Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. I — G. R. S. Mead (1906)

3. And of those who would assign some reason connected with the art of government, some say that Osiris upon his great campaign,8 divided his force into many divisions — (they call them companies and squadrons in Greek) — and gave them all ensigns of animal figures, and that each of these became sacred and venerated by the clan of those banded together under it.

4. Others [say] that the kings after [Osiris], in order

1 Dr Budge (op. cit., i. 29) writes : " Such monuments and texts as we have . . . seem to show that the Egyptians first worshipped animals as animals, and nothing more, and later as the habitations of divine spirits and gods ; but there is no reason for thinking that the animal worship of the Egyptians was descended from a system of totems and fetishes as Mr J. F. M'Lennan (Fortnightly Review, 1869-1870) believed." I believe myself that the Egyptian animal-cult depended chiefly on the fact that life flowed differently in different animal forms, corresponding with the life-currents in the invisible forms or aspects of the A-nimal-Soul of the Cosmos.

2 •xa\ryytvtfftav.

3 Sc. for civilising the world.

VOL. i. 23

to strike terror into their foes, used to appear dressed in wild beasts' heads of gold and silver.

5. While others tell us that one of the clever and crafty kings, on learning that, though the Egyptians were fickle by nature and quick for change and innovation, they nevertheless possessed an invincible and unrestrainable might owing to their numbers when in agreement and co-operation, showed them and implanted into their minds an enduring superstition, — an occasion of unceasing disagreement.

6. For in as much as the beasts — some of which he enacted some [clans] should honour and venerate and others others — are hostile and inimical to one another, and as each one of them by nature likes different food from the others, each [clan] in protecting its own special [beasts] and growing angry at their being injured, was for ever unconsciously being drawn into the enmities of the beasts, and [so] brought into a state of warfare with ihe others.

7. For even unto this day the people of Wolf-town are the only Egyptians who eat sheep, because the wolf, whom they regard as god, [does so].

8. And the people of Oxyrhynchus-town, in our own day, when the folk of Dog-town ate the oxyrhynchus l fish, caught a dog and sacrificing it as a sacred victim, ate it ; and going to war because of this, they handled one another roughly, and subsequently were roughly handled by the Eomans in punishment.2

LXXIII. 1. Again, as many say that the soul of Typhon himself was parted among these animals, the myths would seem enigmatically to hint that every irrational and brutal nature is born from a part of the

1 Lit., "sharp-snout."

2 And such things occur "even to this -day" in India under the British Raj.

Evil Daimon, and that to appease and soothe him they pay cult and service to them.

2. But if he fall upon them mighty and dire, bringing on them excessive droughts, or pestilent diseases, or other unlooked-for strange mischances, then the priests lead away at dark in silence quietly some of the venerated [beasts], and threaten and try to scare away the first [one] of them ; if, however, it stops, they consecrate and sacrifice it, as though, I suppose, this were some kind of chastisement of the Dairnon, or some specially great means of purification in the greater [emergencies].

3. For in the Goddess-of -child-bed-town l they used to burn living men to ashes, as Manethos has told us, calling them Typhoneian ; and the ashes they winnowed away and scattered.2

4. This, however, was done publicly, and at one special time, in the Dog-days ; whereas the consecratings of the venerated beasts, which are never spoken of and take place at irregular times, according to the emergencies, are unknown to the multitude, except when they have burials, and [the priests] bringing out some of the others, cast them in [to the grave with them] in the presence of all, — in the belief that they annoy Typhon in return and curtail what gives him pleasure. For only the Apis and a few other [animals] seem to be sacred to Osiris; while they assign the majority to him [Typhon].