CHAPTER V.

[Regarding the idol of Amida], if the following words are repeated frequently, namely Nami, Amida, Buth, that is: "Felix Amida, save us." Sometimes they place this divinity in a flowering rose-garden and adorn it with many rays around the head, equipped with a prayer-bead crown which is also common to the Japanese deities, Of Isis.. It is pleasing to append here the third image of the many-breasted Isis, filled with hieroglyphic notes, the monument of which is distinguished by this inscription, translated from Diodorus: I am Isis, Queen of Egypt, taught by Mercury, who am the wife of Osiris. I am the mother of King Horus, which I established by laws that no one shall be able to break. I am the first discoverer of fruits. I am she who shines in the star of the Dog [Sirius]. To me the city of Bubastis was founded; rejoice, rejoice, Egypt, who nurtured me. The fourth Idol is the Goddess of Minerva. Minerva. The fifth is Jupiter Ammon.

There follow various divinities, both ancient and those worshipped by diverse peoples in our later times through rituals and sacrifices. These include two portable Chinese figures, so alien to divinity that they represent a joke; carved and sculpted from a small piece of wood, they depict the image of a degenerate little man rather than anything divine. There is a heroic marble statue of Diana, who is also called Lucina by some, because she worshipped the grove on the Esquiline hill in Rome—concerning her, Virgil says in his 4th Eclogue: Chaste Lucina, be favorable. Likewise, there are images of Neptune and Pallas, Cupid, Adonis, and Silenus, the companion of Bacchus, rejoicing festively, as well as several Satyr-like deities.

Of Heroes. Among the heroes or illustrious persons whose statues adorn the Museum, Part I, are firstly: a famous clay statue of The clothing of Emperors and Philosophers. Moses. Secondly, that of the Emperor Antonius Caracalla, so named because he dressed himself in a new type of garment reaching down to his heels. Thirdly, Diogenes the Cynic Philosopher. Fourthly, Marcus Tullius Cicero, the Roman Orator. Fifthly, Zeno, the Stoic Philosopher. Sixthly, Socrates the Athenian Philosopher. Seventhly, Homer the Poet, who lived one hundred years before the founding of Rome. Eighthly, Seneca the Philosopher, tutor to Nero, who, because he was thought to favor the cause of Piso, perished in a bath after his veins were opened. Ninthly, the Tiburtine Sibyl, one of the ten of whom Varro speaks. Tenthly, Agrippina, the daughter of M. Agrippa and wife of Germanicus. Eleventhly, Messalina, who was executed by order of the Emperor Claudius, as Tranquillus [Suetonius] reports in his Life of Claudius. Twelfthly, a life-like image of Henry IV, King of France. One [statue] of Hercules shows him pursuing a locust, while another, bitten by a crab on his toe, implores with a tearful expression: the work of the Chevalier Bernini, today the most celebrated of architects, given by Alphonso Donnino, a benefactor of the Kircherian Museum. Here and there, most ancient fragments of the Greeks, Hebrews, Egyptians, and other nations are seen, along with inscriptions, among which is viewed a marble fragment from the most famous Egyptian Nilometer [Niloscopium], which they used to measure the inundations and the rising of the Nile.

CHAPTER VI.

Various Monuments of Foreign Languages and Kingdoms.

Chap. VI. AMONG the other decorations of the walls, various writings, tablets, characters, and delineations of the Chinese and other unknown nations are seen, all indeed made public by the Author last year in China Illustrata. From this, the curious reader learns many other newly discovered facts of literary interest concerning their religion, customs, and the natural and stupendous mechanical structures of the new world.