monuments of Egypt. But the hand of man is rapidly annihilating what the course of time has spared; and, after all, the best mode of preserving the remains of this nation is by publishing accurate copies, and not sawing away, as Champollion did, the choicest portions of inscriptions and hypogées to enrich the walls of the Louvre at the cost of Egypt's destruction. It is vain to preach to the Arabs to-day, and mutilate the tombs to-morrow! ters, and consequently suffers literature to take care of itself,) and a Prussian expedition, under the auspices of the King of Prussia and M. Humboldt, starts in the autumn, provided with draughtsmen for three years. Great Britain trusts to the feeble voluntary system of a few amateurs or Indian passengers to effect what they can in this quarter. But the popular taste which has set in inclines strongly towards Egyptian antiquities and literature, of which we have a test in the work of Sir Gardner Wilkinson upon the manners and customs of the Egyptians, of which a second part has recently met with a highly favourable reception. It is a learned work, especially with respect to the information afforded us by the Greeks upon Egypt, and embodies a vast mass of information on a variety of branches; and although there are some details upon which we should differ considerably with the accomplished traveller, yet as a whole it is well and carefully prepared, and presents a great deal of novel matter; for example, the Bird, Ben or Bennou, in the Tamarisk of Howara, with an inscription stating it to be "the soul of Osiris," with the chest or closet of the god lying before it, is a very important addition to our knowledge of their mythology, while the elaborately drawn up chapters on the husbandry and agriculture of the Egyptians offer a very striking picture of the ancient cultivation of the soil. There is one reading with regard to an amulet of the Gnostic period, where we entertain rather a different view of the explanation to that of the learned author. qua, one of the best of the kind, is rather snake, a hawk-headed winged deity, and a dull and dry for the general reader. No frog-headed female deity seated upon a further criticism need be passed on it than that it is at present the fullest catalogue of any Egyptian collection extant, since that of the Musée du Louvre, formerly Charles X., by Champollion, is out of print, and has not been reprinted; that of Berlin is the old sale catalogue of Passalacqua; the magnificent collection of Turin waits till the directors of the Museum are acquainted with the subject; and that of the British Museum, though large compared with the bulk of the Synopsis, requires considerable expansion to make it rival the Leyden catalogue. A great portion of the remainder of M. L'Hote's work consists in the verification of what has been previously done, and the account of different hypogées which he has visited, with the various drawings which are destined for publication in their local order in the Monumens de l'Egypte et de la Nubie, now in the course of appearance. Besides the work of L'Hote the second livraison of the Monumens Egyptiens du Musée des Pays Bas has appeared, whose first number was previously mentioned. It is not of the importance of the first, and consists of the fac-simile of a religious papyrus or ritual drawn up at a late period, apparently about the Roman era, comprising the commencing chapters of the first portion illustrating the ceremonies consequent on the embalment and the conducting the mummy of the deceased to its sepulchre. A Catalogue Raisonné of the Leyden collection, very respectably executed, has appeared from the same author, but the precision of a catalogue affords little scope for the advancement of much that is new, even should the author be prepared with it. Even the Catalogue Raisonné of Passalac- It represents on one side a winged disk The knowledge and taste for hieroglyphical literature and Egyptian customs appear to have been transplanted from France to Britain. M. L'Hote, under the auspices of the ministers of public instruction, has throne, facing the hawk-headed deity; on the reverse are an hexameter and pentameter verse, reading Ε'ς Βαὶτ, εἰς " Αθωρ, μία τῶν Βία, εἰς δὲ " Ακωρι In this inscription we regard εἷς as declined poeticè from the verb εἶμι in the sense of " thou art:" "Thou art Bait, thou art Athor, one of the Bia, and thou art Hakori-Hail father of the world-Hail trimorphous god!" In that case the symbols gnostically represented the three forms of the divinity considered as a triad, the frog-headed female deity being considered as Hathor, and the hawk-headed god as Hakori. Hathor is a female deity, and as the inscription is otherwise in good Greek, μία is in good apposition, and could not be kind;" but Noub or Noum, for his name found allied with εἷς. Hakori, analogous is written indifferently, does not in the to the name Acoris of an early Egyptian hieroglyphics bear any analogy with breath, monarch, may possibly have been derived from a deity of a late epoch, Hak-Hor, a form of Horus. -the other one being written and the www (the symbol marked 3 It would require considerable space to offer an analysis of the opinions relative to representing the spread sail catching the the Pantheon set forth by Sir Gardner with his usual ability and judgment, yet there are some points on which we