The Egyptians, not contented with offering incense to animals, carried their folly to such an excess, as to ascribe a divinity to the pulse and roots of their gardens. For this they are ingeniously reproached by the satirist: Who has not heard where Egypt’s realms are nam’d, What monster-gods her frantic sons have fram’d? Here Ibis gorg’d with well-grown serpents, there The Crocodile commands religious fear: Where Memnon’s statue magic strings inspire With vocal sounds, that emulate the lyre; And Thebes, such, Fate, are thy disastrous turns! Now prostrate o’er her pompous ruins mourns; A monkey-god, prodigious to be told! Strikes the beholder’s eye with burnish’d gold: To godship here blue Triton’s scaly herd, The river-progeny is there preferr’d: Through towns Diana’s power neglected lies, Where to her dogs aspiring temples rise: And should you leeks or onions eat, no time Would expiate the sacrilegious crime Religious nations sure, and blest abodes, Where ev’ry orchard is o’errun with gods.(351) It is astonishing to see a nation, which boasted its superiority above all others with regard to wisdom and learning, thus blindly abandon itself to the most gross and ridiculous superstitions. Indeed, to read of animals and vile insects, honoured with religious worship, placed in temples, and maintained with great care, and at an extravagant expense;(352) to read, that those who murdered them were punished with death; and that these animals were embalmed, and solemnly deposited in tombs assigned them by the public; to hear that this extravagance was carried to such lengths, as that leeks and onions were acknowledged as deities; were invoked in necessity, and depended upon for succour and protection; are absurdities which we, at this distance of time, can scarce believe; and yet they have the evidence of all antiquity. “You enter,” says Lucian,(353) “into a magnificent temple, every part of which glitters with gold and silver. You there look attentively for a god, and are cheated with a stork, an ape, or a cat;” “a just emblem,” adds that author, “of too many palaces, the masters of which are far from being the brightest ornaments of them.” Several reasons are assigned for the worship paid to animals by the Egyptians.(354) The first is drawn from fabulous history. It is pretended that the gods, in a rebellion made against them by men, fled into Egypt, and there concealed themselves under the form of different animals; and that this gave birth to the worship which was afterwards paid to those animals.