Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/285

 Correspondence. 247

are not weighty enough to support the argument, the reader will discount them. Authorities are seldom quoted except for facts, and the fact generally commends itself by fitting in with other facts. My task was to reconstruct a ruined temple, and it hardly matters what poor journeyman brings the stones to my hand so long as they fit. I have been able so to fit them that " the very completeness " of the restored building raises your reviewer's "suspicions." Should this be the legitimate effect upon an unprejudiced mind ?

2. My own acquaintance with Egypt appears to him to be but slight. May I ask, Can nobody discuss a Scripture question in- telligently without having travelled extensively in Palestine ? How much did Lewin know, from travel, when he wrote his famous Sketch ofjerusakm ? It was the best book on the subject, and yet he had never been there ! Professor Sayce, again, has given us a valuable Hibbert Lecture on Babylonia, without ever having been so far east, I believe. But I have at least been in Egypt ; besides which, it is not correct to say that I have confounded Abydos with Thinis.

3. The reviewer says there is one reason which will prevent Egyptologists from believing I have discovered a key, viz. the certainty that the Egyptian religion was an ill-assorted amalgam of inconsistent elements derived from different local centres. But if I am right, in main outline merely, this is not the case : to bring it against me is to beg the question. And my critic has nothing else to bring against me. If I am right, the key to Egyptian mythology is to be found in the facts of astronomy, and the efforts of the priest-astronomers to attain to a correct know- ledge of the movements of the heavenly bodies, so as to settle the calendar and regulate the religious festivals. My critic writes like one who has too little knowledge of astronomy to enable him to judge of this theory, but has a strong impression that no outsider is likely to have accomplished what no professional decipherer of hieroglyphs has been able to do. But why not ? A decipherer or translator or linguist may know but little of astronomy, and have no insight into symbolism. On the other hand, if Maspero, Renouf, and Wiedemann have rendered the hieroglyphs correctly, it is possible for a layman to reason justly from the renderings. A mere linguist may be mind-ridden by the demon of words, like the Greek scholar who was asked his opinion of the character of