Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 3.djvu/318

294 it has followed, that there are many of each class that know not whether they are clean or not; and a wonderful confusion and uncertainty has followed through ignorance or mistake, being unwilling to violate the law in any one instance through not understanding it.

abhorrence of the old Egyptians for the bean is well known, and many silly reasons have been assigned for it; but that which has most met the approbation of the most learned men is, in my humble opinion, the weakest of them all. They say, the aversion to the bean arose from its resembling the phallus; but the crux ansata, or the cross with the handle to it, which is put in the hand of every Egyptian hieroglyphic of Isis, Osiris, or whatever the priests have called them, is likewise agreed by the learned to represent the phallus; and the figure of these nudities, without vail or concealment, is plain in all their statues. Now, I would ask, What is the reason why they abhor a bean because it represents these parts which, at the same time, by their own option or choice, are exposed in the hand or person of every figure which they exhibit to public view? The bean, however, is not cultivated in Abyssinia, neither is it in Egypt; lupines grow up in both, and lupines in both are eradicated like a weed, and lupines were what is called faba Ægyptiaca.

I cannot pretend to know the true reason of this, yet I will venture to give a guess:—The origin of great part of religious observances of Egypt began with the worship of the Nile, and probably at the head of it. The country of the Agows, as well where the Nile rises as in parts more distant, is all a honey country; not only their whole