was thrown into the river, and a grand festival was held to celebrate his birthday.  The people believed that during this festival the crocodiles forgot their natural ferocity and became harmless.  There was, however, one drawback to his happy lot:  he was not permitted to live beyond a certain period, and if, when he had attained the age of twenty-five years, he still survived, the priests drowned him in the sacred cistern and then buried him in the temple of Serapis.  On the death of this bull, whether it occurred in the course of nature or by violence, the whole land was filled with sorrow and lamentations, which lasted until his successor was found.

We find the following item in one of the newspapers of the day: 

“The Tomb of Apis.—­The excavations going on at Memphis bid fair to make that buried city as interesting as Pompeii.  The monster tomb of Apis is now open, after having lain unknown for centuries.”

Milton, in his “Hymn on the Nativity,” alludes to the Egyptian deities, not as imaginary beings, but as real demons, put to flight by the coming of Christ.

“The brutish god of Nile as fast,
Isis and Horus and the dog Anubis haste. 
Nor is Osiris seen
In Memphian grove or green
Trampling the unshowered grass with lowings loud;
Nor can he be at rest
Within his sacred chest;
Nought but profoundest hell can be his shroud. 
In vain with timbrel’d anthems dark
The sable-stole sorcerers bear his worshipped ark.”

[Footnote:  There being no rain in Egypt, the grass is “unshowered,” and the country depend for its fertility upon the overflowings of the Nile.  The ark alluded to in the last line is shown by pictures still remaining on the walls of the Egyptian temples to have been borne by the priests in their religious processions.  It probably represented the chest in which Osiris was placed.]

Isis was represinted in statuary with the head veiled, a symbol of mystery.  It is this which Tennyson alludes to in “Maud,” IV., 8: 

“For the drift of the Maker is dark, an Isis hid by the veil,” etc.

Oracles Oracle was the name used to denote the place where answers were supposed to be given by any of the divinities to those who consulted them respecting the future.  The word was also used to signify the response which was given.

The most ancient Grecian oracle was that of Jupiter at Dodona.  According to one account, it was established in the following manner:  Two black doves took their flight from Thebes in Egypt.  One flew to Dodona in Epirus, and alighting in a grove of oaks, it proclaimed in human language to the inhabitants of the district that they must establish there an oracle of Jupiter.  The other dove flew to the temple of Jupiter Ammon in the Libyan Oasis, and delivered a similar command there.  Another account is, that they were not doves, but priestesses, who were carried off from Thebes in Egypt by the Phoenicians, and set up oracles at the Oasis and Dodona.  The responses of the oracle were given from the trees, by the branches rustling in the wind, the sounds being interpreted by the priests.