confirma le pouvoir qu'Auguste lui avait donné de disposer d'eux comme il le voudrait. Saturnin, qui avait été Consul et qui avait occupé des emplois fort honorables, opina le premier avec beaucoup de modération, &c. Les trois fils de Saturninus, qui lui servaient de lieutenans, opinèrent comme lui."

(Haverc. 1. 17. c. 2.) "Hérode, pour établir une entière sureté dans la Trachonite, fortifia un village qui était au milieu du pays, (probablement Phæna); le rendit aussi grand qu'une ville, et y mit une garnison. Ayant appris qu'un Juif, nommé Zamaris, venu de Babylone avec 500 cavaliers, s'était établi, par la permission de Saturnin, gouverneur de Syrie, dans un château nommé Valathe, proche d'Antioche, il le fit venir, &c.

(Haverc. 1. 3. c. 4.) "Hérode envoya à Saturnin, qui les fit conduire à Rome pour faire leur procès, deux Arabes qui étaient venus près de lui pour le faire assassiner."

(Haverc. 1. 5. c.7.) " Antipater arrive à Jérusalem en même tems que Quintilius Varus, qui avait succédé à Saturnin dans le gouvernement de Syrie."

De cette suite de passages il résulte incontestablement que Saturninus fut gouverneur de Syrie avant Quintilius Varus, qui fut précédemment Consul. Son consulat et son gouvernement de Syrie sont encore mentionnés par d'autres auteurs. Ces mêmes écrivains nous font connaître son nom, qui n'est ni Julius ni Junius, mais bien Sentius. Velleius Paterculus libro 2, c. 77. "Quæ res (Pompeii junioris inducia) et alios clarissimos viros et Neronem Claudium, et M. Silanum, Sentiumque Saturninum...restituit reipublicæ." Ibidem, c. 92. "Præclarum excellentis viri factum C. Sentii Saturnini, circa ea tempora consulis, ne fraudetur memoria. Aberat in ordinandis Asia Orientisque rebus Cæsar, circumferens terrarum orbi præsentia sua pacis suæ bona. Tum Sentius forte et solus, et absente Cæsare, eos, cum alia, prisca severitate summaque constantia, vetere consulum more ac severitate gessisset, protraxisset publicanorum fraudes, punisset avaritiam, regessisset in ærarium pecunias publicas, tum in comitiis habendis præcipuum egit consulem,"

Le même, c. 105. "Cum omnem partem asperrimi et periculosissimi belli Cæsar vindicaret; in iis, quæ minoris erant discriminis, Sentium Saturninum, qui tum legatus patris ejus in Germania fuerat, præfecisset; virum multiplicem in virtutibus, gnavum, agilem, providum, militariumque officiorum patientem ac peritum pariter; sed eundem, ubi negotia fecissent locum otio, liberaliter lauteque eo abutentem; ita tamen, ut eum splendi dum ac hilarem potius, quam luxuriosum aut desidem diceres. De cujus viri claro celebrique consulatu prædiximus."

Il en est encore question aux chapitres 109 et 110. Le consulat de Sentius Saturninus est marqué dans les fastes consulaires à l'an de Rome 734 ou 735.

Quant aux fonctions de gouverneur de Syrie, Tertullien en parle dans son traité contre Marcion, liv. 4. c. 19. et lui attribue le recensement de population, ordonné par Auguste, et qui fut cause du déplacement de Joseph et de Marie de Nasareth pour se rendre à Bethleem, où naquit N.S.: en cela il diffère de St. Luc, qui, au ch. 2. de son Evangile, l'attribue à Cyrinus, c'est-à-dire, P. Sulpicius Quirinus. Tertullien fait ainsi remonter à cinq ans avant la naissance de N. S. l'époque de ce recensement, puisqu'il paraît constant que c'est en 747 que Quintilius Varus remplaça dans le gouvernement de Syrie Sentius Saturninus, et que N. S. ne naquit que l'an 752 de Rome; mais cette différence chronologique peut s'expliquer par la durée de l'opération; d'ailleurs les diversités de ce genre sont communes en chronologie, et ce n'est pas ici le lieu d'en traiter. Il suffit de reconnaître comme incontestable le gouvernement de Syrie confié à C. Sentius Saturninus, de 740 environ à 747 de Rome, et que pendant ce tems les habitans de la Trachonitide l'occupèrent, conjointement avec Hérode, pour rétablir l'ordre parmi eux; ce qui vraisemblablement donna lieu à l'ordonnance que je lui attribue en changeant le nom de Julius en Sentius. Peut-être ce changement doit-il s'étendre jusqu'au texte de Suétone par la réforme de Junius qu'on y lit jusqu'à présent. Néanmoins il serait peu fondé pour ce dernier, puisque rien ne prouve l'identité des deux Saturninus, qui au contraire me semble évidente entre celui qui est nommé, par les historiens, comme gouverneur de Syrie et l'auteur du décret qui nous

occupe.

