and Onions--Priests were Physicians and
Interpreters of Oracles--Sacrificing Human
Victims--Wax Figures--Magic--Teaching of the Egyptian
Priests--Transmigration--Character of Men judged of
after Death.

Egypt was a country steeped in superstition. The people believed in
sorcery, magic, and enchantments; and there is the fullest evidence in
the sacred pages that the Egyptian magicians were able to perform
dexterous feats that were truly surprising. Astronomy was studied with
a view to success in astrology, as the latter was a science much
esteemed, and very lucrative. Public or state astrologers were
consulted in cases of emergencies. None dared to practise astrology,
magic, sorcery, or any of the various modes of divination unless
authorised by a master in the art, before whom he had "spread the
carpet" for prayer. To procure sublime visions, seers shut themselves
up for a long time, without food or water, in a dark place, and prayed
aloud until they fainted. While in a swoon, strange visions appeared
to them, and revelations made which sometimes filled the nation with
gladness, and at other times spread mourning over the country. In
advanced ages, as well as in early times, men believed there were a
multitude of subordinate spirits, as ministers, to execute the behests
of the supreme sovereign. To these spirits were committed the
superintendence of all the different parts of nature, and their bodies
were imagined to be composed of that particular element in which they
resided. Altars were built in the midst of groves, where the spirits
were supposed to assemble. Gratitude and admiration tended to the
deification of departed heroes and other eminent persons. This
probably gave rise to the belief of national and tutelar gods, as well
as the practice of worshipping gods through the medium of statues cut
into human form. At one time demi-gods gradually rose in the scale of
divinities until they occupied the places of the heavenly bodies.
Thus, following ancient hyperbole, a king, for his beneficence, was
called the sun, and a queen, for her beauty, was styled the moon. As
this adulation advanced into an established worship, the compliment
was reversed by calling planets or luminaries after heroes. And to
render the subject more reconcilable to reason, the Eastern priests
taught that the early founders of states and inventors of arts were
divine intelligences, clothed with human bodies. When celes