last were dedicated to Hecate and perhaps Neith, so may we safely presume that the Pentaglyphs were dedicated to Apis; nor is it unworthy of notice that the metope is the figure of a globe in a rectangle; light rising from the receptaculum of nature. It is not unlikely that the above Pentaglyph implied "Silence."

I have stated the sum of what is known respecting the worship; of his mysteries as Serapis we have no detailed account, and therefore can only infer them from the gleanings of ancient writers, the vestiges of cognate theologies, and their combination with monumental documents that remain. From these it appears that they were the oldest in the world, and entered into the religious dogmas of most, if not all of the primæval nations. The ancient Persians pictured the first man with a bull's head.1 The Hindoos anciently and still venerate the same character. One of the avatars pictures the bull-man perishing in the flood. A bull-headed human form is frequent among Javanese monuments, and agrees precisely with similar figures on those of Egypt. The monuments preserved by Hyde leave nothing undone on the same subject as far as concerns the Mythraic rites. The Osiris of Egypt was sometimes pourtrayed with a bull's head, sometimes with bull's horns. Among the Syrians Astarte was a human figure with a bull's head, for she was male and female. Among the Phoenicians, Moloch bore the head of an ox on the shoulders of a man. The Greek Osiris, Bacchus Bugenes or Tauriformis, wore the same form; so did the Minotaur. The golden fleece and golden apples were guarded by bulls. Even the Druids devoted two milk-white steeds to the mysterious misletoe. The same traditional hieroglyphic appears repeatedly among Jewish antiquities. They had scarcely left Egypt when they recurred to the worship of the Calf Apis; and as it was their first offence, it adhered to them till their punishment and dispersion. "Thy called, oh Samaria! has cast thee off." Their chimerical bulls or cherubim are evident Egyptian figures. The twelve bulls of Solomon's brazen sea, arranged in threes towards each cardinal point, may be compared with the twelve bulls surrounding the pyramidal apex

I See Gibbon's account of the Zendavista and Persian tenets. An apple formed rudely into the shape of a bull was offered to Hercules. A bull's head hung upon an apple-tree was sacred to Mithra Victor, see Hyde. It is not a little singular that the root of the word malum, apple, may be traced in two other words, malum and melior, implying good and evil.

of the Heliopolitan pillar, arranged also in threes to each cardinal point. The Behemoth and Leviathan of the Rabbins are the Osiris, Apis, and river dragon Typhon of the Egyptians. To the first were given the Elysios collos of Hesiod, the thousand hills promised to Joseph the patriarch, symbolised as an ox, as were his sons Manasseh and Ephraim; to the last was consigned the Ocean. His final wound I need not insist upon; but the division of Behemoth, the Paradisiac land, among the elect, is of great importance to my case. It agrees with the division of Apis; it most particularly coincides with the appropriation of his thigh, the chosen part of the gods, the region sacred to oaths; the Meros of the Greeks, the Paradisiac Meros of the Hindoos, the tenth world of Horticulturists, seated in the thigh of Brahma.

.

It is worthy here of remark, that pots of flowers, similar to what were called the gardens of Adonis, (see Coptic Manuscript in Denon,) were offered to the ox; neither will it be unimportant to add, that apples and apple-trees were connected with the mysteries of Apis.

What is human reason to infer from all this singular analogy of facts, and images as singular? My inference is short: That the whole is a hieroglyphical portraiture, (of what Moses described in words,) viz., of the fall and expected restoration of man, with some dark shadowing of the means through the death of a second Adam, leader or teacher, (ox in Hebrew.)

There is nothing in the least illogical in our supposition, that Ham, whose name Egypt bears to this day, and who lived with the antediluvians, should have handed down the creed and traditions of the first men to his children, in the only language they possessed; nor is it wonderful, from the metaphorical nature of that language, that these traditions should become distorted, and vary from the true and simple statement of Moses, himself an Egyptian scribe. Neither the general coherency, nor peculiar variations, of these traditions, ought therefore to excite the least surprise. But it is incumbent on me to proceed to a more elaborate proof of my hypothesis. My first position is, that Apis was a symbol of antediluvian man; when connected with apples, his paradisiacal state was implied; when connected with water, scyphi, crescents, &c., his partial destruction by a deluge.

It is scarcely necessary to argue that all the pagan fables of apples are referable to the forbidden fruit-those, for instance, of Atalanta, of Hercules, of Discord and the rival goddesses. Let the reader examine these fables, and judge for himself.

It is calculated that the vernal equinox, at the creation, was in the first degree of Taurus. Two thousand years after, Aries, by the precession of the equinoxes, occupied its place, and Aries is, accordingly, the first sign on the most ancient of the zodiacs. Taurus was, therefore, an apt and legitimate symbol of antediluvian man, and we may presume that the mysteries of Apis related to that state.

The mythological account of the fall differs little from that of Moses. According to Plato and his disciples, man fell when he descended from his intellectual to a sensual state, and multiplied himself. This was apparently Milton's idea. It was the version of a large portion of the early Christians, and thence the celibacy of the monastic orders. Moses, therefore, may have employed a delicate metaphor to express what Plato philosophically inferred, and the double interpretation of fruit and fruition at this day warrants the inference. The Mahometans say, that incontinency was the cause of the fall.

