floor while he held
forth the fire to the people; and though he and most of his hearers were
Greeks, he called upon the god in the Egyptian language.

The inner walls of the temples glittered with gold and silver and amber,
and sparkled with gems from Ethiopia and India; and the recesses were
veiled with rich curtains. The costliness was often in striking contrast
with the chief inmate, much to the surprise of the Greek traveller,
who, having leave to examine a temple, had entered the sacred rooms, and
asked to be shown the image of the god for whose sake it was built. One
of the priests in waiting then approached with a solemn look, chanting
a hymn, and pulling aside the veil allowed him to peep in at a snake,
a crocodile, or a cat, or some other beast, fitter to inhabit a bog or
cavern than to lie on a purple cushion in a stately palace. The funerals
of the sacred animals were celebrated with great pomp, particularly that
of the bull Apis; and at a cost, in one case, of one hundred talents,
or eighty-five thousand dollars, which was double what Ptolemy Soter,
in his wish to please his new subjects, spent upon the Apis of his day.
After the funeral the priests looked for a calf with the right spots,
and when they had found one they fattened it for forty days, and brought
it to Memphis in a boat under a golden awning, and lodged it safely in
the temple.

[Illustration: 289.jpg RELIGIOUS PROCESSION ON THE NILE]

The religious feelings of the Egyptians were much warmer and stronger
than those of the Greeks or Romans; they have often been accused of
eating one another, but never of eating a sacred animal. Once a year the
people of Memphis celebrated the birthday of Apis with great pomp
and expense, and one of the chief ceremonies on the occasion was
the throwing a golden dish into the Nile. During the week that these
rejoicings lasted, while the sacred river was appeased by gifts, the
crocodile was thought to lose its fierceness, its teeth were harmless,
and it never attempted to bite; and it was not till six o'clock on the
eighth day that this animal again became an object of fear to those
whose occupations brought them to the banks of the Nile. Once a year
also the statues of the gods were removed from their pedestals and
placed in barges, and thus carried in solemn procession along the Nile,
and only brought back to the temples after some days. It was supposed
that the gods were passing these days on a visit to the r