In the Zendavesta of the Persees, Guebres or fire worshippers of India, descendants of the ancient Per sians, their supreme deity is called Ormisda, and is said to have accomplished the creation in six days, begin ning with the heavens, then the waters and the earth ; 'next in order was produced the trees and vegetables : on the fifth day was formed, birds, fishes, and the beasts of the wood; and on the sixth was created man. For some time after the creation he lived in great happi ness, but at last the world was corrupted by a demon named Ariman. This demon had the to visit heaven, whence he came down to the earth in the form of a serpent, and introduced a set of wicked beings called Karsesters. M. D'Anquetil du Perron's Zenda vesta, vol. iii.
Typhon was by the Egyptians not only worshipped as a god, but was, at the same time, looked upon as the author of every evil ; he was the irreconcle enemy, pursuer, and destroyer of Osiris, their and the day of his birth was always considered as an inauspicious day. The death of Osiris is resolved to be avenged by his wife, and sister Isis, who, with her son Orus, went in constant pursuit of Typhon, who is at length conquered, and, according to Herodotus, killed by Orus ; but, according to Plutarch and others, Ty phon was conquered, but not utterly destroyed, by Orus.
Orus having been mentioned as the conqueror of Ty phon, it is important here to remark, that all antiquity are agreed in his being the eldest and original Apollo, for there were several Apollos ; and, referring to our article Arotto, it will be sufficient here to observe, that the Egyptian Apollo, or Orus, was the pursuer and conqueror of Typhon ; and that this is not only acknow ledged by Herodotus, Cicero, and others, but even by Plutarch, who was himself a priest of the Grecian Apol lo ; that he was committed by Isis to the care of who nursed him at her city of Boutos, in Egypt, where there was not only a yearly festival, celebrated to her honour, but where there was also the oracle of Latina, which, according to Herodotus, was held in higher estimation than all the other oracles of Egypt.
It now only remains, to see how far the destroying serpent Python may be implicated in this inquiry. Ac cording to the Grecian mythology, above alluded to, this monster is supposed to be the production of that horrid being Demogorgcm ; but by others, the serpent Python is said to have been produced by the mud left upon the earth after the subsiding of the waters of Deucalion's flood ; and in this latter -view, it coincides with the production of the serpent generated by the pestilential vapours of the Nile. We are told that Ju piter, having quitted Juno for had, by the latter, Apollo 'and Diana, and that the enraged Juno had in cited the serpent Python to destroy her rival Latona, who took refuge in Delos, a floating island of the Archi pelago, where she was delivered of the celebrated twins.
That Apollo, when grown up, revenged himself and his mother on the serpent Python, whom he slew with his destructive arrows; in commemoration of which, the Pythian games, and the equally celebrated oracle of the Pythoness, were instituted near Delphos, in Greece; in all which fable, we can discover nothing but a ser vile copy of the more ancient Egyptian fable ; so that no one can hesitate to conclude, that the destroying ser pent Python, slain by Apollo, the son of Latona, aveng ing her wrongs, was the same with the destroying de mon Typhon, conquered or killed by Orus, the nursling of the Egyptian Latona, and who was the first Apollo, avenging the death of his father Osiris, the Egyptian Jupiter.
We shall now conclude this article by endeavouring to bring into one point of view, the amount of what we have stated. We have shown, that the emblems of the egg, and of the serpent, have been adopted by different nations widely distant from each other, to represent the opinions they had received, and professed to entertain, on the subject of.the creation, and the original condi tion of man. All of these agreeing in the most impor tant points, have evidently proceeded from the same source, which running, in the lapse of ages various channels, in a course of prodigious length, Five been polluted, more or less, by misrepresentation and error, inseparable in such circumstances from every mode of expression, whether by hieroglyphical figures, or any other species of memorial, by which mankind have en deavoured to transmit their sentiments to posterity, excepting that of written language alone. By the lat ter of these modes, it is that, in the words of inspired truth, the true doctrine of the creation ; the original state of innocence and happiness of man; the change of that happy state, and the introduction of sin into the world, by satan's assuming the form of a serpent; the consequent denunciation against him; the enmity be twixt the destroyer and the Saviour of mankind; and the joyful annunciation of victory over the former, have all been made known to us.' To every one of these particulars there is the most pointed allusion made in the emblems above mentioned, or in the explanations given of them by different nations of antiquity, which unquestionably demonstrate them to have been derived from one and the same original uncontaminated source. (s. o.)