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When the subject has been more thoroughly investigated thn has hitherto been the case, it may be possible to trace a more direct connexion between the two forms - EGYPT. 5 _ of faith than we are now able to do. At dll events we shall then be in a position to say whether it was a real partnership or only an accidental juxtaposition. In the meanwhile, all that is required. in this place i is to draw attention to the subject, and to point out a coincidence which is so remarkable that when investigated it may hereafter lead to the most important results.* EGYPt. In an attempt to investigate any form of ancient mythology froni ay historical _ point of view, we naturally far first to Egypt; for not only was Egypt the carliest civilized of all the countries of the ancient world, in so far at least as we ‘at present know, but she was pre-eminently the parent of all idolatries. With the Egyptians all knowledge was considered as divine, and whatever they saw, they worshipped. Their gods had been kings; their kings were gods; and all the animal kingdom was con- sidered worthy of worship in a greater or less degree. From bulls to beetles, or from crocodiles to cats, it made little difference; all came alike to a people so essentially religious as the Egyptians seem to have been. It is little wonder, therefore, that Serpents, and it may be Trees, should be included in their multifarious Pantheon, and it is casy to detect numerous instances of the honours bestowed on both. Still it would be straining the argument beyond its legitimate issue to describe the Egyptians as in any scuse an essentially Tree or Serpent worshipping people. The serpent was worshipped on the banks of the Nile among other animals, perhaps in some instances with a certain degree of pre-eminence;+ but on the whole. the-accounts are hardly sufficient to enable us to say that the serpent was “more honoured than his associated animal gods. At the same time it must be admitted that the serpent very frequently appears in the sculptures of the Temple walls, and frequently in a place of honour, as on the brow of the king, or as a prominent ornament of his dress, but hardly ever there with that pre-eminence he attained in other countries. The relative position of Tree Worship among the Egyptians seems to be almost the same. It is true that the important part which the Tamarisk (Epixy) plays in the legend of Isis and Osiris, as told by Plutarch,} might tend to a somewhat different conclusion, and the prominence given t6 the other tree (M76/dy), which marked and shaded the tomb of Osiris in the same legend, might lead to the conclusion. that a form of Tree Worship prevailed in Egypt before the multifarious Theban pantheon was elaborated. The authority, however, for these facts is not. such as can be relied upon, and the sculptures again do not favour the belief that Trees were considered as divine on the banks of the Nile, though they may justify the belief that the sreemone was sacred to me anes N one and the aaa to Athor.§ . a ” * As human sacrifices hardly form part of the subject of the work, I have not thought it necessary to encumber the text of this section with notes or references. The subject has been exhaustively treated hy Kalish, in hie Commentary on Leviticus XXIII. p. 381 to 416. J am also much indebted to an unpublished essay by Sir John Acton, where the whole question is treated with his usual depth of learning. + Herodotus, IL. 74. lian, de Animal. XVIL 5. Clemens Alex. III. 2.p.93, } Plutarch, de Iside et Osiri, 11. Wilkinson’s Ancient Egyptians, vol. V. p. 261, et seq. § Wilkinson, vol. IV. p. 391, plates 36 and 54, &e. 6 _ INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. The great test of such a subject in Egypt, are the sculptures which cover the walls of the Temyles. These are’ the Bible of the Egyptians, in so far at least as we know it. Any: one studying these with that object might easily pick out fifty or a hundred examples which would tend to show that the Egyptians were both Tree and Serpent ‘worshippers ; but, ona fair review of the whole subject, these would probably be found to be only a fractional. part of the nature worship of the Egyptians, and neither the most _ prominent nor the. most important.