- A class of animals, to which may be referred the cow, dog, sheep, and ibis, were at first naturally protected and respected out of gratitude for the benefits derived from them. But in time, it is supposed, this respect, by unthoughtful descendants believing too implicitly the teachings of their fathers, was gradually enlarged to so great extent that it became reverence, and at last, perhaps after centuries, worship. For example, at A time, the ibis is respected on account of its destroying noxious serpents; at B, reverenced; and at C, worshiped.
- When at C time, the ibis is worshiped, suppose the masses have lost the reason (which in the case of the Egyptians is an allowable supposition, since it is an historical fact that but the initiated knew the reasons for their manner of worship), and serpents are its food, is it not plain then that if the food be taken away the sacred bird cannot live? Hence at C time are serpents preserved and protected as food for the ibis; and as this protecting care increases as above, till at D they are reverenced, and at E worshiped. To this second class may be referred the crocodile, which was preserved, etc. as food for the ichneumon, a sacred animal of the first class.
- Analogies between animals, and even plants, and certain sources of goodness, or objects of wonder, as the sun, and motion of the stars, were at A time, noticed; at B, respected or reverenced; and at C, worshiped. Thus, among plants, became the onion sacred, from the resemblance of the laminæ which compose it, in a transverse section, to circles—to the orbits of the planets. And thus the Scarabæus from the analogies between its movements and shape and the motions of the sun, traced, as we have before remarked on the authority of several ancient writers, became also an object of adoration.
- A fourth reason may also be given, which follows as a consequence of the latter. If such analogy, as, for example, that between the beetle and the sun, had been observed in the time of picture and hieroglyphic writing, to represent the sun, the beetle would have been taken. Now, it is a well-authenticated fact, that these hieroglyphics in time became sacred, and, if the beetle was found among them, it for this, if for no other reason, would have been looked upon with the same veneration.
- Good men, too, to preserve the lives of animals oftentimes wantonly taken, introduce them into fables and poetry, and connect pleasing tales with them. The “Babes in the Wood” have so fixed the respect for the tameness of the robin, that it is even now deemed a sacrilege with our boys to stone this bird. And may there not have been such good men, and such tender stories, among the Egyptians, and the remembrance of whom and which long lost by the lapse of time?
[122.] Kirb. and Sp. Introd., i. 33.
[123.] Ins. of China, p. 6.
[124.] Nat. Hist., xxix. 6 (38).
[125.] Nat. Hist., xxx. 11 (30). Holland, Trans., ii. 390.
[126.] James’ Med. Dict.
[127.] Donovan’s Ins. of China, p. 6.
[128.] Theatr. Ins., p. 160. Topsel’s Hist. of Beasts, p. 1012.
[129.] Cuvier suggests that the Scarabæus nasicornis of Linnæus, which haunts dead bark, or the S. auratus, may be the insect here referred to.
[130.] Nat. Hist., xi. 28 (34).