Clavis Mythologiarum

BOOK V. OF THE MYSTERIES. HEAD IV. OF THE SACRED WRITING OF THE EGYPTIANS.

○It were premature, under a head which is the last of those assigned to the Mysteries, to attempt more than the examination of one question, namely, whether the figures in which the Egyptians wrote their sacred things were framed to hide a doctrine, or only to record it, and what follows for the keeping of the trust if the answer be the latter. The learned prelate has treated the matter at large in the fourth book of the Divine Legation, and I have in the tractate which I have already laid before the public availed myself of the principle which he there establishes, that the concealing came after the thing concealed; but the tractate, being confined to the assertions of the learned prelate respecting the origin, the secret and the end, had no room for the testimonies concerning the writing itself, which I now set down in the order in which I have found them to bear upon one another.1 The result at which I shall arrive, as at present sketched, is that the sacred writing of the Egyptians was in its first use a writing, and in its later a concealment; that the figures were retained when the reasons which had framed them were in great part lost; and that the explanations which the ancients have left us, of the hawk and of the enigmas, are the explanations of interpreters, and are not shewn to be those of the persons who made the figures. The proof of the solar reading, which is the most considerable of those explanations, is deferred to the second Book, and the objections which may be urged against the view are considered at the end of the present head. NB-57-012 NB-57-007 NB-58-003 NB-58-014

○The principle of the learned prelate is that the opinion which makes the hieroglyphics to have been invented by the Egyptian priests, "in order to hide and secrete their Wisdom from the Knowledge of the Vulgar," is a mistake, and the general sentiment of antiquity, in which he finds it, is by him set aside (Warburton, Div. Leg. b. iv. sect. 4). I have allowed the principle, and I allow it still; but I observe that he grants, in the same place, that the Egyptians did, "at length, employ them" to such a purpose, and that he undertakes to shew how that happened; and I observe that the question whether what was so concealed was the doctrine, or only the manner of putting it, is one which the principle does not decide.2 Of the testimonies by which it is to be decided the first is the classification of the Alexandrian, who relates that those who were instructed among the Egyptians learned first the style of letters which is called the Epistolographic, second the Hieratic, which the sacred scribes practise, and last of all the Hieroglyphic; that the Hieroglyphic is of two kinds, the literal and the Symbolic; and that the Symbolic is itself of three, of which one speaks literally by imitation, another writes as it were figuratively, and the third is wholly allegorical, and makes use of certain enigmas (Clem. Alex. Strom. lib. v.).3 It follows that the sacred writing is not, on the Alexandrian's account, all of it enigma, but that the last kind only is so described; and that the question whether the figures were framed to hide a doctrine, or only to record it, can be put, in the first place, of that one kind alone. What the literal kind of the Hieroglyphic was he does not here say, and I do not find that any other testimony at present collected says it. NB-57-012 NB-57-007 NB-58-014

○In another chapter of the same work the Alexandrian affirms that the enigmas of the Egyptians are similar to the Hebrew enigmas in respect to concealment; and he reads the figures which were set upon the temple at Diospolis, a boy, an old man, a hawk, a fish and a crocodile, as a single sentence of religion, the hawk being the symbol of God, the fish of hatred, and the crocodile of impudence, so that the whole, when put together, appears to teach that God hates impudence (Clem. Alex. Strom. lib. v.).4 Bishop Warburton, who calls it the general sentiment of antiquity that the priests invented the hieroglyphics to hide their wisdom from the vulgar, would have the Alexandrian among the ancients so mistaken (Warburton, Div. Leg. b. iv. sect. 4); but the Alexandrian says only that the Egyptian enigmas are like the Hebrew in respect to concealment, and does not say by whom, or to what end, the figures were first devised. A sentence of the kind which he reads is written to be read, and it is not easily conceived that a sentence so composed should have been framed in order that it might not be understood; whence I am led to inquire whether what is in such a case concealed be the doctrine, or only the manner of putting it, and I note that the testimonies at present collected do not determine it.5 NB-57-012

