cent size, his forehead blazing with gems in honor of Mithra; close behind rode the king in a chariot of ivory inlaid with gold, followed by his royal kindred in embroidered garments, and a long train of nobles riding on camels richly caparisoned. This gorgeous retinue, facing the east, slowly ascended Mount Orontes. When they arrived at the summit the high-priest assumed the tiara wreathed with myrtle, and bailed the first rays of the rising orb with incense and prayer. The other magi gradually joined him in singing hymns to Ormuzd, the source of all blessing, by whom the radiant Mithra had been sent to gladden the earth and preserve the principle of life. Finally all joined in one universal chorus of praise, while king, princes, and nobles prostrated themselves before the orb of day.

AHRIMAN,

Or Arimanes, was the devil of the Persian mythology. Ormuzd, the King of Light, and Ahriman, the Prince of Darkness, both emanated from the Eternal One. Ahriman, the second emanation, became jealous of his eldest brother, the first-born. In consequence of the manifestation of his pride and envy, the Eternal One condemned Ahriman to remain three thousand years in the dark realm of shadows, where no ray of light could penetrate. During this time Ormuzd made the firmament, the heavenly orbs, and celestial spirits, without his brother being aware of it. But when the period of his banishment had expired he approached the light, by the effects of whose dazzling beauty his old feelings of envy revived. He resolved to compete with Ormuzd in everything. He created seven spirits called archedevs, in opposition to the amshaspands, and attached them to the seven planets, to paralyze their efforts for good and substitute evil. Then be made twenty-eight spirits, called devs, to counteract the izeds, by spreading all manner of disorder and distress. The most powerful and pernicious of these was an impure serpent called Aschmogh. Then he produced a crowd of genii in the service of Ormuzd.

Ormuzd, to arrest the increase of evil, made an egg containing kindly spirits; but Ahriman made one containing an equal number of spirits of hatred, and he broke the eggs together, and good and evil became mixed in the new creation. So there were contending forces of good and evil in all parts of the universe. To counteract the effect of the good spirits which Ormuzd had created, one to attend every buman being, Ahriman created innumerable evil geniuses, one to attend each human being and tempt him in all possible ways. These evil spirits easily stepped into the thoughts of men and women, and whispered into their ears and said, "It is Ahriman who has given the sun and moon and all good things;" and when they listened to these false assertions, Ahriman cried aloud from his realm of darkness, "O men, worship us." This Meshia poured milk towards the north as a libation to the spirits of darkness, and their power was greatly increased thereby.

To harass and destroy the good animals, Ahriman made wolves, tigers, serpents, and venomous insects of all kinds. And by eating a certain kind of fruit he transformed himself into a serpent and glided about the earth to tempt human beings and do all the harm he could. His devs entered the bodies of men and produced all manner of diseases. They entered also the mind and incited human beings to sensuality, falsehood, slander, and revenge. Into every department of the world they introduced discord and death. When Ormuzd tried to lead men against Ahriman, they deserted him and joined the enemy, thus enabling him to gain the ascendency on earth and keep it for three thousand years. In all these ways he proved himself to be quite as vile a character as the Christian devil, who, by the by, has been believed to be only a copy of his prototype, Ahriman, of Persia.

GODS OF EGYPT.

"The ancient Egyptians,” says Clarke," "have been the object of interest to the civilized world in all ages; for Egypt was the favorite home of civilization, science, and religion. It was a little country, the gift of the Nile; a little strip of land not more than seven miles wide, but containing innumerable cities and towns, and in ancient times supporting seven millions of inhabitants. Renowned for its discoveries in art and science, it was the world's university; where Moses and Pythagoras, Herodotus and Plato, all philosophers and lawgivers, went to school. The Egyptians knew the length of the year, and the form of the earth; they could calculate the eclipses of the sun and moon; were partially acquainted with geometry, music, chemistry, the art of design, medicine, anatomy, architecture, agriculture, and mining. In architecture, in the qualities of grandeur and massive proportions, they are yet to be surpassed. The largest buildings elsewhere erected by man are smaller than their pyramids; which are also the oldest works still remaining, the beauty of whose masonry, says Wilkinson, has not been surpassed in any subsequent age. An obelisk of a single stone now standing in Egypt weighs three hundred tons, and a colossus of Ramsis II, nearly nine hundred. But Herodotus describes a monolithic temple which must have weighed five thousand tons, and which was carried the whole length of the Nile to the Delta. And there is a roof of a doorway at Karnak, covered with sandstone blocks forty feet long. Sculpture and bas-reliefs three thousand five hundred years old, where the granite is cut with exquisite delicacy, are still to be seen throughout Egypt. Many inventions, supposed to be modern,

