Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/338

 322 HISTORY OF GREECE. views of a permanent benefit to be achieved, as in the caual of Nekos and the vast reservoir of Moeris, 1 with its channel join- ing the river, when they thus expended the physical strength and even the lives of their subjects. Sanctity of animal life generally, veneration for particular ani- mals in particular nomes, and abstinence on religious grounds from certain vegetables, were among the marked features of Egyptian life, and served preeminently to impress upon the country that air of singularity which foreigners like Herodotus remarked in it. The two specially marked bulls, called apis at Memphis, and mnevis at Heliopolis, seem to have enjoyed a sort of national worship : 3 the ibis, the cat, and the dog were through- out most of the nomes venerated during life, embalmed like men after death, and if killed, avenged by the severest punishment of the offending party : but tl e veneration of the crocodile was confined to the neighborhood of Thebes and the lake of Moeris. Such veins of religious settiment, which distinguished Egypt from Phenicia and Assyria, not less than from Greece, were ex- plained by the native priests after their manner to Herodotus, though he declines from pious scruples to communicate what was told to him. 3 They seem remnants continued from a very early 1 It appears that the lake of Moeris is, at least in great part, a natural reservoir, though improved by art for the purposes wanted, and connected with the river by an artificial canal, sluices, etc. (Kenrick ad Ilerodot. ii, 149.) " The lake still exists, of diminished magnitude, being about sixty miles in circumference, but the communication with the Nile has ceased." Herodo- tus gives the circumference as three thousand six hundred stadia,=betwcen four hundred and four hundred and fifty miles. I incline to believe that there was more of the hand of man in it than Mr. Kenrick supposes, though doubtless the receptacle was natural. 8 Herodot. ii, 38-46, 65-72 ; iii, 27-30 : Diodor. i, 83-90. It is surprising to find Pindar introducing into one of his odes a plain mention of the monstrous circumstances connected with the worship of the goat in tha Mcndesian nome (Pindar, Fragm. Inc. 179, ed. Bergk). Pindar had also dwelt, in one of his Prosodia, upon the mythe of the gods having disguised themselves as animals, when ueeking to escape Typhon ; which was one of the talcs told as an explanation of the consecration of animals in Egypt: see Pindar, Fragm. Inc. p. 61, ed. Bergk; Porphyr. dc Abstinent iii, p. 251, ed. Rhoer. 3 Herodot. ii, 65. Diodorus docs not feel the same reluctance to mcntior
 * Hpafl aTTotytra 'V 86).