Pour’d out, as this libation on the ground.
Cowper.
[227] Her youngest-born Typhœus.] Taph, which at times was rendered Tuph, Toph, and Taphos, was a name current among the Amonians, by which they called their high places. Lower Ægypt being a flat, and annually overflowed, the natives were forced to raise the soil on which they built their principal edifices, in order to secure them from the inundation: and many of their sacred towers were erected on conical mounds of earth. There were often hills of the same form constructed for religious purposes, upon which there was no building. These were high altars; on which they used sometimes to offer human sacrifices. Tophet, where the Israelites made their children pass through fire to Moloch, was a mount of this form. Those cities in Ægypt which had a high place of this sort, and rites in consequence of it, were styled Typhonian. Many writers say that these rites were performed to Typhon at the tomb of Osiris. Hence he was in later times supposed to have been a person; one of immense size; and he was also esteemed a god. But this arose from the common mistake by which places were substituted for the deities there worshipped. Typhon was the Tuph-on, or altar; and the offerings were made to the Sun, styled On; the same as Osiris and Busiris. What they called his tombs were mounds of earth raised very high: some of these had also lofty towers adorned with pinnacles and battlements. They had also carved on them various symbols; and particularly serpentine hieroglyphics; in memorial of the god to whom they were sacred. In their upper story was a perpetual fire, that was plainly seen in the night. The gigantic stature of Typhon was borrowed from this object: and his character was formed from the hieroglyphical representations in the temples styled Typhonian. This may be inferred from the allegorical description of Typhœus given by Hesiod. Typhon and Typhœus were the same personage; and the poet represents him of a mixed form; being partly a man, and partly a monstrous dragon, whose head consisted of an assemblage of smaller serpents: and as there was a perpetual fire kept up in the upper story, he describes it as shining through the apertures of the building. The tower of Babel was undoubtedly a Tuph-on, or altar of the Sun; though generally represented as a temple. Hesiod certainly alludes to some ancient history concerning the demolition of Babel, when he describes Typhon or Typhœus as overthrown by Jove. He represents him as the youngest son of Earth; as a deity of great strength and immense stature; and adds what is very remarkable, that had it not been for the interposition of the chief god, this dæmon would have obtained a universal empire. Bryant.
Equally remarkable is the diversity of voices, described as issuing from the different heads of the giant. In the Mexican mythology a giant builds an artificial hill, in the form of a pyramid, as a memorial of the mountain, in whose caverns he, with six others, had taken shelter from a deluge. This monument was to reach the clouds; but the gods destroyed it with fire. See Humboldt’s American Researches.
Beneath his everlasting feet
The great Olympus trembled.]
Mr. Todd, in his notes on Milton, quotes the passage describing the rushing of the Messiah’s chariot, as superior in grandeur to this of Hesiod:
Under his burning wheels
The steadfast empyreum shook throughout,