(1) Whence also the Egyptians did not entrust the mysteries they possessed to all and sundry, and did not divulge the knowledge of divine things to the profane; but only to those destined to ascend the throne, and those of the priests that were judged the worthiest, from their nurture, culture, and birth. Similar, then, to the Hebrew enigmas in respect to concealment, are those of the Egyptians also. Of the Egyptians, some show the sun on a ship, others on a crocodile. And they signify hereby, that the sun, making a passage through the delicious and moist air, generates time; which is symbolized by the crocodile in some other sacerdotal account. Further, at Diospolis in Egypt, on the temple called Pylon, there was figured a boy as the symbol of production, and an old man as that of decay. A hawk, on the other hand, was the symbol of God, as a fish of hate; and, according to a different symbolism, the crocodile; of impudence. The whole symbol, then, when put together, appears to teach this: "Oh ye who are born and die, God hates impudence."

(1) Since, however, every part of the heavens, every sign of the zodiac, all the motion of the heavens, every period of time according to which the world is moved, and all things contained in the wholes of the universe, receive the powers which descend from the sun, some of which are complicated with these wholes, but others transcend a commixture with them, the symbolical mode of signification represents these also, indicating “ that the sun is diversified according to the signs of the zodiac, and that every hour he changes his form .” At the same time, also, it indicates his immutable, stable, never failing, and at once collected communication of good to the whole world. But since the recipients of the impartible gift of the God are variously affected towards it, and receive multiform powers, from the sun, according to their peculiar motions, hence the symbolical doctrine evinces through the multitude of the gifts, that the God is one, and exhibits his one power through multiform powers.

(2) Hence, likewise, it says that he is one and the same, but that the vicissitudes of his form, and his configurations, must be admitted to exist in the recipients. On this account it asserts “that he is changed every hour, according to the signs of the zodiac,” in consequence of these being variously changed about the God, according to the many modes by which they receive him. The Egyptians use prayers to the sun, conformable to these assertions, not only in visions which are seen by the bodily eyes, but also in their more common supplications, all which have such a meaning as this, and are offered to the God conformably to a symbolic and mystic doctrine of this kind. Hence it would not be reasonable in any one to undertake a defence of them.

(65) The SUN has its own royal place to itself, and does not go away from that place where it came to be at the first. Some suppose that it runneth round about the globe of the earth in a day and a night; and some of the astrologers also write so; and some have undertaken to measure how far its orb and circumference of its supposed motion is.

(72) When the sun rises in the heaven, he comes forth through that fourth portal thirty mornings in succession, and sets accurately in the fourth portal in the west of the heaven.

(131) The Sun more true measureth all things by time, being itself the time of time, according to the Oracle of the Gods concerning it.

(72) And this is the law and the course of the sun, and his return as often as he returns sixty times and rises, i.e. the great luminary which is named the sun, for ever and ever.

(3) In b the central object is the Sun setting in the West . He is saluted by three hawk-headed and by three jackal-headed divinities, the Spirits of Pu and of Nechen. Below this scene the Sun of Yesterday and the Sun of To-day in lion forms are saluted by Isis and Nephthys