could desire a more strict adherence to the monu air, and there beautifully employed as its determinative) while ly in the inscriptions accompanied by the three streams of water forming the phonetic equivalent analogous to the Coptic word "the abyss" of the primordial mental information considered as distinct from the Greeks; the later writers of Paganism, platonizing over Pantheism, endeavouring to veil the expiring agonies of the national religion with an air of philosophy and system, which, applicable no doubt in an amphibolic sense to the religion, never embodied its original ideas, or its doctrine edly textually called & “substance, matas explained by the priests themselves. ter." These are not put forth as blemishes Our information is, of course, traditionally of Sir Gardner's work, who is perfectly deficient, but from what does remain, we are disposed to consider the early religion of the Egyptians a system of local worship. How, for example, can we otherwise explain the fact that Phtah, the eponymous protector of Memphis, is rarely, if ever, found at Abydos or Thebes-or Amounra at Memphis and Abydos, where Osiris is the main divinity, and that the worship of the "disk of the sun" at Alabastron and Psinaula is rare at Thebes, and never found at Memphis-that no individual is found qualified Osirian after death until the nineteenth dynasty, and that no one divinity, except this last god, attained to anything like universal worship? Chnouphis, for example, was the local god of Elephantina, and even when his names and titles are found at spots far and wide from his seat of worship, he is always qualified "lord of Elephantina." The labours of Champollion, in his "Lettres écrites de l'Egypte," clearly proved that the deities in their local worship were as unaltered as the language, the old temples erected to them by the early Pharaohs having been repaired under the Romans, no other worship being substituted for the old local one. Again, there is one supposition put forth, which, although excessively ingenious, is not justified by the inscriptions; it is thisthat the deity Chnouphis indicates the xvèo, or breath, spirit moving upon the face of the waters. That Chnouph indicates primordial water, we are aware, because it is over the "waters," "the pure waters," that he always presides; and that he is a creative power, we equally perceive from those inscriptions in which he is stated " to fabricate upon his wheel the divine limbs of Osiris," and to be "the builder of all man- | waters out of whose elements the world was formed, and the same deity is repeat justified by the later Greek authorities, but as philological proofs that the Greeks are frail authorities, especially the later sophists, on any or every question of Egyptian mythology. There is another deity in the Pantheon who has excited a good deal of attention, but who has never as yet received any satisfactory explanation either as to his attributes or name. His form replaces in the cartouche of Osirei Menephtah II. that of the god Osiris, and has been in the majority of instances most carefully chiselled out, and that evidently of old; the name has been supposed to be Seth, which is one of Typhon's appellations; another of his names is identical with that of the town of Ombos; a third, which is to be found in the Excerpta Hieroglyphica of Burton, gives his appellation as identical with that of the negroes in the tomb of Menephtah I. at Thebes. Nahsi at this place appears to be the name of the black race of Cush or Æthiopia, as distinguished from the copper-coloured races to the south of Egypt. The bird which is represented in the commencement of the word is coloured completely black, and is the restricted initial phonetics of this group only, to which it otherwise serves as a determinative, and its head forms that of the deity in question. On a papyrus in the British Museum (Salt, No. 825) this very deity Nahsi is represented bound with his hands behind his back to an Asiatic prisoner, just as the actual negro is drawn in other monuments. From this it must be inferred that this god represents one of the forms of Typhon, considered as the personification of the impious race of Cush or Æthiopia, whose name and attribute and inflictions he bears. There are also some other considerations up • eighteenth dynasty. on the names and attributes of deities which | It conveys a beautiful picture of the decorathrow light upon the notions entertained by tions of the tombs, and a powerfully graphic the Egyptians. For example, attached to a illustration of the expenses contingent upon representation of Netpe pouring a libation, the funeral of persons of rank under the and emerging from a sycamore tree, a subject repeated at the great funereal ritual, in the chapter entitled "The drinking the living waters in Noutehir," occurs in Sir J. Gardner's plate the following text: "Netpe, the great resplendence, with her name in the sycamore, we consecrate to thee these libations; refresh thy heart with it, with these waters manifested" *** the rest being deficient. The soul of the deceased eagerly catches one of the streams of living water. Thus the god called Khem by Wilkinson, and Harsaphes by Champollion, is frequently in the texts called Har-nasht, "the victorious Horus," which accounts for the constant presence of this deity in the triumphal processions of the