VARIOUS NAMES OF VENUS. 307 proportion as the studies to which they owe their birth have been more or less pursued. Other emotions also have their influence. The pleasure of beholding for yourself an object greatly celebrated, yet seen by comparatively few; a secret reference to the ages it has endured; the fact that it has outlived the religion and the race for whom it was erected; that it remains, almost solitary, in the midst of a city long ruined, as if the power in whose honour it was erected still protected its ancient fane from utter destruction. CCXX. And what was this power? The same, I apprehend, to whom the Pyramids were erected, -Bhavani, Athor, Aphrodité, Venus, whose symbols were the cow, the lotus-flower, the cone, the triangle, the kteis or yoni; and who, under different names, was worshipped throughout the whole Pagan World. Isis, in the conception of the philosophers, was a personification of nature in general; Athor, of that principle by which homogeneous and congruous elements are attracted towards each other, and united for the generation of new beings; whence the universe is peopled with beautiful forms, which, under the influence of the primitive energy, successively transmit to other forms the imperishable essence of life, originally infused into them by Athor. * Such, it appears to me, was the idea which the Orientals anciently entertained of Venus. The Greeks, when their fancy peopled heaven and earth with gods, conceived this * Hence she is called the "Mother of Gods and Men."- Apul Met. 1. xi. Ovid. Fasti. iv. 99. sqq. plastic power of nature somewhat differently*; for I can by no means adopt the vulgar hypothesis that they borrowed their gods from the East. Observing the effect, among mankind, of beauty and a lively playful temper, they imagined a being endowed in the highest possible degree with those qualities, and placed her on Olympus, among the immortals, to preside over the delights of gods and men, the perpetuation of the human race, and of every thing which breathes the breath of life. CCXXI. Learned men, however, who love to entangle all subjects in the meshes of erudition, as Vulcan once did in his net the beautiful limbs of Aphrodité herself, have laboured with extreme earnestness to confuse our ideas respecting this goddess. Jablonski, upon the whole a judicious writer, in placing Athor at the head of all the gods of Egypt, as the Brahmins do Bhavani, seems to have been misled by the insufficient and equivocal testimony of antiquity; for if Neith, a form of Isis, signify Nature, as the inscription on her statue at Sais clearly proves, she must then, both in antiquity and importance, have preceded Athor, as the whole is greater and more ancient than a part. The grammarian Orion, cited by the author of the Etymologicum Magnum, identifies Athor with the Grecian Venus, and observes, that the third month of the Egyptian year was named after this goddess. Hesychius, whose testimony on CHARACTER OF ATHOR. 309 this point is also supported by Orion, insists that the word Athor, among the Egyptians, signified a cow as well as a month; but this can only be understood of the cow when regarded as a symbol of Venus. Jablonski, who had studied Egyptian mythology more closely than Orion, clearly discerned the great dissimilarity between the Venus of the Greeks and the Egyptian Athor, who, in many respects, he observes, rather resembled Juno; though, according to Herodotus, Juno was unknown to the Egyptians. Several of the ancients imagined that Athor was the same with the moon; while others, again, suppose her to have been the planet Venus, so highly venerated by the Arabs; and Jablonski, after a wonderful range of speculation, at length confounds her with Night, worshipped as a goddess among the Phoenicians, to whom temples were erected in ancient Greece, and who, according to Hesiod, was the mother of the gods. The Egyptians, also, regarded Night as the first principle of all things. In later times, they are said to have used the word Athor to signify winter and the moon. The temples erected in Egypt to this goddess, whatever she was, were exceedingly numerous; and cows, frequently milk-white, were usually fed in the sacred edifices, or in the adjoining meadows, exempt from labour, like the bulls of Siva in Hindoostan.* Euterpe, c. 50. Selden, De Diis Syris. Synt. II. c. 2. 4. Vossius, 20. 22. Euseb. i. 10. Pausanias, in Att. et Though Night be a goddess very friendly to De Idololatriâ, l. ii. c. 310 MORAL DESIGN OF THE ARCHITECT. CCXXII. It would appear therefore that the great temple of Tentyris was dedicated to the Principle of Love, which, when combined with sentiment and affection, and divested of wings, all nations have embodied in the female form. And the architect who erected this fane, in the contrivance and arrangement of its several parts,-in the capitals, in the sculpture, in the distribution of light,—seems to have had in view the awakening of a certain train of feelings, analogous in their moral character to those which are excited by the contemplation of living beauty. The cornices, the mouldings, contain the richest curves; the capitals of the columns consist of a woman's face, four times repeated, which appears to smile upon you from whatever side you regard it; the sculptures for the most part represent scenes of joy and pleasure, religious festivals, processions, groups charmed by the sounds of music, figures reclining on delightful couches, and women, all softness and benevolence, with infants of different ages at the breast. On the roof of the pronaos, where learned fancies have discovered astronomical signs, we observe a mythological representation of the birth of the universe from the bosom of Athor, whose outstretched arms appear to embrace the whole expanse of heaven. From her mouth issues the winged globe, emblematic Venus, and quite undeserving of the epithet barren, bestowed on her by Spenser, we should by no means confound the one with the other. If Venus be the Queen of Love, Night may be regarded as her mother. Panth. Ægypt. l. i. pp. 4. 27. BIRTH OF THE UNIVERSE. 311 of the self-poised world, floating, as if on wings, through immeasurable space. Her womb also gives birth to the sun and moon, which, as soon as born, diffuse their light and generative influence over the whole of sublunary nature; while the other gods, with their stellar mansions, mystic symbols, transmigrations, avatars, and earthly representatives, are seen moving in order along the firmament, enveloped within the skirts of her starry robe. She is, in short, that Remphah, "Queen of Heaven," with whose worship the Scriptures reproach the old idolaters; and every image in her temple at Tentyris breathes of that voluptuous spell by which her votaries were bound, "Whose wanton passions in the sacred porch His eye surveyed the dark idolatries CCXXIII. Such, unquestionably, appears to me the design of the architect; and, if this be the case, he has triumphantly succeeded in embodying his conceptions; the sentiments awakened in the mind of the spectator, though the religion of which they once formed a part be extinct, being precisely those to which he must have been desirous of giving birth. But, to come to the description of the material object the most prominent feature in this style of architecture is that grand projecting cornice, curving outward from the moulding which divides it from the |