It glorifies, like the
Proverbs, wisdom. It says that "man's heart rules the man," that "the bad
man's life is what the wise know to be death," that "what we say in secret
is known to him who made our interior nature," that "he who made us is
present with us though we are alone."

Is not the human race one, when this Egyptian four thousand years ago,
talks of life as Solomon spoke one thousand years after, in Judaea; and as
Benjamin Franklin spoke, three thousand years after Solomon, in America?

Sec. 7. Influence of Egypt on Judaism and Christianity.

How much of the doctrine and ritual of Egypt were imported into Judaism by
Moses is a question by no means easy to settle. Of Egyptian theology
proper, or the doctrine of the gods, we find no trace in the Pentateuch.
Instead of the three orders of deities we have Jehovah; instead of the
images and pictures of the gods, we have a rigorous prohibition of
idolatry; instead of Osiris and Isis, we have a Deity above all worlds and
behind all time, with no history, no adventures, no earthly life. But it
is perhaps more strange not to find any trace of the doctrine of a future
life in Mosaism, when this was so prominent among the Egyptians. Moses
gives no account of the judgment of souls after death; he tells nothing of
the long journey and multiform experiences of the next life according to
the Egyptians, nothing of a future resurrection and return to the body.
His severe monotheism was very different from the minute characterization
of gods in the Egyptian Pantheon. The personal character of Jehovah, with
its awful authority, its stern retribution and impartial justice, was
quite another thing from the symbolic ideal type of the gods of Egypt.
Nothing of the popular myth of Osiris, Isis, Horus, and Typhon is found in
the Pentateuch, nothing of the transmigration of souls, nothing of the
worship of animals; nothing of the future life and judgment to come;
nothing of the embalming of bodies and ornamenting of tombs. The cherubim
among the Jews may resemble the Egyptian Sphinx; the priests' dress in
both are of white linen; the Urim and Thummim, symbolic jewels of the
priests, are in both; a quasi-hereditary priesthood is in each; and both
have a temple worship. But here the parallels cease. Moses left behind
Egyptian theology, and took only some hints for his ritual from the Nile.

There may perhaps be a single exception to this statement. According to
Brugsch[194] and