Egyptians. The priests at Philae threw a piece
of gold into the Nile once a year, as the Venetian Doge did into the
Adriatic. The Feast of Candles at Sais is still marked in the Christian
calendar as Candlemas Day. The Catholic priest shaves his head as the
Egyptian priest did before him. The Episcopal minister's linen surplice
for reading the Liturgy is taken from the dress of obligation, made of
linen, worn by the priest in Egypt. Two thousand years before the Pope
assumed to hold the keys, there was an Egyptian priest at Thebes with the
title of "Keeper of the two doors of Heaven."[198]

In the space which we have here at command we are unable to examine the
question of doctrinal influences from Egypt upon orthodox Christianity.
Four doctrines, however, are stated by the learned Egyptologist, Samuel
Sharpe, to be common to Egyptian mythology and church orthodoxy. They are
these:--

1. That the creation and government of the world is not the work of one
simple and undivided Being, but of one God made up of several persons.
This is the doctrine of plural unity.

2. That salvation cannot be expected from the justice or mercy of the
Supreme Judge, unless an atoning sacrifice is made to him by a divine
being.

3. That among the persons who compose the godhead, one, though a god,
could yet suffer pain and be put to death.

4. That a god or man, or a being half god and half a man once lived on
earth, born of an earthly mother but without an earthly father.

The gods of Egypt generally appear in triads, and sometimes as three gods
in one. The triad of Thebes was Amun-Ra, Athor, and Chonso,--or father,
mother, and son. In Nubia it was Pthah, Amun-Ra, and Horus-Ra. At Philae
it was Osiris, Isis, and Horus. Other groups were Isis, Nephthys, and
Horus; Isis, Nephthys, and Osiris; Osiris, Athor, and Ra. In later times
Horus became the supreme being, and appears united with Ra and Osiris in
one figure, holding the two sceptres of Osiris, and having the hawk's head
of Horus and the sun of Ra. Eusebius says of this god that he declared
himself to be Apollo, Lord, and Bacchus. A porcelain idol worn as a charm
combines Pthah the Supreme God of Nature, with Horus the Son-God, and
Kneph the Spirit-God. The body is that of Pthah, God of Nature, with the
hawk's wings of Horus, and the ram's head of Kneph. It is curious that
Isis the mother, with Horus the child in her arms, as the merciful gods
who wo