Another pagan fable bears a remarkable coincidence to the narrative of Moses. The pagan Eve, Persephoneh, (which name signifies lost fruit,) is condemned to Hades, or death, for eating a portion of the forbidden pomegranate.

Numerous pictorial and symbolical representations of the same event may be referred to. I apprehend that, according to the laws of hieroglyphical writing, the narrative of Moses could not have been more closely adhered to. I will endeavour to refer to these pictorial descriptions in the order of the Mosaic account.

Montfaucon exhibits several instances of the Bull-man, or first parent, crowned with apples.

Osiris was represented as enclosed in the thigh of Apis, an emblem of Paradise.

Protogonus and Eon, the first man and woman, were described as sailing through space in an egg-shaped vehicle. There are similar representations among the hieroglyphics.

On one of the Egyptian planispheres, exhibited by Kircher, instead of Astrea, who represented the paradisiacal state, there appears a fruit-tree, with two dogs in the branches looking different ways. Now, two cynocephali were symbols of light and darkness, of good and evil.

On a mythraic sculpture, preserved by Hyde, there are two

fruit-trees. The first has a scorpion winding round it, and near it a ladder, which was the mystic symbol of descent or fall. Scorpio, on some Egyptian zodiacs, is a serpent-in others Typhon, depictured as the devil now is, with a serpent's tail and breathing flames.

In Montfaucon there are many representations of the Hespe rian tree, with a serpent twined round it, and a male and female on the opposite sides.

So much for illustration of the Mosaic theory of the fall. The Hesperian gardens, in fact, were the pagan Paradise-the golden apples the fruit of the tree of life and the dragon, or seraph, the angel who guarded the way of it. Sometimes, indeed, a chimera, resembling the Jewish cherubim, was substituted for the seraph or fiery serpent. At others, the golden apples were converted into a golden fleece, and the bulls (the cherubim of the Hebrews) with fiery breath, were the guardians. Griffins (a mixed monster, also resembling the cherub,) are, in a different hieroglyphical version of the same story, guarding the "treasures of the everlasting hills" promised to Joseph. Throughout it is the same Mosaic story, only differently colored by the picturing vehicle.

I conceive, then, that dramas, not unlike the sacred mysteries copied from them by the Romish Church, were exhibited during the preparatory stages of initiation, and subsequently explained; that in the sacred chest called the Sarcophagus, a figure of Osiris in inferis was deposited with a serpent and a phallus, a dry branch, as at the mysteries of the Greek Osiris; that portions of the dismembered Apis were most probably deposited with them, and particularly the thigh, from which Bacchus and Erechthon were born. And indeed it is not unlikely that all the remaining symbols, placed in the Mundus Cereris, and decidedly Egyptian, were during initiation produced and explained, These consisted of a phallus, sesame, pomegranates, a dry stem, baked cakes, salt, carded wool, honey and cheese, a child, a serpent, and a fan. The meaning of these symbols will be easily caught at by those who are conversant with the subject of hieroglyphical inquiry, but would require a separate treatise, and in short composed the subject of a set lecture at Eleusis. I shall only remark at present the assertion of the Rabbins, that the Mosaic tabernacle contained the dead staff of Aaron which sprouted into life, and the Urim and Thummim1 supposed to

' Perhaps derived from Orus, light, and Thammuz, mourning. VOL. XXIX.

Cl. JI.

NO. LVIII.

T

represent the six signs of the upper, and six of the lower hemisphere.

But whether these circumstances were as I have supposed or not, there can be little doubt that the Sol Inferus, identified with Bacchus, Adonis, Osiris, and Serapis, that midnight sun which was the type of an after state, was the great object of the mysteries and goal of initiation.'

I assume as proved that Mizra and Mithra both meaning the sun and agreeing in name, the rites of the cavern temples dedicated to each were similar; that both had their lion-masked priests; that the same baptism of fire and water took place, the same sidereal passage, the same sacrament of bread, the same mark3 (see Apocalypse) on the forehead, and the same final apparition of the renewed sun bursting from his parent rock. And here I cannot help remarking, by way of extant illustration, that the Hindoos paint Veeshnu, the same person as the lion-headed Mythra, bursting from a stony column in the form of a lion.

In sum, it is my induction from the foregoing premises that the ancient gloomy ritual of an assassination, a dismembered body, a coffin, and a resurrection, were acted within the gloomy recess of the Great Pyramid; and that the slaughtered Adonis, the slain and lamented Apollo, the third person of the Dioscuri murdered by his brothers, the dismembered Bacchus, the assassinated Osiris, the Maneros of the Egyptians, the Balder of the Scandinavians, the Manes of the Magians and Rosycrucians, the Hiram of the Freemasons, were the same person; and that these parental features of one theology, these diverging streams of cognate mystery, may be traced from the ends of the earth to the pyramidal cista, as their fountain-head, and to the central chamber as the first great lodge..

See note on Plato and Elysium.

2 See Denon, and Tertullian adver. Marc. p. 55. "Lions of Mithra." 3 The modern Hindoos mark their foreheads with a Y; but the Egyptians marked the initiate's forehead with a T, and to that no doubt the Apocalypse alluded, because it was a symbol appertaining to the Sol inferus or Serapis, and his four-headed chimera of a man, lion, eagle and dog.