The Crocodile is one of the many animals to which divine honours were paid by the Egyptians. This we learn from several sources. Herodotus, for example, in "Euterpe," chapter 69, writes as follows: "Those who dwell about Thebes and Lake Mœris, consider them to be very sacred; and they each of them train up a Crocodile, which is taught to be quite tame; and they put crystal and gold ear-rings into their ears, and bracelets on their fore-paws; and they give them appointed and sacred food, and treat them as well as possible while alive, and when dead, they embalm them, and bury them in sacred vaults.
"But the people who dwell about the city of Elephantine eat them, not considering them as sacred."
The reasons for this worship are several. At the root of them all lies the tendency of man to respect that which he fears rather than that which he loves; and the nearer the man approaches the savage state, the more is this feeling developed. By this tendency his worship is regulated, and it will be found that when man is sufficiently advanced to be capable of worship at all, his reverence is invariably paid to the object which has the greatest terrors for him. The Crocodile, therefore, being the animal that was most dreaded by the ancient Egyptians, was accepted as the natural type of divinity.
By degrees, though the worship of the Crocodile was retained, the worshippers thought themselves obliged to find reasons for their veneration, and some of them said that they considered the Crocodile a type of divinity because it had no tongue, and was therefore an emblem of divine power, which requires no tongue wherewith to speak. "For by a mute and silent way it ascendeth, and bringeth all things mortal to a vocal justice, which speaketh in action, though not in voyce, even as all that is in the Crocodile is action and not voyce."
Some said that they reverenced the Crocodile because it laid threescore eggs and lived threescore years, this being the span of human life. Others, and these give by far the best reason, say that divine honours are paid to the Crocodile because the time of laying the eggs and hatching the young foreshows the annual rising of the Nile, on which depends the prosperity of the whole country. Still there is no doubt that, whatever explanations may have been offered by the advocates of Crocodile worship, the true reason for it was nothing but the terror inspired by the animal.
Owing to the accuracy of the description in the Book of Job, which is evidently written by one who was personally acquainted with the Crocodile, it is thought by many commentators that the writer must have been acquainted with the Nile, in which river both the Crocodile and hippopotamus are found at the present day.
It is possible, however, that the hippopotamus and the Crocodile have had at one time a much wider range than they at present enjoy. Even within the memory of man the hippopotamus has been driven further and further up the Nile by the encroachments of man. It has long been said that even at the present day the Crocodile exists in Palestine in the river which is called "Nhar Zurka," which flows from Samaria through the plains of Sharon. Several of the older writers have mentioned its existence in this river, and, since this work was commenced, the long-vexed question has been set at rest; a Crocodile, eight feet in length, having been captured in the Nhar Zurka.
In her "Domestic Life in Palestine," Miss Rogers gives an old legend by which the people account for the presence of Crocodiles in this river. Many ages ago there dwelt upon the bank of the river an old man and his two sons, the elder of whom was idle and profligate, while the younger was industrious and virtuous.
The father died, and left them each an equal share of his wealth—the flocks and herds which fed on the rich banks of the river. In process of time, the elder brother wasted all his property by riotous living and neglect, while the younger brother had greatly increased his flocks and herds, and had become a wealthy man. The elder, being jealous of his brothers prosperity, sought in his mind how to do him an injury. Accordingly, he travelled to Egypt, brought some young Crocodiles thence, and turned them into the river, hoping that they would destroy his brother's flocks as they came to drink.