a_.[15] But already in Akkad a similar prophecy had been
uttered.[16] It may be, therefore, that it was in Babylon that Israel
first heard it.

[Footnote 15: Sayce: Guifford Lectures.]

[Footnote 16: Jastrow: The Dibbara Epic.]

The doctrine of a trinity, common to almost all antique beliefs, was a
blasphemy to the Jews. The belief in immortality, also prevalent,
though less general, was to them an abomination. The miracle of divine
descent they were perhaps too practical to accept. There was no room
in their creed for the dogma of future rewards and punishments, and
that, together with other articles of the Christian faith, Egypt's
elect professed.

The slaves and mongrels that constituted the bulk of the population
were not instructed in these things and would not have understood them
if they had been. In Babylonia education was compulsory. In Egypt it
was an art, a gift, mysterious in itself, reserved to the few. To the
Egyptian, religion consisted in paraded symbols, in avenues of
sphinxes, in forests of obelisks, in pharaohs seated colossally before
the temple doors, in inscriptions that told indistinguishably of
theomorphic men and anthropomorphic gods, and in a belief in the
divinity of bulls and hawks.

These latter had their uses. In transformations elsewhere effected,
the sacred bull may have become a golden calf, the golden hawk a
sacred dove. In Egypt they were otherwise serviceable. The worship of
them, of other birds and beasts, of insects and vipers as well,
ecclesiastically indorsed, hid the myth of metempsychosis.

Of that the people knew nothing. When they died they ceased to be.
Even mummification, usually supposed to have been general, was not for
them. Down to an epoch relatively late it was a privilege reserved to
priests and princes. When the commonalty were embalmed it was with the
opulent design that, in a future existence, they should serve their
masters as they had in this. Embalming was a preparation for the
Judgment Day. Of that the people knew nothing either. It was even
unlawful that concerning it they should be apprised.

In the Louvre is a statue of Ptah-meh, high priest of Memphis. On it
are the significant words: "Nothing was hidden from him." A passage of
Zosimus states that what was hidden it was illicit to reveal, except,
Jamblicus explained, to those whose discretion a long novitiate had
assured. To such only was disclosed the secret that life is death in a
land of darknes