observations, not at Kanopus, but in the Serapeumi at Alexandria. The previous work of Eudoxos of Knidos, who, according to authentic evidence, had attended the college at Heliopolis from 366 to 364 B.C.; of Eratosthenes, of the great Hipparchus, of Marinus of Tyre, and others, all lay to his hand. He knew the maps of the Milesian Anaximander, of Hekataeus and Aristagoras, who were well acquainted with Egypt, and he must have been able to take a much wider sweep than the Egyptian priests. His knowledge of peoples and countries was certainly not derived from them, but from the commercial connections of the Alexandrians. But still he found among his own countrymen much that could be made use of, and when the Arabian geographer Mas'udi asserts that there were maps in the geographies of Ptolemæus and Marinus of Tyre, which were painted with colours, the statement seems to be confirmed by the scanty traces of ancient Egyptian cartography that have come down to us, for these present the mountainous country, in which the gold-mines of the Pharaohs were situated, in lines of very clumsy drawing, but with variegated colouring. The coloured maps which Mamun, who studied with great zeal at the college at Fostat († 833), published with his geography, are said to have excelled those of Ptolemæus himself.

It is known that the great Syntaxis of Ptolemæus, under its Arabic name of Almagest (uɛyiorn-i.e., the greatest), and the tables of the same scholar, were early translated into Arabic, and were not known in Europe except by means of this version before the beginning of the sixteenth century. Then for the first time did the geography of the great Egyptian, and the not very successful maps of Agathodæmon, become accessible to the West in their original Greek form. Thanks to their works, the Arabs were from that century onwards far in advance of all other peoples in mathematical geography. They knew already that the earth was a ball and moved in space, though they still erroneously looked on it as the centre of the universe. Abulfida says, for example, that if two persons travelled round the earth, the one going in an easterly and the other in a westerly direction, and if they met again at the spot from which they had started, the one would be a day before and the other a day behind the time of the ordinary calendar. Now compare with this the fact mentioned by the too early deceased Peschel, that when the first ship, the Victoria, made in 1522 the voyage round the world, and found a day wanting in the ship's reckoning, the best heads despaired of discovering a solution for this simple circumstance.

Unfortunately, our knowledge of the state of astronomical science among the ancient Egyptians is so limited, that it would be rash to try to pick out from the writings of Ptolemæus all that he owed to the learning of his countrymen. This, however, can be easily perceived, that he went beyond them in all fields. Unless we are to assume that his tables have been incompletely preserved, his list of 3 L

VOL. XLIII.

kings shows that he intentionally omitted much that he might in his time have found in the archives of the temples on the Nile; for while he enumerates twenty Babylonian kings, ten Persian, and thirteen of the house of the Ptolemies, as well as the Roman Emperors after Augustus, he gives no list whatever of the Pharaohs. His doctrine of the eccentricity and epicycles of the planets, which passed current down to a late period in the Middle Ages, connects itself with the previous labours of Apollonius of Perga and the great Hipparchus, and is consequently associated only indirectly at the best with Egyptian ideas. On the other hand, we may affirm that Eudoxos's theory of the spheres is connected with Egyptian ideas, because he was educated in the school of the priests at Heliopolis, and because the astronomers of the Nile had long before his time reduced the apparently arbitrary courses of the planets to the form of a circle in a way similar to his conception. Aristotle speaks of very ancient observations of the planets by the Egyptians and Babylonians; and Seneca says expressly that it was Eudoxos that first brought the knowledge of the planetary motions from Egypt to Greece. According to this same Eudoxos, every planet had to move through a number of spheres, or transparent ball-shells, all concentric, but moving in different directions. He believed there were twenty-six of these in all. This number was subsequently increased by Aristotle to fifty-five. "We read," says a great modern scholar, "of the geometrical phantasy of the ancients, which looked on space as being filled with fifty-five transparent balls turning on different axes in different ways and in different periods, but they left unsolved the problem of connecting these apparently irregular movements together under a single law."

