Egypt of the Pharaohs and of the Khedivé

At the top is the familiar, winged, serpent-supported globe of the old Egyptians. This, as every body knows, is generally found over the main entrances of the temples, and on the heads of mummy cases. In speaking on such subjects we must not press words too far. But I believe it may be taken for what we may almost call a pantheistic emblem, compounded of symbols of three of the attributes of Deity, as then imagined. The central globe, the sun, represents the source of light and warmth, and, therefore, of life. The serpents represent maternity. The wings, beneath which the hen gathers her chickens, represent protection. This is one interpretation.
There might have been, and doubtless were, contained in the emblem other ideas, irrecoverable now by the aid of the ideas that exist in our minds. At all events, theological emblems, like theological terms, must vary in their import from time to time, in accordance with the varying knowledge of those who use them: for they can be read only by the light of what is in the mind of the reader. This emblem, therefore, may not always have stood to the minds of the old Egyptians for precisely the same conceptions. The above interpretation, however, probably contained for them, for some millenniums, its main and most obvious suggestions; suggestions which were for those early days a profound, though easily read, exposition of the relations of nature to man, and which are very far from being devoid of, at all events, historical interest to the modern traveller in Egypt.
The beneficent action of the mysterious river, which made, and maintains Egypt, is suggested by the three wavy lines, the old hieroglyphic for water.
How deep is the interest with which these facts and thoughts affect the mind!

EGYPT OF THE PHARAOHS AND OF THE KHEDIVÉ

Second Edition.
C. Scribner & Co., New York.
Being Table-talk collected during a Tour through the late Southern Confederation, the Far West, the Rocky Mountains, &c.