Читать книгу Sketches of Imposture, Deception, and Credulity онлайн

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This element, first respected only as the representative of the sun, in time became itself the object of adoration among the Chaldeans; and Eusebius relates the following circumstance with respect to it. The Chaldeans asserted that their god was the strongest and most powerful of all gods; since they had not met with any one that could resist his force; so that whenever they happened to seize upon any deities, which were worshipped by other nations, they immediately threw them into the fire, which never failed of consuming them to ashes, and thus the god of the Chaldeans came to be publicly looked upon as the conqueror of all other gods: at length a priest of Canopus, one of the Egyptian gods, found out the means to destroy the great reputation which fire had acquired. He caused to be formed an idol of a very porous earth, with which pots were commonly made to purify the waters of the Nile; the belly of this statue, which was very capacious, was filled with water, the priest having first made a great many little holes and stopped them with wax. He then challenged the fire of the Chaldeans to dispute with his god Canopus. The Chaldeans immediately prepared one, and the Egyptian priest set his statue on it; no sooner did the fire reach the wax than it dissolved, the holes were opened, the water passed through, and the fire was extinguished. Upon this a report was soon spread, that the god Canopus had conquered and destroyed the god of the Chaldeans. As a memorial of their victory, the Egyptians always afterwards made their idols with very large bellies.