If we look into their extant writings, we find that they thought the universe to be occupied by seventy-five spheres. These are frequently mentioned, and their importance indicated in passages of the so-called Lekennu texts on the kings' graves of Bibāu-el-Mulūk, which have been published and excellently commented on by the Geneva Egyptologist, Naville. They were termed Kert', and distinguished either by the general sign for abode or dwelling, or by the circle O. The seventy-five forms of divinity (here termed Ra) have their dwelling-place in them and fill them full. The spirit of the Highest occupies them, proceeds from them, and lives in them in blessed peace. They can hardly be anything else than the ball-shells of Eudoxos. They must be thought of as flying clouds clear as crystal. In the mythological astronomical representations, found on the ceiling of halls sacred to the gods, deity, entering the sensible world as a star, moves in a golden boat on their surface. According to pantheistic conceptions, Rā is he in whom all the spheres are united, who comprehends them all in himself, and fills them with his being. In this connection Naville recalls the saying of

Damascius," The whole kosmos is the kosmical God, for he embraces all kosmical spheres in himself." The learned Syrer states expressly that this saying was derived from ancient traditions, and by that he means those of the Egyptians, for we know that he owes the best part of his own knowledge to Theon of Alexandria, and Ammonius the Egyptian.

Some texts of old date appear to indicate that astronomers under the Pharaohs already possessed a knowledge of the motion of the earth, and the Norwegian Lieblein has carefully collected all the information bearing on that matter; but for many reasons we cannot consider the remarkable facts he adduces as results of astronomical observation. The astronomical writings and tables of the ancient horoscopists are lost, but we gather that they contained surprisingly extensive knowledge, for Diodorus states that the Egyptian astronomers knew how to calculate the eclipses of the sun and moon with unerring accuracy, and according to Diogenes Laërtius, there were observed, from the earliest times down to Alexander the Great, 375 eclipses of the sun and 852 of the moon. The Egyptians were acquainted, as Lepsius most ably proves, with the fixed stars. According to their view, the earth sat in the centre of the universe, and all the stars journeyed round her.

Space does not permit us to go into the other branches of knowledge cultivated by the Arabs. Their philosophy, as is known, was entirely dependent on Aristotle, whose works, like those of Ptolemæus, were brought to the West in the Middle Ages, in part by means of Arabic translations. We know so little of the philology of the Egyptians that we must forbear trying to find in the philological works of the Arabs what they have borrowed from the Egyptians. What is best in the Greek philosophers was arrived at by themselves independently, but still much might be added to Teichmuller's able account of the Egyptian teaching in Hekataeus. In the writings of the Neo-Platonists, we have ourselves come across many things unconditionally Egyptian. In Arabic tracts also, like that of Hermes on the Human Soul, there are many remarkable resemblances to ideas which we find in earlier times expressed by Egyptian priests. The religion of the Mussulmans came to Egypt ready-made and complete along with its confessors. The Koran has been much, thoroughly, and more or less ably and profoundly commented on in that country, but, naturally, always in a purely Arabian sense. But in Cairo many outward things, especially the forms taken by beneficence and the funeral rites, connect themselves with customs and usages that grew on ancient Egyptian soil, and were rooted in Moslem life through the instrumentality of the Copts. One of these customs was that of attaching schools as pious foundations to temples. In the earliest times we find all seminaries of science of which hieratic manuscripts make mention, closely associated with the temples

of the gods. The most important of these institutions flourished on the territory of the Necropolis of Thebes, and belonged, together with the famous library which bore the inscription "Hospital of the Soul," to the Memnomium of Ramses II. But in the residential part of Thebes also, scholastic institutions were maintained in connection with the greatest sanctuary of the kingdom. The pupils educated at them meet us often under the name of scholars of the town of Ammon, and it is now established that the colleges of Heliopolis and Sais were connected with the temples of those towns. Every sanctuary had landed property, and was put into an excellent position by the endowments provided by Pharaoh and private benefactors, and often by claims to pious services. The real and movable estate of the temples and schools was largely increased, especially by the lavish generosity of Ramses the Third, and it may be compared throughout with the ankaf (sing. wakf), the foundations in which Cairo is peculiarly rich, but which have been subject to State supervision since Mohammed 'Ali. Of course it is difficult to determine in what form the heathen custom preserved itself in passing through the Christian period into the Moslem. It is usual, in the transition of a people from one religion to another, for important institutions of the old doctrine to be completely abolished, while matters of unessential detail are often willingly retained and live long in oral tradition as popular superstitions.

