to dance before the great god Min of the crops, and at harvest-time the peasants performed their thanksgiving before the figures of Min in this manner.  Hathor and Bast, the two great goddesses of pleasure, were worshipped in the dance.  Hathor was mistress of sports and dancing, and patron of amusements and mirth, joy and pleasure, beauty and love; and in regard to the happy temperament of the Egyptians, it is significant that this goddess was held in the highest esteem throughout the history of the nation.

Bast was honoured by a festival which for merriment and frivolity could not well be equalled.  The festival took place at Bubastis, and is described by Herodotus in the following words:—­

“This is the nature of the ceremony on the way to Bubastis.  They go by water, and numerous boats are crowded with persons of both sexes.  During the voyage several women strike the cymbals, some men play the flute, the rest singing and clapping their hands.  As they pass near a town they bring the boat close to the bank.  Some of the women continue to sing and play the cymbals; others cry out as long as they can, and utter mocking jests against the people of the town, who begin to dance, while the former pull up their clothes before them in a scoffing manner.  The same is repeated at every town they pass upon the river.  Arrived at Bubastis, they celebrate the festival of Bast, sacrificing a great number of victims, and on that occasion a greater consumption of wine takes place than during the whole of the year.”

At this festival of Bast half the persons taking part in the celebrations must have become intoxicated.  The Egyptians were always given to wine-drinking, and Athenaeus goes so far as to say that they were a nation addicted to systematic intemperance.  The same writer, on the authority of Hellanicus, states that the vine was cultivated in the Nile valley at a date earlier than that at which it was first grown by any other people; and it is to this circumstance that Dion attributes the Egyptian’s love of wine.  Strabo and other writers speak of the wines of Egypt as being particularly good, and various kinds emanating from different localities are mentioned.  The wines made from grapes were of the red and white varieties; but there were also fruit wines, made from pomegranates and other fruits.  In the lists of offerings inscribed on the walls of temples and tombs one sees a large number of varieties recorded—­wines from the north, wines from the south, wines provincial, and wines foreign.  Beer, made of barley, was also drunk very largely, and this beverage is heartily commended by the early writers.  Indeed, the wine and beer-bibber was so common an offender against the dignity of the nation, that every moralist who arose had a word to say against him.  Thus, for example, in the Maxims of Ani one finds the moralist writing—­