think, to be a matter of wonder that, after a long time of bondage, the Israelites left Egypt without having even learnt the length of the year. The Hebrew year consisted of twelve lunar months, each of them empirically determined by actual inspection of the new moon, and an entire month was intercalated whenever it was found that the year ended before the natural season. The most remarkable point of contact between Hebrew and Egyptian religion is the identity of meaning between "El Shaddai" and nutar nutra; but the notion which is expressed by these words is common to all religion, and is only alluded to as characterizing the religion of the patriarchs in contrast to the new revelation made to Moses. But even this revelation is said to have been borrowed from Egypt. I have repeatedly seen it asserted that Moses borrowed his concept of God, and the sublime words, ehyeh asher ehyeh ("I am that I am," in the Authorized Version), from the Egyptian nuk pu nuk. I am afraid that some Egyptologist has to bear the responsiblity of this illusion. It is quite true that in several places of the Book of the Dead the three words nuk pu nuk are to be found; it is true that nuk is the pronoun I, and that the demonstrative pu often serves to connect the subject and predicate of a sentence. But the context of the words requires to be examined before we can be sure that we have just an entire sentence before us, especially as pu generally comes at the end of a sen

tence. Now if we look at the passages of the Book of the Dead where these words occur, we shall see at once that they do not contain any mysterious doctrine about the Divine nature. In one of these passages1 the deceased says, "It is I who know the ways of Nu." In another place2 he says, "I am the Ancient One in the country [or fields]; it is I who am Osiris, who shut up his father Seb and his mother Nut on that day of the great slaughter." "It is I who am Osiris, the Ancient One." In another recension of the same text, contained in the 96th chapter, the words nuk ри nuk disappear, because the narrative is in the third person. "He is the Bull in the fields, he is Osiris who shut up his father," and so forth. I have looked through a number of works professing to discover Egyptian influences in Hebrew institutions, but have not even found anything worth controverting. Purely external resemblances may no doubt be discovered in abundance, but evidence of the transmission of ideas will be sought in vain. I cannot find that any of the idolatries or superstitions of the Israelites are derived from Egyptian The golden calf has been supposed, but on no sufficient grounds, to represent Apis or Mnevis.

sources.

1 Todt. 78, 21. See an excellent article of Dr. Pietschmann in the Zeitsch. f. ägypt. Spr. 1879, p. 67.

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8 Two of the many names of Horus are the Youth in Town" and "the Lad in the Country." Todt. 85, 8, 9.

The worship of oxen, as symbols of a Divine power, is not peculiar to Egypt, but is met with in all the ancient religions. The chariot and horses of the sun which the kings of Judah had set up "at the entering in of the house of the Lord," and which Joash burnt with fire, show that the Israelites had an independent mythology of their own.

The existence of Egyptian elements in Hellenic religion and philosophy has long since been disproved. The supposed travels of Pythagoras and other ancient philosophers to Eastern climes, Chaldaea, Persia, India and Egypt, are fabulous inventions, the historical evidence of which does not begin till at least two centuries after the death of the philosopher, but continues increasing after this time. Internal evidence tells the

Every step in the history

same tale as the external. of Greek philosophy can be accounted for and explained from native sources, and it is not merely unnecessary, but impossible (to the historian of philosophy, ridiculously impossible), to imagine a foreign teacher, to whom the Greeks would never have listened, as being the author of doctrines which without his help the Greeks would themselves certainly have discovered, and at the very time that they did so.

The importance of Alexandria as a medium of interchange of ideas between the Eastern and Western worlds must also be considered as exploded. Nothing was more common, about forty or fifty years ago, than

to hear learned men account for the presence of Oriental ideas in Europe, by the transmission of these ideas through the channel of Alexandria. Alexandria was supposed to be the seat of Oriental philosophy, and Philo, Origen, Porphyry, Plotinos and other great names, were imagined to be the representatives of the alliance between Greek and Oriental thought. All this is now considered as unhistorical as the reign of Jupiter in Crete. It was a mere a priori fancy, which has not been verified by facts. The most accurate analysis of the Alexandrian philosophy has not succeeded in discovering a single element in it which requires to be referred to an Oriental source. All attempts to refer Alexandrian opinions to Eastern sources have proved abortive. And long before the great work of Zeller on Greek Philosophy had dealt with the problem in detail, M. Ampère had shown how extremely improbable the received hypothesis was. Alexandria was a commercial Greek town, inhabited by a population which cared not the least for Eastern ideas. The learned men in it were Greeks who had the utmost contempt for barbarians and their opinions. Of the Egyptian language and literature, they were profoundly ignorant. "It is incredible," he says, "to what an extent the Greeks of Alexandria remained strangers to the knowledge of the Egyptian language and writing; one could not understand it if there were not other instances of the contemptuous aversion of the

Greeks and Romans to the study of the barbarous languages." The greatest part of the information they give us is utterly erroneous, and even when it has been derived from an authentic source, it never fails to be completely hellenized in passing through a Greek channel. The Oriental works, like those attributed to Zoroaster, said to have been preserved in the Library at Alexandria, were Greek forgeries. "En somme," M. Ampère says, "Alexandrie fut très grecque, assez juive et presque point égyptienne."1 And if Alexandria was not the means of communicating Egyptian ideas to the Western world, still less was it the channel of learning from the farther East. It is an error to suppose that Alexandria was on the chief line of traffic between Europe and Asia. During the whole period which followed the foundation of Alexandria down to the Roman times, there was no direct communication between this city and the distant East. Indian traffic was in the hands of the seafaring Arabs of the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman, and the Gulf of Akaba. It came to the shores of the Mediterranean through Seleucia, Antioch and Palmyra, or through Gaza and Petra, the chief town of the Nabataeans.2

1 Revue des Deux Mondes, Sept. 1846, p. 735. Ampère refutes the opinions of Matter and of Jules Simon as expressed in their Histories of the Alexandrian School.

2 "Presque tout le temps que les Ptolémées regnèrent en Egypte, les navires qui partaient des côtes égyptiennes ne dépassaient pas la