Engraved stones of this kind were esteemed as amulets or preservatives from unlucky accidents, or from the malice of enemies. With these the forms of divinities and the vestments of the priests were decorated, and they were distributed as honourable distinctions to persons who had become eminent either in military employments, or in the offices of civil administration. That these stones were generally attached to the dress or to the person, appears by their being perforated, so as to admit a string, by which they were either suspended from the neck or fastened on the arm.

It has excited surprise that the Etruscans, a nation so distant from Egypt, should have had the same singular kind of engraved stones; but the circumstance merely shews that the Etruscans copied the Egyptians, and probably, in adopting the scarabs of Egypt, they likewise adopted the superstitious practices prevailing in that country.

From these Egyptian and Etruscan gems, which are to be classed with the earliest productions of the glyphic or engraver's art, we may conclude that although they carried the mechanic operation of the art to a considerable height, they made little or no progress in the poetical or inventive part. We must distinguish the real Egyptian style from the Egyptio-Grecian, which took place when Egyptian gems were afterwards executed by Greek artists.

We discover on these stones the divinities of the country, and all the hieroglyphics of their symbolical writing. Among these divinities we find their Isis, Osiris, Horus, Anubis, Harpocrates, &c. sometimes single and sometimes united. The flower of the

lotus or persea* (for which is meant appears sometimes doubtful) ornaments their forehead, or its stalk is held like a sceptre in the hand of the divinity, who is sometimes represented as sailing in a bark of the papyrus. The sistrum or rattle, the situla or ewer, and the whip or scourget are occasionally represented.

Although our knowledge of the HIEROGLYPHICS of the Egyptians is very confined, and will probably ever remain so, yet learned conjecture and plausible reasoning have supplied the inquisitive mind with some materials. Time has preserved the curious work of Horapollo, of which the first book is, perhaps, the work of a learned Egyptian, though the age in which he lived is not exactly known. From other scattered notices we shall glean a few, which, we hope, may prove not uninteresting.

The allegorical genius of the most remote antiquity (as Raspe judiciously observes,) especially of Egypt, was pleased and prompted equally by a spirit of wisdom, as well as of taste, to represent that kind of knowledge which would be of the greatest use to society. But what are the objects of that knowledge?

* We know nothing of the blossom of the persea. We imagine the flower to be Lotus Nilotica, called also, if we recollect right, Nymphæa Nelumbo.

Strabo mentions the persea, as an evergreen tree, bearing a fruit like a pear. Plutarch says, it was sacred to Isis, because the fruit resembled a heart, and the leaf had the likeness of a tongue. Galen says, it was a large tree, which, when growing in Persia, had a poisonous quality, causing the instant death of those who eat the fruit; but when transplanted into Egypt, the pear-like fruit became innoxious, and good for eating.

↑ Situla signifies a small vessel used to hold water, a pail or ewer, also an urn, in which lots intended to be drawn were placed.

Isis was represented with the sistrum in her right hand, which was rattled to announce the swelling of the Nile; the situla was in her left, which is said to symbolize the efflux or retiring of the inundation. See Rosini Antiq. Roman. p. 190.

The regular return of the seasons; the inundations; the seed time and harvest; the revolutions of the sun, moon, and stars, and other wonders of nature, ever friendly and beneficent to those who follow her laws.

Warburton, who has treated this subject with his usual ingenuity, has classed the hieroglyphic characters under three heads. He says, the first design was to make the principal circumstances of the subject stand for the whole; thus, when they would describe a battle, or two armies in array, they painted two hands, one holding a shield, and the other a bow-when a tumult, or popular insurrection, an armed man casting arrows-when a siege, a scaling ladder. But all this is of the rudest simplicity.

The second, or more artificial method of contraction, was by putting the instrument of the thing, whether real or metaphorical, for the thing itself. Thus, an eye eminently placed was designed to represent God's omniscience; an eye and sceptre displayed the duties of a monarch; and a ship and pilot, the governor of the

universe.

The third, and still more artificial method was, by making one thing stand for, or represent another, where any quaint resemblance or analogy in the representative could be collected from their observations of nature, or their traditional superstitions. Sometimes this kind of hieroglyphic was founded on their observations on the form, and real or imaginary natures and qualities, of beings. Thus the universe was designed by a serpent in a circle, whose variegated spots signified the stars; and the sun-rise by the two eyes of the crocodile, because they seem to emerge from its head; a young widow, who will not admit of a second husband, by a black pigeon; one dead of a fever, contracted by what we call a coup de soleil, from

the great solar heat, by a blind scarab; a client flying for relief to his patron, and finding none from him, by a sparrow and owl; an inexorable tyrant estranged from his people, by a vulture; a man initiated into the mysteries, by a grasshopper which they imagined had no mouth.

They certainly employed hieroglyphics as a concise method to communicate their ethical instructions. That a judge should be alike insensible to interest, or to compassion, they designed a man without hands, and with declining eyes. Of their delight in sculptured gems we have a pleasing proof in the circumstance recorded by Ælian, that the chief of their judges wore round his neck an image of Truth engraven on a sapphire. The Peach tree was said to be more fruitful when transplanted, than on its native spot, and hence they characterised a person who had passed much of his life in travelling by a peach tree in luxuriant fruit. They designated a melancholy man by a hare sitting in her form, as being a most timorous and solitary creature. But the hieroglyphic was not a single detached emblem only, they often contrived to unite a series of them so as to form an inscription, which the eye might perpetuate on the memory. We learn this from one, preserved by Clemens of Alexandria, who informs us that it was engraven on one of the gates of the temple of Diospolis, in Egypt. On one side appeared a child (the symbol of birth,) and an old man (the symbol of death,) a hawk (the accepted symbol of the divinity,) a fish (the symbol of hatred,) and on the other side a frightful crocodile (the symbol of effrontery and insolence.) All these symbols united, expressed-O thou who art born and who diest, remember that God hateth those whose insolent forehead never blusheth !

E

Raspe, describing in his catalogue a number of these hieroglyphic gems, observes, that we frequently find among them the eye. It is sometimes without eyebrows, sometimes marked only by two eyelids, without a pupil appearing. Sometimes it is seen ornamented with eye-lids in the greatest perfection; it is likewise occasionally adorned with wings, or other expressive attributes, which obviously proves that there are different modifications and different ideas represented by the same symbol. It is the most simple image of vision, and consequently of wisdom and providence. It is thus applicable to the sun, which sees and makes every thing to be seen; and to the Divinity who is every where present, and from whom nothing can be hid. Eyes were seen in all the Egyptian temples, and we learn from Diodorus and Plutarch, that the eye was particularly the symbol of Osiris. On the obelisks and other Egyptian fragments lately deposited in the British Museum, may be seen frequently repeated an eye surmounting several zig-zag lines, with the figure of a slug directly beneath them. May not this signify that knowledge or prudence surmounts the intricacies of life, while indolence sinks under them?

We frequently find in these gems a sphynx under a variety of disguises a large ape, or cynocephalus-a falcon or hawk mitred, &c. some of these have been explained by Horapollo, from whose singular work on the ancient hieroglyphics, Warburton derived his explanations. On his authority we shall describe two or three of these subjects. He tells us the hawk signifies supreme intelligence; the intelligent soul, and God-because the hawk was called in Egyptian baith, from bai, soul, and eth, heart, which the Egyptians looked upon as the seat, the residence, or the covering of the soul. That the hawk was a sacred bird, appears by its being fed in the temples consecrated to Osiris. The