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179 Memnon. 1^9 fable and history about the city itself, in the usual style of the French Academicians, who in treating of a place or a person seem always to proceed on the supposition that their learned colleagues never heard of the name before. But as to the main point, the matter of Serapis, all that I could find proved by the dissertation is, that, wherever an opinion has been firmly embraced, everything will be sure to make for it. The opinion which Mr J. adopts about the deity of Sinope is so far from being established by the Abbe, that it is only one among a great number of conjectures which he proposes as about equally probable, and is not even that which he himself prefers. All that is disputable in the question we are now considering he takes for granted. The difficulty with him is not where to find Egyptians out of Egypt, but^ to choose between the numerous points from which an Egyp- tian deity might have been brought to Sinope. He observes that Sinope might have received the worship of Serapis, if not immediately from the inhabitants of the neighbouring provinces, who had it from the Syrians and Phoenicians, among whom it had been introduced from Egypt, at least from the Colchians, an Egyptian colony, with whom Sinope was closely connected by commerce, or perhaps from the Milesians, whose colony it was, and who, having kept up an intimate connexion with Egypt ever since the time of Psammetichus, could not fail to be thoroughly versed in the Egyptian religion. This last is in fact the conjecture he prefers, so that he really lends no support whatever to Mr J''s hypothesis : and to remove all difficulties he subjoins : " I might add that the Athenians, whose colony the Mile- sians themselves were, had too great a veneration for Isis and Serapis, the knowledge of whom they had received from Egypt through Cecrops and Erechtheus, two of their kings who were natives of that country, not to have established or promoted the worship of those two Divinities on the coasts of the Euxine, where they were so powerful during a long period, and where they founded so many celebrated colonies."" (p. 500.) In the meanwhile the main point on which Mr J.'s argu- ment depends — that the god of Sinope had ever been an Egyptian deity before he was introduced into the temple at