Μητροκωμίᾳ τοῦ Τράχωνος. L'emploi de μητροκωμία dans cette inscription fixe, à ce qu'il me semble, la manière dont on doit suppléer une abbréviation dans une médaille que cite Tollius in Epistolis Itinerariis, Amsterd. in 4°. 1700. epistolæ 2dæ initio. y lit ANTIOXEON. MHTPOK. C'est une médaille de Hostilianus. Myтpоxoλavía, que propose Henninius dans ses observations, n'est point un mot Grec.

On

Δέξασθαι ταῖς οἰκίαις, remplacé dans la legon de M. Letronne par δέξασθαι παρ' οἰκίας, doit être conservé d'après l'autori é de Demosthène περὶ Παραπρεσβείας, § 425.

Φίλιππον θαυμάζουσι, καὶ χαλαοῦν ἱστᾶσι, καὶ τὸ τελευταῖον, ἂν εἰς Πελοπόννησον ἰῇ, δέχεσθαι ταῖς πόλεσιν εἰσιν ἐψηφισμένοι.

VOL. XXXII. CI. JI. NO. LXIV.

A

·Proving that it was a Serapeum, dedicated to the funeral mysteries of Serapis by Sesostris the Great.

Ir is a mortifying reflection, that the magnificent excavation disentombed from the silence of thirty centuries by the skill of the late unfortunate Belzoni, should have attracted so little of profitable public notice, while exhibitions of transitory interest have drawn crowds to their survey. The artist, the antiquary, the scholar, the philosopher, and the historian, cannot, without impugning their title to the dignified appellations they assume, neglect the earliest monuments of the sciences and arts; records which appear to connect the first and the last races of mankind; which elucidate the theology and history of the earliest ages.

It has been the fashion to consider this excavation a tomb: our opinion is that it was a serapeum or cavern temple, devoted to the funeral mysteries of Apis; and sepulcral only in a secondary point of view; for in such structures, the founder and, sometimes, his family were occasionally allowed to be intombed. In this point of view, it may be considered as much a palace as a tomb, such as was that of Osymandes, which in several particulars, especially in the consecutive arrangement and appropriation of the chambers, it resembles. As this is a view of the subject as important as it is novel, I shall not waste time by a prefatory detail of the various chambers it contains; but bear the reader at once in medias res.

1

It is certain that there were rocks in various parts of the world hewn into winding passages and chambers, for the celebration of religious rites and mysterious trials of a funereal nature, connected apparently with the primitive religion of mankind; and that they exist to this day in Persia, în India, in Greece, in Syria, in Ethiopia, and in Italy. These excavations were generally characterised like this, by a sloping descent, a pit or well, a double entrance, one concealed; and a sacred coffer or cymba. These characteristics were necessary to the celebration of the secret rites, according to the extant records which describe them. We have indeed, a scriptural description of a serapeum (if I may so term it) of Adonis, the Lord Osiris of Syria, which strikingly corroborates the truth of the view above taken. (See Ezekiel, Chap. 8.)

In the passage above referred to, the number of "twentyfive men" is remarkable. It was the amount of the cycle of years at the end of which the priests entered the serapeum,

1 Diodorus Siculus.

for the purpose of secretly drowning and entombing Apis. For the fact of the periodical performance of this rite, and of the place wherein it was performed, we have good authority,-that of Pausanias. He informs us, that "that there were secret caverns in which APIS WAS EMBALMED-WHICH NO STRANGER EVER

EN

APPROACHED-WHICH THE PRIESTS THEMSELVES NEVER TERED BUT ON THAT OCCASION, AND WHICH BELONGED TO AN ANCIENT TEMPLE OF SERAPIS." Can it be doubted after this, that the splendid room, called the saloon, was devoted to the rites of Apis, WHEN THE REMNANT OF AN EMBALMED APIs was actually found there; and when the BULL APIs, is almost the only, certainly, the ONLY PROMINENT FIGURE represented there?