kings. It is in this capacity that the statue of this deity is borne along in the procession of Rameses Meiamoun, representing, according to Sir J. Gardner, the ceremonies performed at the coronation of a king, from the sculptures of Rameses III. at Medenet Haboo; for the deity there, although he appears to be worshipped in the capacity of Lord of the soil, is notwithstanding in his attributes, the lord of victory; and in the speech addressed by the god (part E.) the deity states, "We give you all power and all victory." The white bull in this sculpture is probably the living emblem of Har-nasht, mystically termed the husband of his mother-considered as Amoun, the father of the very triad of which, as Har-nasht, he was the son; and since the whole of the inscriptions run in his praise, we are disposed to consider that it is intended to show what is termed on the earlier monuments "The panegyry of the manifestation of Harsaphes." Among other points connected with this interesting plate are the declarations uttered before the deity and the bearing of the usual offerings and standards by the "Negroes of Pount" or "Libya," (Part G. H.), connecting the ceremony with the worship of Ammon in his oracle at the oasis in the desert and at Meroe; for it is to be observed that the Libyans here appear not as captives, but equally participating in the rights along with the sons and brethren of the king. In bringing his labours to a conclusion, the author of necessity touches on the funereal ceremonies, and among other beautiful illustrations of this portion is a magnificent plate, printed in colours, representing the funereal ceremonies performed upon the decease of Nofreophth, a scribe of Ammon. We now have to touch upon another scholar, avowedly, is not open to the same the year, in Thoth the commencement of the year. As from time immemorial the public documents were dated by regnal years, the year was probably calculated from the coronation, whether from accident or design; the celebration of the festival was made to tally with the course of the year, and recall the identity of the king and the sun. However, that the royal birthday was a movable feast, and calculated from the actual event, is certain, from the historical stele published by Rosellini and Leemans, by which the regnal years are calculated for the life of an individual in such a manner as would not coincide with the present date. composed of two separate portions, -the | gyry of Thoth at the commencement of the "red crown" and the "white crown," - M. year," and otherwise in the completion of Letronne imagines that it answers to the κυνέη, out of which Psammetichus poured his libation (Herod. ii., s. 142); but the Egyptian helmet is the crown called tosh, and is always on the head of the king when helmed in the military scenes, while its peculiar shape bears much greater analogy to the term κυνέη, as used by Herodotus; for example, the κυνέη Κορινθιάκη, which, thrown upon the back of the head, with its visor up, exactly resembles the tosh; the κυνέη, too, of Psammetichus, was of brass, and we may doubt if the pschent can be shown to have been of this material. Another illustration may be given relative to the γενεθλία of the king mentioned in the Greek: he observes, that the day of celebration being the actual Before taking our leave entirely of the birthday, no conclusion can be arrived at question, we have a new reading to propose relative to any astronomical circumstances with regard to the hieroglyphical version of connected either with this festival, or that the inscription: the three writings being of the coronation on the 17th of Mecheir. distinctly mentioned as "the writing of the Champollion has proved that the hiero- divine words (hieroglyphics)," "the writing glyphical text here substitutes the month of of the books (or epistolographic of ClePaophi for that of Mecheir in the Greek, mens)," "the enchorial," and "the writing of four months sooner, evidently erroneously, since the compliment would have breathed rather cold, and the demotic reads with the Greek Mecheir. The point of the γενεθλία being a fixed or a moveable feast cannot yet be considered as determined; every day in the Egyptian calendar was either a fast or a festival, and two 30ths of months, those of Epiphi and Mecheir, were, from the evidence of Plutarch on the one hand, "the celebration of the birthday of the eyes of Horus (symbolic eyes)," and from the ritual on the other, "the day of clothing the symbolic eye in Poni (eye of Horus), on the 30th of Mecheir, that I may behold the filling of the eye in Poni, in the presence of the god of that country." We quote from the part of the ritual entitled, "The Book of going to the Hall of the Two Truths." Of the two festivals, however, the coronation should be rather expected to be found fixed; the γενεθλία, the actual birthday, variable since the Egyptians paid particular attention to nativities; and a Græco-Egyptian one has been found cast in Greek. Letronne also considers that the restoration of Porson, to whom he generally inclines, is here undoubted; in fact, that the demotic, according to Champollion, states "each in its month" to be dated from the first of Thoth, and the νεομήνια, which Letronne has restored to its right sense, the first of Thoth, was apparently the commencement of the Egyptian year, upon which, following