HORAEA, in Antiquity, were solemn sacrifices, consisting of fruits and other products of the earth, offered in spring, summer, autumn, and winter, that heaven might grant mild and temperate weather. These, according to Meursius, were offered to the goddesses called *∩cα∕, or Hours, who, being three in number, attended upon the sun, presided over the four seasons of the year, and had divine honours paid them at Athens.

∏ORAPOLLO, or Horus Apollo, was, according to Suidas, a grammarian of Panoplus in Egypt, who taught first at Alexandria, and afterwards at Constantinople, under the reign of Theodosius, or about the year 380 of our era. But as there were several persons of this name, it is uncertain whether the grammarian of Panoplus, or some other Horus Apollo, was the author of the two books still extant, “concerning the hieroglyphics of the Egyptians,” which Aldus first published in Greek, 1505, in folio. These books have often been republished since, with a Latin version and notes; but the best edition of them is that of

Cornelius de Pauw, which appeared at Utrecht in the year 1727, in 4to. Fabricius is of opinion that the Hieroglyphica did not emanate from the grammarian of Panoplus, to whom indeed Suidas does not attribute it, but that it is the production of another Horus Apollo, who flourished about fifteen hundred years before Christ, and wrote upon hieroglyphics in the Egyptian language, and from whose work an abstract was afterwards made, and translated into the Greek language. And this much seems certain, that, Whatever may have been the epoch of the original author, the two books of Hieroglyphics contain the substance of an older work, interspersed with the fancies and conceits of a later age, when the true import of many of the Egyptian symbols was no longer understood. These books, however, besides being exceedingly curious in themselves, have derived a new and unexpected interest from the discoveries of Dr Young and Μ. Champoilion; and though the former somewhat hastily treated the explanations of Horus Apollo as mere puerilities, the latter showed, in a very satisfactory manner, that some of them at least were well founded, and susceptible of confirmation from the interpretation of the hieroglyphical texts on the monuments; in other words, assuming these explanations as correct, and combining such assumptions with the values of other characters ascertained by different means, he found that the whole led to results, the truth of which was either self-evident or demonstrable. At the same time, it cannot be disputed that, in the abridged Greek version, there are many absurdities that could never have had a place in the Egyptian original from which it was made, and which must therefore be regarded as the interpolations of an age when the knowledge of hieroglyphics had declined, and the values of the more recondite symbols, particularly the tropical and aenigmatical, had been lost. Besides, the analogies on which Horus Apollo endeavours to explain the original employment and secondary import of the signs, are, many of them, fanciful and remote, though sometimes ingenious; they proceed upon assumptions, the truth of which cannot now be ascertained, and which are occasionally too far fetched and ridiculous not to startle the most credulous. It is highly probable, indeed, that, in the course of ages, the primary analogies were forgotten; that, in practice, many of the signs were employed arbitrarily, without reference to their precise original import, whether kuriological or tropical, usage prevailing over strict principle; and that abbreviated forms, though possessing in use a known and determinate value, were no longer susceptible of being resolved and re-expanded into their original elements. But, with all these drawbacks, this abridgment is highly curious in itself, and, in several instances, has afforded a clue to explanations which, but for the assistance afforded by it, might never have been discovered. See the article Hieroglyphics, passim. (a.)