en by Mr.
Birch in Arundale's 'Gallery of Antiquities,' which I suppose is the
book of best authority easily accessible. For the full titles and
utterances of the gods, Rosellini is as yet the only--and I believe,
still a very questionable--authority; and Arundale's little book,
excellent in the text, has this great defect, that its drawings give the
statues invariably a ludicrous or ignoble character. Readers who have
not access to the originals must be warned against this frequent fault
in modern illustration (especially existing also in some of the painted
casts of Gothic and Norman work at the Crystal Palace). It is not owing
to any wilful want of veracity: the plates in Arundale's book are
laboriously faithful: but the expressions of both face and body in a
figure depend merely on emphasis of touch; and, in barbaric art, most
draughtsmen emphasise what they plainly see--the barbarism; and miss
conditions of nobleness, which they must approach the monument in a
different temper before they will discover, and draw with great subtlety
before they can express.

The character of the Lower Pthah, or perhaps I ought rather to say, of
Pthah in his lower office, is sufficiently explained in the text of the
third Lecture; only the reader must be warned that the Egyptian
symbolism of him by the beetle was not a scornful one; it expressed only
the idea of his presence in the first elements of life. But it may not
unjustly be used, in another sense, by us, who have seen his power in
new development; and, even as it was, I cannot conceive that the
Egyptians should have regarded their beetle-headed image of him
(Champollion, 'Pantheon,' pl. 12), without some occult scorn. It is the
most painful of all their types of any beneficent power; and even among
those of evil influences, none can be compared with it, except its
opposite, the tortoise-headed demon of indolence.

Pasht (p. 24, line 32) is connected with the Greek Artemis, especially
in her offices of judgment and vengeance. She is usually lioness-headed;
sometimes cat-headed; her attributes seeming often trivial or ludicrous
unless their full meaning is known; but the enquiry is much too wide to
be followed here. The cat was sacred to her; or rather to the sun, and
secondarily to her. She is alluded to in the text because she is always
the companion of Pthah (called 'the beloved of Pthah,' it may be as
Judgment, demanded and longed for by Truth); and it may be well for
you