Ans. Horus or Harpocrates was the son of Osiris. He was worshipped as the god of Silence, and is represented as a boy, seated on a lotus-flower, with his finger on his lips.
Besides the gods we have mentioned, the Egyptians worshipped the dog, the wolf, the crocodile, the ibis, and many other animals. They even attributed divinity to certain plants and roots. Juvenal, in one of his Satires, thus ridicules their superstition:
Who has not heard where Egypt’s realms are nam’d
What monster gods her frantic sons have fram’d?
Here Ibis gorged with well-grown serpents, there
The Crocodile commands religious fear:
Where Memnon’s statue magic strains inspire
With vocal sounds that emulate the lyre;
And Thebes, such, Fate, are thy disastrous turns,
Now prostrate o’er her pompous ruins mourns
A monkey-god, prodigious to be told!
Strikes the beholder’s eye with burnish’d gold:
To godship here blue Triton’s scaly herd,
The river progeny is there preferr’d:
Through towns Diana’s power neglected lies,
Where to her dogs aspiring temples rise!
And should you leeks or onions eat, no time
Would expiate the sacrilegious crime.
Religious nations sure, and blest abodes,
Where every orchard is o’er-run with gods.
CHAPTER II.
EASTERN MYTHOLOGY.
Deities of the Assyrians.
BAAL, OR BEL—MOLOCH.
Ques. Who were these divinities?
Ans. The names Baal and Moloch seem to have been, at first, different appellations of the Sun; later they assumed another signification, and were applied to distinct deities.
Ques. Where was the Sun worshipped under the name of Baal or Bel (the Lord)?