The mysteries of Apis were diffused over the greatest part of the ancient world, in which the image of a minotaur or man bull, appears to have been an emblem of the primitive state of manperhaps his antediluvian condition, when the year began with Taurus. The relics of this superstition are still preserved in India and Japan; the rites connected with it were of a subterranean, sepulcral, and, most probably, sanguinary character. The word Serapis means the the tomb of Apis, or rather the Sun, (of which the zodiacal bull was one emblem) in inferis.

The galleries, the chambers, the stair cases are all well calculated for the performance of the initiatory rite. The well is not less admirably calculated for the severest trials of the initiate, one of which consisted of an ascent by a "sidereal ladder"1 of seven steps; another being suspended over a pit by cords or concealed machinery. Again, the descent of 300 feet, beneath the sarcophagus, and terminating, as Belzoni intimates, in a SECRET ENTRANCE known only to THE PRIESTS beyond the Libyan hills, was evidently intended for a priestly juggle. Even the bats, which Homer describes as the frequenters of the "oracular cells,' were to be found here; nor could a descent to Hades-facilis descensus Averni-be better symbolised than by that dark, sloping, and dreary passage, communicating probably with "the pit," (synony mous with Hell among Egyptians as well as Jews) on one side, and the subterranean Necropolis of Thebes, or hanging gardens (the earliest Elysium,) of the Libyan hills, on the other. The splendid saloon, its six-pillared vestibule, and bold proscenium expanding like a theatre, were equally well calculated for the dramatic pageants and sublime delusions exhibited in that portion of the structure devoted to the mysteries, which was called the theatre. The lateral and ulterior chambers were equally well calculated for the retiring rooms of the actors; and the magnificent alabaster sarcophagus for the concluding and crowning rite.

'Maurice's Indian Antiquities.

2

Odyssey, 22d book.

A detail of the pictures and symbols in this extraordinary excavation will, we feel assured, corroborate the view we have taken. And first, the fact of the excavation being dedicated to Serapis, is proved by the repeated representations of that deity throughout the intire structure. In processions and assemblages of deities he is the central or terminating object. On many occasions, he is depicted as a column with a human head. The eyes of the head of the column are depicted in a certain mystical fashion, having a scroll and a perpendicular line attached to it. An eye is frequently seen represented so in the midst of a circle among the hieroglyphics. Asweeping and lamenting for the dead,' was one of the rites common to all the funereal mysteries, it is not improbable that it means, as Dr. Young has stated, an eye weeping; though we should rather have expected to have found weeping expressed, as in the modern Chinese hieroglyphic, by an eye and the symbol of water.

The serapean column, so distinguished, Dr. Young has called STABILITY: but when or where was such a deity heard of in Egypt? That Serapis in his capacity of guardian and measurer of the Nile, was portrayed as a column, there can be no doubt. But in fact no collateral evidence is wanting to identify his image wherever it appears throughout the tomb.

In the hall of four pillars, immediately after the well, he is represented seated with his usual green mask, implying death, and in the white dress used in the funereal rites of initiation. His feet are swathed also, which was one of those rites, and it is, moreover, a known mark of Harpocrates and Serapis, both signifying the Sol inferus, or sun in the winter months. He also grasps his peculiar symbols of final judgment of the dead as Pluto or Lord of the lower hemisphere-the pastoral crook implying to gather; and the flail to separate. From his tricipital capacity, it is known that the combined functions of the three infernal judges is derived. In one part of the excavation, he is depicted as a human-headed column, supported and placed on its pedestal by the hero-founder of the serapeum; in others, he appears standing with swathed feet, and furnished with wings; again, as a pillar with a human head crowned with four capitals, and still grasping the flail and crook; in another instance, as standing beside a Nilometer, and holding in his hand a plummet of judgment; equivalent to the scales, which he holds on some of the early Zodiacs. He was, we know from various medals, represented as a vase with three heads of animals; numerous instances of the funereal cynocephalic vases occur in the excavation. Hollow vases of the kind were found in the room of couches, the most conpsicuous decoration of which is the figure of Serapis on a column. His attending priests, in the Eleusinian rites, as Pluto, as well as in the Egyptian rites as Serapis, bore the marks of four animals devoted to him; the first