such as

glass, mosaics, false gems, glazed tiles, enameling,

were well known to the Egyptians. But, for us, the most fortunate circumstance in their taste was their fondness for writing. No nation has ever equaled them in their love for recording all human events and transactions. They wrote down all details of the private life with wonderful zeal, method, and regularity. Every year, month, and day had its record, and thus Egypt is the monumental land of the earth. Bunsen says, 'The genuine Egyptian writing is at least as old as Menes, the founder of the empire; perhaps three thousand years before Christ.' No other human records, whether of India or China, go back so far. Lepsius saw the hieroglyph of the reed and inkstand on the monuments of the fourth dynasty, and the sign of the papyrus roll on that of the twelfth dynasty, which was the last but one of the old empire. 'No Egyptian,' says Herodotus, 'omits taking accurate note of extraordinary and striking events.' Everything was written down. Scribes were seen everywhere on the monuments, taking accounts of the products of the farms, even to every single egg and chicken. 'In spite of the ravages of time, and the systematic excavation has scarcely yet commenced,' says Bunsen, we possess chronological records of a date anterior to any period of which manuscripts are preserved, or the art of writing existed in any other quarter. Because they were thus fond of recording everything, both in pictures and in three different kinds of writing; because they were also fond of building and excavating temples and tombs in the imperishable granite; because, lastly, the dryness of the air has preserved for us these paintings, and the sand which has buried the monuments has prevented their destruction, we have wonderfully preserved, over an interval of forty-five centuries, the daily habits, the opinions, and the religious faith of the ancient time.

6

"The oldest mural paintings disclose a state of the arts of civilization so advanced as to surprise even those who have made archæology a study, and who consequently know how few new things there are under the sun. It is not astonishing to find houses with doors and windows, with verandas, with barns for grain, vineyards, gardens, fruit trees, etc. We might also expect, since man is a fighting animal, to see, as

we do, pictures of marching troops, armed with spears, shields, bows, slings, daggers, axes, maces, and the boomerang; or to notice coats of mail, standards, war-chariots; or to find the assaults of forts by means of scaling-ladders. But these ancient tombs also exhibit to us scenes of domestic life and manners which would seem to belong to the nineteenth century of our era, rather than to the fifteenth century before it. Thus we see monkeys trained to gather fruit from the trees in an orchard; houses furnished with a great variety of chairs, tables, ottomans, carpets, couches, as elegant and elaborate as any used now. There are comic and genre pictures of parties, where the gentlemen and ladies are sometimes represented as being the worse for wine; of dances where ballet girls, in short dresses, perform very modern-looking pirouettes; of exercises in wrestling, games of ball, games of chance like chess or checkers, of throwing knives at a mark, and of the modern thimblerig, wooden dolls for children, curiously carved wooden boxes, dice, and toy-balls. There are men and women playing on harps, flutes, pipes, cymbals, trumpets, drums, guitars, and tambourines. Glass was, till recently, believed to be a modern invention, unknown to the ancients. But we find it commonly used as early as the age or Osertasen L, more than three thousand eight hundred years ago; and we have pictures of glass-blowing and of glass bottles as far back as the fourth dynasty. The best Venetian glass-workers are unable to rival some of the old Egyptian work; for the Egyptian could combine all colors in one cup, introduce gold between two surfaces of glass, and finish in glass details of feathers, etc., which it now requires a microscope to make out. It is evident, therefore, that they understood the use of the magnifying glass. The Egyptians also imitated successfully the colors of precious stones, and could even make statues thirteen feet high, closely resembling an emerald. They also made mosaics in glass, of wonderfully brilliant colors. They could cut glass at the most remote periods. Chinese bottles have also been found in previously unopened tombs of the eighteenth dynasty, indicating commercial intercourse reaching as far back as that epoch. They were able to spin, weave, and color cloth; and were