d have suffered the
most, extreme torments, rather than be guilty of such sacrilege." It was
death for any person to kill one of these animals voluntarily; and even a
punishment was decreed against him who should have killed an ibis, or cat,
with or without design.(346) Diodorus relates an incident,(347) to which
he himself was an eye-witness during his stay in Egypt. A Roman having
inadvertently, and without design, killed a cat, the exasperated populace
ran to his house; and neither the authority of the king, who immediately
detached a body of his guards, nor the terror of the Roman name, could
rescue the unfortunate criminal. And such was the reverence which the
Egyptians had for these animals, that in an extreme famine they chose to
eat one another, rather than feed upon their imagined deities.

Of all these animals, the bull Apis, called Epaphus by the Greeks, was the
most famous.(348) Magnificent temples were erected to him; extraordinary
honours were paid him while he lived, and still greater after his death.
Egypt went then into a general mourning. His obsequies were solemnized
with such a pomp as is hardly credible. In the reign of Ptolemy Lagus, the
bull Apis dying of old age,(349) the funeral pomp, besides the ordinary
expenses, amounted to upwards of fifty thousand French crowns.(350) After
the last honours had been paid to the deceased god, the next care was to
provide him a successor; and all Egypt was sought through for that
purpose. He was known by certain signs, which distinguished him from all
other animals of that species; upon his forehead was to be a white spot,
in form of a crescent; on his back, the figure of an eagle; upon his
tongue, that of a beetle. As soon as he was found, mourning gave place to
joy; and nothing was heard, in all parts of Egypt, but festivals and
rejoicings. The new god was brought to Memphis, to take possession of his
dignity, and there installed with a great number of ceremonies. The reader
will find hereafter, that Cambyses, at his return from his unfortunate
expedition against Ethiopia, finding all the Egyptians in transports of
joy for the discovery of their new god Apis, and imagining that this was
intended as an insult upon his misfortunes, killed, in the first impulse
of his fury, the young bull, who, by that means, had but a short enjoyment
of his divinity.

It is plain, that the golden calf set up near mount Sinai by the
Israelites, was owing to their abode in Egypt