The Progress of Religious Ideas Author:Lydia Maria Francis Child Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: EGYPT. "The faculty of reverence is inherent in all men, and its natural exercise is always to be sympathized with, irrespective of its objects. I did not wai... more »t till I went to Egypt, to become aware that every permanent reverential observance has some great idea at the bottom of it; and that it is our business not to deride, or be shocked at the method of manifetltt- tion, but to endeavour to apprehend the idea concerned."—H. Martixeau. History and poetry have preserved traditions of an extraordinary race of men, called Ethiopians. The name is from Greek words signifying burnt faces; and the ancients appear to have applied it to people browned by the sun, whether their complexions were black, or merely dark. According to a map made to represent the ideas of Herodotus concerning the world, as expressed in his History, about four hundred years before our era, there were two nations of Ethiopians; one in Asia, on the banks of the Indus, another in the northern portion of Africa. There is evidence that these people were powerful and illustrious, as far back as the Trojan war, about one thousand one hundred and eighty-four years before our era. Memnon then reigned over them, and it is recorded that he assisted Priam, king of Troy, against the invasion of the Greeks. Homer calls them " the blameless men ;" and relates that Jupiter, at certain seasons of the year, left Olympus and went to spend twelve days in that pious and hospitable region. Egyptian annals are full of allusions to them. Persia, and other old Asiatic nations, mingle Ethiopian legends with songs composed in honour of their own heroes. Herodotus says they worshipped the gods with cxtrcmest veneration. The ancient historian, Diodo- rus Siculus, declares that they were the religious parents of the Egyptians, the inv...« less