* In spite, therefore, of the passages in classical authors which may be quoted against this view, it would probably. be incorrect, to include the ancient Egyptians among the votaries either of the Serpent or of Trees. _JUDEA. The earliest distinct allusion which we have to those mysterious properties which the ancients attributed to certain Trees, is to he found in the second and third chapters of Genesis. The planting of the Trees of Life and Knowledge in the Garden of Eden is , there. described in minute detail, and judging from subsequent forms of the story, their custody seems to have been intrusted to the serpent. Taken by itself, this narrative has always appeared one of the least intelligible parts of the Pentateuch, and numberless theories have been formed to account for what seemed so completely outside the range of ordinary human experience. With the knowledge we now possess, it does not seem so difficult to understand what was meant by the curse on the scrpent, or the prohibition to eat the fruit of the trees. When the writers of the Pentateuch set themselves to introduce the purer and loftier worship of the Elohim, or of Jehovah, it was first necessary to get rid of that earlier form of faith which the primitive inhabitants of, the earth had fashioned for themselves. ‘The serpent, as the principal deity of that early religion, was cursed “above all cattle, and above every beast of the ‘field;”}-and in future there was to be for ever enmity between the serpent and ‘man of woman born.” The confusion of ideas on this subject seems to have arisen from the assumption that the curse was directed at the reptile as such, and not rather at a form of worship which the writers of the Pentateuch must have regarded. with horror, and which they thought it necessary to denounce in the strongest terms and in the form they believed would be most intelligible by those to whom it was addressed. The tree it was not. necessary should be cursed; the fruit of the tree of knowledge had been eaten, and no further result could be obtained by access ‘to it, while the tree of life was guarded: by a cherub with a flaming sword, and all approach prevented. Its fruits could not then be obtained, nor have they to the present day. The two chapters which refer to this, however,—-as indeed the whole of the first eight of Genesis,—are now generally admitted by scholars to be made up of fragments of earlier books or earlier traditions belonging, properly speaking, to Mesopotamian rather than to Jewish ee the exact meaning of which the writers of the y * On such a monument, for instance, as the Sarcophagus of Menepthah, in Sir Soke Soane’s Mus seum, where the Serpent occurs more frequently than on any monument of the same extent I am acquainted with, aad in a more important character, there is not one instance in which.it can be said he is being worshipped. He is the representative of heaven—is a good or evil genius—a protector or destroyer—a mere hieroglyphic—anyth\n -‘ short, but never a god.—See Bonomi’s published account of the Sarcophagus; Longmf&n, 1864, : + Genesis, iii. 14. 7 JUDEA. 4 Pentateuch seem hardly to have appreciated ‘when they transcribed them in the form in which they are now found. The history of the Jews and of the Jewish religion commences ‘with the call of:Abraham, and from that time forward the worship of Serpents and Trees took an infinitely - less important,sposition, though still oeeasionally cropping Up, often when’ least expected, but: apparently not‘ as ‘a religion of the Jews, but “as a backsliding towards the feelings of the pre-existing races among whom they, were located. - There is apparently no mention of serpents, either in the Bible or in any of the. traditions in connexion with Abraham or his immediate descendants; but that Patriarch “ planted a grove at the well of the.eovenant (Beersheba), and called there ‘* on the name of the Lord” *—a circumstance the more worthy of note, as it is the. earliest mention of a form of worship to which continual allusions are afterwards made in Je ewish history. The oak, or ‘rather the terebinth tree, under which Abraham is said to have entertained the angels at Mamre, became an object of extreme veneration to his descendants, and, if we may trust Eusebius, was worshipped down ,to the time of Constantine.+ The pious. zeal of that emperor led him to desccrate its altars, and apparently to cut down the sacred tree to make way for a Christian church which he erected on the spot, and which was then or afterwards dedicated to St. George.t With the time of Moses the indications became more distinct and palpable. We gather from the context in the Bible,§ and still more from the narrative of Josephus, I, that the tree or bush on Tloreb, from which the Lord appeared to Moses as a flame, had heen considered sacred before that event. It was, indeed, apparently in- consequence of its sanctity that it was chosen for the delivery of the oracle, while the. conversion on’ that occasion of Moses’ rod into a serpent brings these two names into the juxtaposition in which they are so frequently found. This miracle on Horeb would, however, be ‘more impressive and more to the point were it not that it was repeated by Aaron before Pharaoh, and copied by the Egyptians ;§ but at the burning bush it stands alone, and without any apparent motive for its exhibition there,. except the a ae of the combination.