MARI-AMMUN. Ammun or Amma, literall3 mother, in the south of India is the honorific suffix of various local deities, as Mari Aroma Yagath Amma. Professor Wilson thinks that Mari Amma comes from the Virgin Mary, and that Yagath Amma is from St. Agatha. Bul Mari Amma seems to be from Mari,• death, and Ammun, mother, mother-death. Amongst the Tamil people, Mari-Ammuu is a new goddess who sends smallpox. She is said to scatter pearls ; to propitiate her, sacrifices are offered and hook swinging practised. She is a mixture of the village goddess and Kali, the sakti of Siva. MARICHI, a Hindu author of a law treatise, and of one on religious services. The Kapila Purana describes him as an old man in the habit of a mendicant, and states that he lived as an anchorite at Bhadrashwa Varaha.—Ward, iv. 17. MARIETTE BEY, a distinguished Egypto logist, died 1881. In 1848 he was attached to the Egyptian Museum at the Louvre ; in 1850 he was sent to Egypt to search for Coptic manu scripts. He discovered the site of the Serapeum,
the temple and enclosure dedicated in ancient times to the worship and custody of the sacred bull Apis, as well as the long range of tombs in which the bulls were buried. The tombs, dated and inscribed, furnish a check and a verification of Egyptian chronology derived from independent sources, while the actual remains discovered in situ are invaluable as illustrations of the ritual and worship of ancient Egypt. His explorations . at Memphis were continued for four years. During his first visit to Egypt, Marlette had excavated the buried part of the Sphinx, and demonstrated anew the fact that that stupendous monument is hewn from the solid rock.