a city of ancient Egypt, afterwards called Arsinoe and Crocodilopolis, was the capital of one of the nomes into which that country was divided, and is remarkable, in the annals of idolatry, for the hatred of its inhabitants to the religion of their neighbours the citizens of Tentyra.

The genius of paganism was so complying with respect to the objects of religious worship, that although each nation, each city, and almost every family, had its own tutelar god, we know not a single instance, out of Egypt of one tribe of Pagans persecuting another for worshipping gods different from theirs. The Jews and Christians were indeed persecuted by the Romans, not however for worshipping the true God, but because, together with him, they would not worship Jupiter, Juno, and all the rabble of heathen divinities.

The reason of the almost universal tolerance of idolaters to one another, and of the intolerance of all to the Jews and Christians, is very obvious. Not a single Pagan, a very few philosophers perhaps excepted, ever thought of paying his adoration to the Supreme and self-existent Being, but to inferior divinities, to whom it was supposed that the care of particular persons, families, cities, and nations, was consigned by the God of the universe. The consequence was, that, as no person denied the divinity of his neighbour's object of worship, an intercommunity of gods was everywhere admitted, and all joined occasionally in adoring the gods of the various nations. By the Jews and Christians this communion was rejected as in the highest degree impious; and it could not well be maintained between the citizens of Ombi and those of Tentyra.

That brutes were worshipped in Egypt is universally known (see Polytheism); and Diodorus the Sicilian informs us, in a passage quoted by Eusebius*, that "the cities and nomes of Egypt being at one time prone to rebellion, and to enter into conspiracies against monarchical government, one of their most politic kings contrived to introduce into the neighbouring nomes the worship of different animals; so that while each reverenced the deity which itself held sacred, and despised that which its neighbours had consecrated, they could hardly be brought to join cordially in one common design to the disturbance of the government."

In this distribution of gods he conferred upon Ombi the crocodile, and upon Tentyra, the mortal enemy of that monster, the ichneumon. The consequence of which was, that while the Ombites worshipped the crocodile, the Tentyrites took every opportunity of slaughtering him, insomuch that, according to Strabo, the very voice of an inhabitant of Tentyra put the crocodile to flight. This, we confess, is a very improbable fact; but it is certain that the mutual hatred of those cities, on account of their hostile gods, rose to such a height, that whenever the inhabitants of the one were engaged in the more solemn rites of their religion, those of the other were sure to embrace the opportunity of setting fire to their houses, and rendering them every injury in their power to inflict. And what may, to a superficial thinker, appear extraordinary, though it will excite no wonder in the breast of him who has studied mankind, this animosity continued between the inhabitants of the two cities long after the crocodile and ichneumon had lost their divinity.

The conduct of the Egyptian monarch was admirably calculated for preventing the nation from combining against the government; and it extended its influence over the whole kingdom. Diodorus informs us, that he assigned to each nome an animal to worship, which was hated, killed, and sometimes fed upon by the inhabitants of the neighbouring nome; and we know, upon higher authority than his, that the Israelites could not offer sacrifices in Egypt, because the bullock was deemed sacred over the whole country.