the authority of the earlier monuments, a festival of Thoth was held, as during the "pane the Ionians," the Greek. With this last part of the inscription, the enchorial text bears a much greater analogy than the hieroglyphic with the Greek version. A point upon which M. Letronne constantly insists is the priority of the Greek version. The testimony of Letronne to the truth of the discovery of the manner of reading the sacred character may be placed on the same shelf with the declaration of Niebuhr, and the slow but sure progress of truth is insensibly winning its way with an irresistible power, which nothing can daunt or destroy. In this country the current of popular opinion is rapidly verging toward the ocean of Egyptian lore, and among those works which are more particularly calculated to afford a lucid explanation of Egyptian philology directed to all capacities, we may notice "The Antiquities of Egypt" put forth by a religious society, to elucidate more especially the connection of the Jews and their bondmasters, since the connection alluded to, rather than distinctly mentioned, in the Old Testament, must, previous to the desolation of the arms of Shishak, have always been politically strong;-the one in their flank marches upon central Asia, or Syria, encountering the Philistines or Phœnicians, and assisting indirectly in maintaining the independence of Judah; while the other, from similar institutions, many of them equally influencing the habits and tastes of the two races, looking with a favourable eye to their old masters, now new allies, and reposing in the shadow of the riches and influence of Egypt. It is pleasing to reflect duit en Gaule.* Agathias writes that they were a people of Asia. "Hunni quondam circa lacum Mæotidem loca incoluere in arcturum potius versi, ut barbarorum cæteræ nationes, quæ quod infra Imaum montem Asiam insident, hi omnes et Scythæ et Hunni vocitabantur: seorsum tamen et per generationes. Nam partim Cotriguri appellantur, partim Ultizuri, partim Burgundi, partim alias utcunque patrium illis est gentibus, et consuetum nominari." After mentioning the temporary possession which some of these nations had of the territories they seized upon, their subsequent final overthrow, and even the entire perishing of their names, he adds, "sed Ultizuri, Burgundique ad Leonis usque tempora Romanorum imperatoris celebres extitere." It is that, in this country, where a fungous and unhealthy state of archæological research into the obscure too frequently finds favour, there is light as well as darkness, and that the morbid sense is on the decrease, which discovers a Hebrew in every tomb, and Pharaoh's signet in every ring. When the labours of Rosellini are completed, the circle of the monumental history of Egypt is finished; the eyes of Europe must then be cast on those barbarian efforts which convert the records of art and antiquity into quarries, and destroy what they cannot equal. Day after day plunder and mutilation are rooting up all that remains. Another century, and what Egypt was, will be a tale. Woe to Egypt! "The impure foreigner," whom she bound to her chariots, trod under probable that a body of Burgundians, tempt her sandals, and forced to excavate the tem- ed by the expectation of plunder, or influples of her gods, recklessly mocks and de-enced by the renown of his name, might faces the palaces of her kings and the tombs of her dead. The original place from which the Burgundians came, and their race, have been matters of great dispute with historians and geographers. "Germanorum genera quinque: Vindili, quorum pars Burgundiones, Varini, Carini, Guttones." - Plin. Nat. Hist. lib. iv. § 28. "Par lesquels mots," says Paradin, in the first page of his Annales de Bourgogne, "l'on peut assez conjecturer la noblesse et antiquité de cette nation, laquelle est mise au premier rang des cinq premiers races de l'antique et noble Germanie; chose que monstre assez ce que n'est un nom nouvellement forgé et intro have served under Attila, and thus have caused the error of Agathias. Valesius imagines that the Burgundi and Burgundiones were different people. This, however, is totally improbable. Jerome and Orosius call the same nation Burgundiones to which Marcellinus gives the appellation of Burgundi.t Malte Brun assigns to them a Gothic origin, and says all that remains of the Burgundian language indicates that they spoke Gothic dialect. It is to be wished that Malte Brun had told us where these traces of their language are to be found. It is singular that the Vandal race, once so fearfully celebrated in the annals of mankind, has so utterly perished from the face of the earth, that we are not aware that any vestiges of their language can be traced, so as to throw any light on the disputed question of their origin. a All these surmises, however, are in direct opposition to the plain and decisive authority of Pliny, as quoted above. His opinion deserves great weight. He composed the history of Drusus, who, in conjunction with Tiberius, conquered these very Burgundians: besides, he himself served in Germany about sixty years after the death of Drusus. Mascou, whose History of the Ancient Germans is a work of very great research, confirms the declaration of Pliny. He says, "the accounts we meet with of their manners, which entirely agree with those of the ancient German nations, |