180 ' Memnon. Alexandria — is left by the Abbe in equal uncertainty with the road by which he reached Sinope. " Would we know, he asks, to what country the worship of Jupiter Plutus originally belonged ! It is very probable that it was Egypt. Even if Plutarch (De Is. et Os.) did not assure us that this God was no other than the Egyptian Serapis, it would be impossible to mistake him from the modius on his head, his Egyptian dress, his attitude, his demeanour, and his hands raised toward heaven. "*"' How far a mistake on this subject is possible, may be partly inferred from a previous remark of the Abbe's on the same figure, which he says is drest in the Greek or rather in the Egyptian fashion ^^, but will be- come much clearer from an inspection of the figure itself, which could certainly never have suggested such a thought to one who did not view it through the glass of a favorite hypothesis. The good Abbe has the truly astonishing sim- plicity to add : " We need only compare several medals of Egyptian cities on which Serapis is represented, with the reverse of this of Gordian and several other medals of Greek towns, which exhibit the Jupiter Plutus of the Greeks, to perceive at once that it is one and the same deity.*^' After this we could not have been surprised to find that he received the whole story told by Plutarch and Tacitus as a matter of fact. But since Mr J. certainly does not, it would have been more to his purpose to have assigned some reason for thinking that the Pluto of Sinope was an Egyptian god, than to have appealed to the Abbe, on whose dissertation I should not have dw^elt so long, if it had not afforded a signal example of the danger of trusting to re- ferences, even in the writings of the most learned and candid men. It would carry us to a great distance from our subject, and would be of Httle use to discuss this question : but I may be allowed to remark that the accounts we have of the transac- tion raise no presumption whatever in favour of Mr J.'s opinion. It seems very clear that Ptolemy's object in the jug- gle he concocted with the aid of his Greek and Egyptian theologians (one of whom was the Manetho on whose veracity so much of what sometimes passes for history depends) was
- ^ La figure de Serapis est ici vetue a la Grecque, ou plutot a TEgyptienne. p. 497*
