Page:The Religion of Ancient Egypt.djvu/44

 each other in reference to time. The speculations of the ablest men are sure to fail if their chronology is fatally wrong. I remember the time when men talked gravely and learnedly of reminiscences of primeval revelation respecting the Trinity and other Christian doctrines, as having been preserved, though in a very corrupt state, in the Hindu traditions about Trimûrti. Some, on the other hand, perhaps suspected that the Christian doctrine might have been derived through some unknown channel from a Hindu source. It is now acknowledged by all scholars that the Hindu doctrine, in question is extremely modern; the first traces of it are to be sought more than fourteen hundred years, not before, but after, the Christian era. The work upon India of P. Von Bohlen used to be considered a decisive authority respecting the influence of Indian upon Egyptian culture. No such influence can any longer be admitted. Many of you have probably read Mr. McLennan's articles on the Worship of Animals and Plants. In order to show that the ancient notions passed through what he calls the Totem stage, which he says must have been in pre-historic times, he appeals to the signs of the Zodiac. "The Zodiacal constellations figured on the porticos of Dendera and Esne in Egypt are," he says, "of great antiquity." The authority for this statement is a passage from Chambers' Encyclopaedia, to the effect that "Dupuis, in his Origine des Cultes, has, from a careful