Page:The Religion of Ancient Egypt.djvu/18

worship is natural enough, but this disdain was fully shared by many of their heathen contemporaries. "You are never done," says Clement to the latter, "laughing every day of your lives at the Egyptians." He then quotes a Greek philosopher, Xenophanes of Colophon, who tells the Egyptians, "If you believe these brutes to be gods, do not mourn or bewail them; if you mourn or bewail them, do not any more regard them as gods." The comic writers of Greece had already made themselves merry upon the subject. Antiphanes, one of the most fertile and celebrated Athenian poets of the Middle Comedy, jests at the cleverness of the Egyptians who consider the eel as equal to the gods. Anaxandrides, another famous Athenian comic writer, tells the Egyptians: "I never could be your ally, for neither our customs nor our laws agree. They differ widely. You worship an ox, but I sacrifice him to the gods. You consider the eel a mighty demon; we think him by far the best of fish. You do not eat swine flesh, and I am particularly fond of doing so. You worship a dog, but I thrash him whenever I catch him stealing meat. Here the law is, that integrity of all their members is required of priests; with you, it appears, they must be circumcised. You weep if you see a cat ailing, but I like to kill and skin him. A shrew-mouse is an object of great consideration with you, not of the least with me." Timokles, in a play called "The Egyptians," asks, "How is it possible for