In this way the worship of cats, which were held high and holy among the ancient Egyptians, has survived to the present day, though in an ever feebler and feebler form. The Kadi was obliged, not very long ago, to feed homeless mouse-catchers for the most part at his own cost, and even to-day meat is laid out for them every afternoon in a particular courtyard to which they flock. The great Sultan Bebars bequeathed a garden in the north of Cairo for the entertainment of the cats of the town. The German pilgrim Arnold von Harfi saw a soldier sitting in the sunshine, and observed that he allowed himself to be painfully roasted and blinded rather than go back into the shade, because he could not bring it into his heart to disturb the sleep of a cat that lay in his bosom.

It is especially remarkable, however, to find this survival of ancient Egyptian animal-worship introduced into one of the most important religious functions of the Egyptian Arabs, the pilgrimage to Mecca, and retained in it to this day. Pilgrimages to particular sanctuaries were already customary in the age of the Pharaohs. Bubastis, in the Delta, is mentioned as the shrine of the most important of these. At that place was situated the principal sanctuary of the goddess Sechet, the daughter of the sun-god Pia, who was represented by a cat's head, as the Queen of Love, from whom passion, lust and festal intoxication flowed into the hearts of the pious. Men and women from all Egypt streamed in wild licentiousness to her temple.

700,000 men, we are told by Herodotus, went to Bubastis every year and brought dead cats there for burial; and this statement has been completely authenticated, for a short time ago a cat graveyard, containing innumerable bones of this sacred animal, was discovered in the heap of ruins which rises from the plain of Zakazik, and now constitutes the only remains of the famous pilgrimage city of Bubastis. As 700,000 of the faithful went to Bubastis under the Pharaohs, so in the present day 70,000 Moslems are obliged to make the pilgrimage to Mecca. this number is not complete, then Heaven makes up the difference by sending angels. The caravan begins with the Mahmal of Cairo, and what comes next in the long procession immediately after the CamelSchech, who every year makes the pilgrimage, half naked, and with streaming hair? It is the Father of Cats, or Schech of Cats, who carries with him, in baskets hanging on either side of his saddle, as many cats as he can accommodate before and behind him.

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In earlier times the caravan was accompanied by a mother of cats, instead of a father of cats, but the wife has been supplanted by the husband in consequence of the small part which women take in the pilgrimage. Islam has, indeed, generally deprived women of the privileged position which was granted them in ancient Egypt. A pilgrimage similar to that of Bubastis is at present celebrated at Tanta. It is attached to the tomb and commemoration festival of the saint Sejjid Ahmed-el-Bedawi. Popular festivals, on as great a scale as those of the time of the Pharaohs, are associated with the religious celebration, and we have ourselves seen whole boatfuls of women of illfame going to the fair of Tanta, who, as soon as they met another boat, uttered those singular shrill screams with which under emotional excitement, whether gay or sad, they rend the ear. These women conduct themselves in general not much more decently than their predecessors at the pilgrimage to Bubastis.

In the graveyard of Cairo the Egyptian archæologist will find many traces of pre-Christian times. The Greeks burnt the dead; the Christians disliked mummifying them; for example, one of the most ancient saints of the Coptic Church desired to see his body saved from that process; and so the art of the Colchytes, Parashistes and Taricheutes became lost; but just as Memphis and Thebes had their necropolis, so Cairo has its city of the dead. Of course this is situated in the east of the town, and not, according to ancient Egyptian usage, in the west. This circumstance is partly due to the nature of the locality, and partly to the altered estimate set upon the various quarters of the heavens, for the Moslems have quite different ideas on this point from the ancient Egyptians. The latter gave the first rank to the south, the home of the Nile, on which the weal and woe of their country depended; and since they likened the fate of the soul to the course of the sun, and thought the boat of day received the immortal part of man in order to disappear