Note 382 — TIT and TITH.

I have taken notice that towers of this sort were the repositories of much treasure; and they were often consecrated to the Ophite Deity, called Opis and Oupis. It is the same which Callimachus addresses by the title of [382]Ουπι, Ανασσ' ευωπι: and of whom Cicero speaks, and styles Upis; [383]quam Græci Upim paterno nomine appellant. The temple was hence called Kir-Upis; which the Grecians abridged to Γρυπες: and finding many of the Amonian temples in the north, with the device of a winged serpent upon the frontal, they gave this name to the hieroglyphic. Hence, I imagine, arose the notion of Γρυπες, or Gryphons; which, like the dragons abovementioned, were supposed to be guardians of treasure, and to never sleep. The real conservators of the wealth were the priests. They kept up a perpetual fire, and an unextinguished light in the night. From Kir Upis, the place of his residence, a priest was named Grupis; and from Kir-Uph-On, Gryphon. The Poets have represented the Grupes as animals of the serpentine kind; and supposed them to have been found in countries of the Arimaspians, Alazonians, Hyperboreans, and other the most northern regions, which the Amonians possessed. In some of the temples women officiated, who were denominated from the Deity they served. The Scholiast upon Callimachus calls the chief of them Upis; and styles her, and her associates, Κορας [384]Ὑπερβορεους, Hyperborean young women. The Hyperboreans, Alazonians, Arimaspians, were Scythic nations of the same family. All the stories about Prometheus, Chimæra, Medusa, Pegasus, Hydra, as well as of the Grupes, or Gryphons, arose, in great measure, from the sacred devices upon the entablatures of temples.