space and time.  Instead of abstract contemplation, it gives us ceremonial worship.  Instead of the absorption of man into God, it gives us transmigration through all bodily forms.[169] It so completely incarnates God, as to make every type of animal existence divine; hence the worship of animals.  It makes body so sacred, that the human body must not be allowed to perish.  As the Brahman, contemplating eternity, forgot time, and had no history, so on the other hand the Egyptian priest, to whom every moment of time is sacred, records everything and turns every event into history; and as it enshrines the past time historically on monuments, so it takes hold of future time prophetically through oracles.

The chief peculiarity about the religion of Egypt, and that which has always caused the greatest astonishment to foreigners, was the worship of animals.  Herodotus says (Book II.  Sec. 65), “That all animals in Egypt, wild and tame, are accounted sacred, and that if any one kills these animals wilfully he is put to death.”  He is, however, mistaken in asserting that all animals are sacred; for many were not so, though the majority were.  Wilkinson gives a list of the animals of Egypt to the number of over one hundred, more than half of which were sacred, and the others not.  As hunting and fishing were favorite sports of the Egyptians, it is apparent that there must have been animals whom it was lawful to kill.  Nevertheless, it is certain that animal worship is a striking peculiarity of the Egyptian system.  Cows were sacred to Isis, and Isis was represented in the form of a cow.  The gods often wore the heads of animals; and Kneph, or Amun, with the ram’s head, is one of the highest of the gods, known among the Greeks as Jupiter Ammon.  The worship of Apis, the sacred bull of Memphis, the representative of Osiris, was very important among the Egyptian ceremonies.  Plutarch says that he was a fair and beautiful image of the soul of Osiris.  He was a bull with black hair, a white spot on his forehead, and some other special marks.  He was kept at Memphis in a splendid temple.  His festival lasted seven days, when a great concourse of people assembled.  When he died his body was embalmed and buried with great pomp, and the priests went in search of another Apis, who, when discovered by the marks, was carried to Memphis, carefully fed and exercised, and consulted as an oracle.  The burial-place of the Apis bulls was, a few years ago, discovered near Memphis.  It consists of an arched gallery hewn in the rock, two thousand feet long and twenty feet in height and breadth.  On each side is a series of recesses, each containing a large sarcophagus of granite, fifteen by eight feet, in which the body of a sacred bull was deposited.  In 1852 thirty of these had been already found.  Before this tomb is a paved road with lions ranged on each side, and before this a temple with a vestibule.