By the same analogy we may trace the true history of Terambus, the Deity of Egypt, who was called the Shepherd Terambus. The name is a compound of Tor-Ambus, or Tor-Ambi, the oracular tower of Ham. He is said to have been the son of Eusires, [[381]]Ευσειρου του Ποσειδωνος; and to have come over, and settled in Thessaly, near mount Othrys. According to Antonius Liberalis, he was very rich in flocks, and a great musician, and particularly expert in all pastoral measure. To him they attributed the invention of the pipe. The meaning of the history is, I think, too plain, after what has preceded, to need a comment. It is fabled of him, that he was at last turned into a bird called Cerambis, or Cerambix. Terambus and Cerambis are both antient terms of the same purport: the one properly expressed is Tor-Ambi; the other Cer-Ambi, the oracular temple of the Sun.
I have taken notice that towers of this sort were the repositories of much treasure; and they were often consecrated to the Ophite Deity, called Opis and Oupis. It is the same which Callimachus addresses by the title of [[382]]Ουπι, Ανασσ' ευωπι: and of whom Cicero speaks, and styles Upis; [[383]]quam Græci Upim paterno nomine appellant. The temple was hence called Kir-Upis; which the Grecians abridged to Γρυπες: and finding many of the Amonian temples in the north, with the device of a winged serpent upon the frontal, they gave this name to the hieroglyphic. Hence, I imagine, arose the notion of Γρυπες, or Gryphons; which, like the dragons abovementioned, were supposed to be guardians of treasure, and to never sleep. The real conservators of the wealth were the priests. They kept up a perpetual fire, and an unextinguished light in the night. From Kir Upis, the place of his residence, a priest was named Grupis; and from Kir-Uph-On, Gryphon. The Poets have represented the Grupes as animals of the serpentine kind; and supposed them to have been found in countries of the Arimaspians, Alazonians, Hyperboreans, and other the most northern regions, which the Amonians possessed. In some of the temples women officiated, who were denominated from the Deity they served. The Scholiast upon Callimachus calls the chief of them Upis; and styles her, and her associates, Κορας [[384]]Ὑπερβορεους, Hyperborean young women. The Hyperboreans, Alazonians, Arimaspians, were Scythic nations of the same family. All the stories about Prometheus, Chimæra, Medusa, Pegasus, Hydra, as well as of the Grupes, or Gryphons, arose, in great measure, from the sacred devices upon the entablatures of temples.
TAPH, TUPH, TAPHOS.
There was another name current among the Amonians, by which they called their λοφοι, or high places. This was Taph; which at times was rendered Tuph, Toph, and Taphos. Lower Egypt 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 upon conical mounds of earth. But there were often hills of the same form constructed for religious purposes, upon which there was no building. These were very common in Egypt. Hence we read of Taphanis, or Taph-Hanes, Taph-Osiris, Taph-Osiris parva, and contra Taphias, in Antoninus; all of this country. In other parts were Taphiousa, Tape, Taphura, Tapori, Taphus, Taphosus, Taphitis. All these names relate to high altars, upon which they used oftentimes to offer human sacrifices. Typhon was one of these; being a compound of Tuph-On, which signifies the hill or altar of the Sun. Tophet, where the Israelites made their children pass through fire to [[385]]Moloch, was a mount of this form. And there seem to have been more than one of this denomination; as we learn from the prophet Jeremiah, [[386]]They have built the high places of Tophet, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire. And in another place: They have built also the high places of Baal, to burn their sons with fire for burnt-offerings unto Baal. These cruel operations were generally performed upon mounts of this sort; which, from their conical figure, were named Tuph and Tupha. It seems to have been a term current in many countries. The high Persian [[387]]bonnet had the same name from its shape: and Bede mentions a particular kind of standard in his time; which was made of plumes in a globular shape, and called in like manner, [[388]]Tupha, vexilli genus, ex consertis plumarum globis. There was probably a tradition, that the calf, worshipped by the Israelites in the wilderness near Horeb, was raised upon a sacred mound, like those described above: for Philo Judæus says, that it was exhibited after the model of an Egyptian Tuphos: [[389]]Αιγυπτιακου μιμημα Τυφου. This I do not take to have been a Grecian word; but the name of a sacred orbicular mount, analogous to the Touphas of Persis.
The Amonians, when they settled in Greece, raised many of these Tupha, or Tapha, in different parts. These, beside their original name, were still farther denominated from some title of the Deity, to whose honour they were erected. But as it was usual, in antient times, to bury persons of distinction under heaps of earth formed in this fashion; these Tapha came to signify tombs: and almost all the sacred mounds, raised for religious purposes, were looked upon as monuments of deceased heroes. Hence [[390]]Taph-Osiris was rendered ταφος, or the burying place of the God Osiris: and as there were many such places in Egypt and Arabia, sacred to Osiris and Dionusus; they were all by the Greeks esteemed places of sepulture. Through this mistake many different nations had the honour attributed to them of these Deities being interred in their country. The tumulus of the Latines was mistaken in the same manner. It was originally a sacred hillock; and was often raised before temples, as an altar; such as I have before described. It is represented in this light by Virgil:
[[391]]Est urbe egressis tumulus, templumque vetustum
Desertæ Cereris; juxtaque antiqua cupressus.
In process of time the word tumulus was in great measure looked upon as a tomb; and tumulo signified to bury. The Greeks speak of numberless sepulchral monuments, which they have thus misinterpreted. They pretended to shew the tomb of [[392]]Dionusus at Delphi; also of Deucalion, Pyrrha, Orion, in other places. They imagined that Jupiter was buried in Crete: which Callimachus supposes to have been a forgery of the natives.
[[393]]Κρητες αει ψευσται· και γαρ ταφον, ω Ανα, σειο