BOOK V. OF THE MYSTERIES. HEAD I. OF THE EGYPTIAN ORIGIN OF THE GREEK RITES.

○It were premature, in a Book which is to treat of the last of the modes by which the primitive tradition was obscured, to do more in the present head than to recall what has been established in another place, and to indicate the manner in which it is here to be employed. The assertion of the late Bishop of Gloucester, that the first and original Mysteries were those of Egypt, "from whence they were derived to the Greeks" (Warburton, Div. Leg. b. ii. sect. 4), has been examined by me in the tractate which I have already laid before the public; and the result of that examination, which I shall state in a single sentence, is that the assertion is in the main to be allowed, that the rites which the Greeks celebrated under the names of their own gods were received out of Egypt and kept, and that they were not contrived by the legislators to whom the learned prelate would ascribe them.¹ Of the other results of the tractate, namely, that the thing concealed in the Mysteries was in the possession of the priesthood before the concealment, and that the end which the learned prelate assigns to them, the doctrine of a future state, is rightly assigned, I shall have occasion to speak under the next head; and it is only to be added in this place that the tractate, having been composed for a particular occasion and within the limits which that occasion prescribed, had not room for the consideration which I now propose, of the place which the Mysteries hold among the modes of corruption, and of the manner in which, as I conceive, a trust was kept by those who had in great part ceased to know what it signified. The proof of this last, which depends upon the testimonies of the following heads taken together, I defer to its proper place; and I shall here content myself with setting down, as briefly as the subject permits, the witnesses to the first result, with such observations as may serve to prevent their being extended beyond what they say.² NB-45-004 NB-43-012 NB-57-003

○The first testimony in the order of the collections is that of Herodotus, who relates that the names of nearly all the gods came to Hellas from Egypt, with the exception of those of Poseidon and the Dioscuri, of Hera, of Hestia, of Themis, of the Graces and of the Nereids, and who adds, in so many words, that he reports only what the Egyptians themselves say (Herod. ii. 50). It is necessary to observe, with a care which the importance of the place appears to me to require, that the testimony is a testimony as to names, and as to names upon the Egyptian account; that it is not by the historian extended to the rites, still less to the doctrine; and that whoever should rest upon it a weight which it does not itself profess to bear would be using it to prove what it nowhere affirms.³ I make the observation the more readily because the learned prelate, in a place which is at first sight unconnected with the present question, has himself separated the first use of the hieroglyphics from the concealment which came afterwards (Warburton, Div. Leg. b. iv. sect. 4); and since the separation, so far as it extends, is in agreement with what I have to maintain, it were easy to suppose that the writing of the Egyptians and the names of their gods might be made to support one another. They cannot be so made, the one being a testimony concerning writing and the other concerning names; and the concession of the learned prelate that the priests did at length employ the figures for concealment is not a ground upon which the argument respecting the origin of the rites can be made to rest.⁴ NB-57-003

○Of the rites themselves the testimony of the same historian is more explicit, and is accompanied by a named agency. He relates that the daughters of Danaus were those who brought out of Egypt the rite of Demeter which the Greeks call Thesmophoria, and taught it to the Pelasgian women; that when the people of the Peloponnese were driven out by the Dorians the rite was lost, except in so far as it was preserved by the Arcadians; and that he could say more of the matter, for he knows the truth, but preserves a discreet silence (Herod. ii. 171).⁵ To this is to be added the relation of Diodorus, who reports, as I read the place, what the Egyptian priests themselves claim, namely, that Orpheus brought from Egypt most of his mystic ceremonies, and that the rite of Osiris is the same as that of Dionysus, and the rite of Isis very similar to that of Demeter, the names alone having been interchanged (Diod. Sic. i. 96).⁶ In both relations the rite is described as carried and as taught, and in neither as devised; and a rite which is brought and taught is not thereby shewn to have been contrived, but is, on the contrary, shewn to have been in existence before the person who brought it, which is the point upon which the first assertion of the learned prelate, that the Mysteries were the invention of the legislators, is found wanting.⁷ NB-43-012 NB-45-004

○In one particular, however, the learned prelate's account of the derivation is not supported by the witnesses whom he would have cited, and it is proper that the particular be stated exactly. He says that the Mysteries were derived from Egypt to the Greeks, "under the Presidency of various Gods, as the Institutor thought most for his purpose" (Warburton, Div. Leg. b. ii. sect. 4); and he thus supposes, in the person of the institutor, a choice of deities made with a design. The Egyptians, as Diodorus has them speak, speak of a change of name and say nothing of a purpose; and Herodotus, in the passage cited, says of the daughters of Danaus only that they brought and taught. So far as the testimony goes, the god differs in the Greek rite and the rite does not; and the difference of the god, which the learned prelate attributes to the policy of the institutor, is by the witnesses attributed to nothing but the language of the country into which the rite was carried.⁸ NB-45-004 NB-43-012

○There remains a testimony which, from the humbleness of the matter, has been less considered than it deserves. Herodotus relates, in his account of the dress of the Egyptians, that nothing woollen is brought into their temples or buried with the dead, the practice being accounted impious; that those who are partakers of the rites which the Greeks call Orphic and Bacchic are under the same rule, so that it is impious for one of them to be buried in woollen wrappings; and that these practices, which pass under Greek names, are in fact Egyptian and Pythagorean (Herod. ii. 81). He adds that there is a sacred legend about the rule, and does not give it.⁹ I do not carry the sentence beyond the observance to which it is attached; but it is the testimony of a Greek that a rite which went by the name of a Greek founder was, in the matter of its rule of dress, an Egyptian rite, and that the Greek name was the later and the Egyptian practice the source. Whether the rule came into Egypt from an older tradition, or began there, the passage does not shew; it is evidence of the direction in which the rite passed, and of no more, and it is therefore to stand with the other testimonies of borrowing from Egypt, and not yet with those which concern the primitive tradition.¹⁰ NB-43-006 NB-59-011

○It may be objected, in the first place, that these relations are, in the main, the relations of the Egyptians, delivered to a stranger, and that a people may be presumed to speak favourably of its own antiquity; to which I answer, that the objection, if it be admitted, proves too much, since it would equally deprive the historian of every testimony which he professes to have received, and that I rest upon the relations only so far as they are agreed, and so far as the direction which they assign to the rite is not that which would be natural to a people claiming the whole for itself.¹¹ It may be objected, in the second place, that a rule respecting woollen garments is a matter of too little moment to be set beside the rites of Demeter and of Dionysus; to which I answer, that the weight of a testimony as to the origin of a rite lies less in the importance of the observance than in its being observed in common by those who bear the Greek name and by those who bear the Egyptian, and that an observance of small moment is, for that reason, the less likely to have been adopted for the sake of a design. It may be objected, in the third place, that the borrowing of the rites, even if it be granted, does not shew that the doctrine was borrowed with them; to which I answer that the objection is well founded, and that I do not so extend the testimony; the question of the doctrine, and of the persons who held it, belongs to the next head. And it may be objected, lastly, that if the rites came from Egypt it remains to be shewn whence the Egyptians had them; which is indeed the question to which the whole inquiry is directed, and which is not to be answered, as I have elsewhere said, by any single witness, but by the concurrence of many, of which the testimonies here set down are the first and the least.¹² NB-57-003 NB-43-012 NB-59-011