It is supposed that many of the animals and animal forms buried with and painted on the coffins of the Egyptian dead were, in remote times, the sacred animals or “Totems” belonging to the dead man’s family. “Totem worship” may have been the most ancient form of the Egyptian religion. The Temple of Bubastis (in the Delta) was sacred to the goddess Bast, or Pasht, the cat-headed goddess (Fig. 86). The cat was, therefore, a sacred animal or a “Totem,” in ancient Egypt, like the ibis, hawk, asp, beetle, &c., totems; and so in the district or town of Bubastis the Cat Clan, or worshippers of the cat-headed goddess Pasht, built the rock-cut temple called Speos Artemidos, near Beni-Hasan, and dedicated it to her worship. [Illustration: Fig. 85.—Osiris. (P. & C.)] [Illustration: Fig. 86.—The Goddess Bast, or Pasht. Actual Size. (P. & C.)] The writing of the Egyptians is classified under three heads: the “Hieroglyphic,” or the form in which it appears on the monuments; the “Hieratic,” or priestly writing, as used on the papyrus documents; and the “Demotic,” a cursive or running kind of writing similar to the Hieratic, and a later development of it. In the year 1798 the famous “Rosetta Stone,” now in the British Museum, was found near the Rosetta mouth of the Nile by a French officer. It passed into the hands of the British in 1802. On this stone is inscribed a decree of the priests of Memphis conferring divine honours on Ptolemy V., King of Egypt, B.C. 195. The inscription is in three forms, the Hieroglyphic, the Demotic, and in Greek characters. From this inscription was first obtained the key to the decipherment of the hieroglyphics, and interpretation of the ancient language of Egypt, and the names of the kings which in the hieroglyphics are enclosed in cartouches or oblong rings. Thus the clue was obtained to the identification of the letters of the Egyptian alphabet, which had hitherto baffled all the attempts of Egyptologists to find out. The credit of the identification is chiefly due to the French savant, Champollion, but a considerable share of the honour must be given to Thomas Young, who was the first to find out the correct value of many of the phonetic signs. The Egyptians, from the earliest period known, were acquainted with and skilled in medicine, in astronomy, in mathematics, philosophy, poetry, and fiction. The oldest literary papyrus at present known dates from the Third to the Fifth Dynasties (3966 to 3333 B.C.). Egyptian art was at its best in the earliest Dynasties. The Fourth Dynasty was the great pyramid-building period, and the statues of this great epoch were more natural and artistic, and altogether were less conventional than those of later times. It is notable that in the Eighteenth and Twenty-sixth Dynasties, after a long period of art depression, the artists went back for inspiration and better models to the work of the men of the Fourth and Twelfth Dynasties.