○Of the manner in which the explanation of a figure passes from the framer to the interpreter the account which Horapollo gives of the hawk is an instance of some value. He relates that when the Egyptians would signify God, or height, or lowness, or excellence, or blood, or victory, they delineate a hawk; that they symbolize God by it because the bird is prolific and long-lived, or, as he says, "perhaps" rather because it seems an image of the sun, being able to look more intently towards the rays of the sun than other winged creatures; and he gives, besides, the use which physicians are said to make of an herb for diseases of the eyes (Horapoll. Hierogl. lib. i.).6 The Alexandrian also makes the hawk the symbol of God (Clem. Alex. Strom. lib. v.). Now Bishop Warburton supposes the picture to have been abridged in three ways at three periods, and names as the first the taking of the principal circumstance for the whole, for which he cites Horapollo: "The first Way was, To make the principal Circumstance of the Subject stand for the whole" (Warburton, Div. Leg. b. iv. sect. 4). The hawk, however, is not a circumstance taken for a subject. If it stands for God, it does so by a reason; and the reasons which Horapollo gives are the reasons of the interpreter, and are not shewn to be those of the Egyptians who framed the figure, the writer himself, as the word which I have quoted discovers, not being able to choose between them. The figure I take to be old; the explanation I do not know to be so.7 NB-58-003 NB-57-012

○There is a testimony of another kind in Apuleius, who relates, in the person of his narrator, that there were brought out of the secret place of the temple books, "partly written with unknown characters, and partly painted with figures of beasts declaring briefly every sentence," which were "strange and impossible to be read of the prophane people" (Apul. Metam. lib. xi.).8 The passage is spoken by a narrator of himself, in a tale of the author's own composing, and is to be taken as fable before it is taken as testimony to the usage of the priests; and if it be allowed to stand, it is a witness only to a concealing, and does not say how long the books had been so kept. I note that the books are of two kinds, the one in unknown characters and the other in figures of beasts, and I inquire whether the two answer to the Hieratic and the Hieroglyphic of the Alexandrian; but the tractate might mention the passage and was not to build upon it, and I do not build upon it here. NB-58-014

○The view which I propose, as at present sketched, is as follows. The figures of the sacred writing were in the first instance a mode of recording, of which the learned prelate has traced the progress; but the order of priests which received them, and which was at a later time to employ them for concealment, received with them the explanations which had been given of each, and received those explanations as it received the rest of what it held, without the reasons; so that the hawk which was drawn for God was drawn, in the later usage, for God because the bird was long-lived, or because the bird was like the sun, according as the interpreter was inclined to the one or to the other. The Mysteries are thus to be regarded, as the last of the modes by which the primitive tradition was obscured, not as the devising of a secret, but as the retention under figures of a trust whose meaning the priesthood had in great part forgotten; and the concealing, which the learned prelate allows to have come at length, is the effect, and not the cause, of that forgetting.9 The proof of this, which depends upon the whole body of the testimonies concerning the several figures, and which I do not suppose to be finished by the instances here given, is deferred to its place; and I shall add only that the solar reason of the hawk, which is the reason that appears the most considerable, is that which I have reserved to be examined last, among the reasons of the solar interpretation, in the second Book. NB-57-007 NB-58-003 NB-58-014

○It may be objected, in the first place, that the Alexandrian speaks of the Egyptians as concealing, and that I have myself allowed that the figures were at length so employed; to which I answer that the testimony is to the concealing, and that the date of the concealing, and the persons by whom it was practised, are the points upon which it is silent. It may be objected, in the second place, that I have represented the explanations of the hawk as the work of interpreters, whereas the Alexandrian and Horapollo may be supposed to have had them from the priests; to which I answer that this is possible, and that I do not deny it, and that the explanation delivered by a priest in a late age is not on that account the explanation of the person who framed the figure in an early. It may be objected, in the third place, that the passage in Apuleius is rejected by me as fable, and admitted as a witness to the two kinds of writing; to which I answer that I have admitted it only to the extent to which I have said, and that a fable which is composed by a writer who had seen the temple may be taken for what it declares as to the existence of books, and not for what it describes of their reading. And it may be objected, lastly, that the tractate allowed to the learned prelate a principle which this head employs against him; to which I answer that the principle is allowed in the sense in which he states it, and that I have employed against him only what he has himself conceded.10 NB-57-007 NB-57-012 NB-58-003 NB-58-014

