In the _sepulchral_ opinion I am not a little fortified by the circumstance of there being found at Benares pyramids corresponding in all respects, save that of size, to those in Egypt, having also subterranean passages beneath them, which are said to extend even for miles together. A column also, besides a sphinx’s head, which has been discovered not long since in digging amid the ruins of an ancient and unknown city, on the banks of the Hypanis, bearing an inscription which was found to differ on being compared with Arabic, Persia, Turkish, Chinese, Tartar, Greek, and Roman letters; but bore “a manifest and close similarity with the characters observed by Denon on several of the mummies of Egypt,” gives strength to the idea of the identity of the Egyptian religion with that of the Indians, as it does to the identity of destination of their respective pyramids. CHAPTER VI. Now if there be any one point of Irish antiquity which our historians insist upon more than another, it is that of our ancestral connection with the Egyptian kings. In all their legends Egypt is mixed up--in all their romances Egypt stands prominent, which certainly could not have been so universal without _something_ at least like foundation, and must, therefore, remove anything like surprise at the affinity our ancient religion bore, in many respects, to theirs, since they were both derived from the same common origin. I have already intimated my decided belief of the application of the Egyptian pyramids to the combined purposes of religion and science. The department of science to which I particularly referred was astronomy, the cultivation of which was inseparably involved in all their religious rites; for despite of the reverence which the Egyptians seemed to pay to crocodiles, bulls, and others of the brute creation, in those they only figured forth the several attributes, all infinite, in the divinity; as their worship, like that of the ancient Irish, was purely planetary, or Sabian. The Indians too have images of the elephant, horse, and other such animals, chiselled out with the most studious care, and to all intents and purposes appear to pay them homage; but, if questioned on the subject, they will tell you that in the sagacity of the former, and the strength and swiftness of the latter, they only recognise the superior wisdom and might of the All-good and All-great One, and the rapidity with which his decrees are executed by his messengers.