Footnotes

  1. The tractate, in its third section, examines the secret, and refers in more than one place to the principle of the learned prelate respecting the hieroglyphics; the classification of the Egyptian writing, and the question of the concealment of the doctrine, were there set aside to be considered in their proper place, which is the present head. The reader will observe that the order of the testimonies in the text is not that in which I have copied them in the collections, but that in which they best bear upon one another; I have preferred, as in the Introduction, the clear to the ancient, and the classification, which is clearest, to the examples, which are more various, and which I have been obliged to treat more briefly than their number would justify. ↩

  2. Warburton, Div. Leg. b. iv. sect. 4. The learned prelate says, in the lines which immediately precede the concession, that it is now apparent that the hitherto undisputed opinion of ancient and of modern writers, that the Egyptians invented the hieroglyphics to conceal their knowledge and to render it mysterious, is altogether without just foundation. I give the words so far as they bear upon the question; the learned prelate adds that he will examine how it happened that the Egyptians were led to the employment, and I have not found that the examination touches the doctrine. ↩

  3. Clem. Alex. Strom. lib. v. I report the passage in substance, and give no words from it within marks, not having seen the translation by which an English reader could have had it at the date of this work. The three divisions of the Symbolic are, in the order of the Alexandrian, that which speaks literally by imitation, that which writes as it were figuratively, and that which is quite allegorical. I do not enter upon the examples which he adds, which are of the sun and of the moon. ↩

  4. Clem. Alex. Strom. lib. v. The Alexandrian gives, besides, the figure of the sun upon a ship or upon a crocodile, which he interprets as the sun making a passage through the moist air and generating time; this I do not here consider, as it belongs to the solar interpretation. The temple at Diospolis is described by him as that which is called the Pylon. ↩

  5. I am aware that a sentence so composed may be read in more than one way; the Alexandrian reads it as a precept, and I do not dispute his reading. That the figures were so arranged by one who wished them to be read, or by one who wished them to be read only by the learned, is not stated in the place; and it is for this reason that I have framed the question, and have not answered it. ↩

  6. Horapoll. Hierogl. lib. i. I give the passage in substance. The English version which is now commonly used is later than the date of this work, and I have therefore not set any of its words within marks, with the exception of the one word upon which the observation of the text depends. I do not enter upon the matter of the herb, which is of the nature of an addition to the reason. The reasons are two, and the writer, as I have said, expresses a preference for the second by a single word; the first, that the bird is prolific and long-lived, is of the nature of an observation upon the animal, and the second, that it seems to be an image of the sun, is of the nature of a comparison between the animal and a luminary; and it is not for me to say at this stage which of the two is the more probable, since the solar reading, if it be admitted, is a question of the second Book, and not of the fourth mode. ↩

  7. Warburton, Div. Leg. b. iv. sect. 4. The learned prelate supposes that the abridgment of the picture was made in three ways, at three successive periods, as appears from the more or less art of each; the second, of which I do not here speak, takes the instrument of the thing for the thing. Of the third I have not found it necessary to speak, nor to determine whether Horapollo is rightly cited for the first. ↩

  8. Apul. Metam. lib. xi. The words are those of the English version of 1566, in the spelling of the reprint of 1639; I have modernized neither the spelling nor the construction. The same passage adds that the priest interpreted to the narrator such things as were necessary to the use and preparation of his order, which I do not cite for any purpose of the present head. ↩

  9. The learned prelate, as I have said, grants that the Egyptians did at length employ the figures for concealment; and so far as that concession goes, it is a concession to the view which I propose, though the learned prelate does not draw from it the consequence which I draw. I mark the point without pressing it. ↩

  10. For the other results of the tractate, see the first and second heads of the present Book; for the solar interpretation of the hawk, the second Book; and for the deposit itself, and the question whether the Egyptians held it from an older tradition, the first. The fourth of the modes of corruption is thus, in the order of the work, the last; and I leave it with the remark that the testimonies which I have examined, taken singly, determine little, and, taken together, appear to me not inconsistent with the view which I have sketched. ↩

← BOOK V. OF THE MYSTERIES. HEAD III. OF HERMES, AND OF THE WRITINGS WHICH BEAR HIS NAME.EXCURSUS A. ON CRETE. →