(2) And there are those who fashion ears and eyes of costly material, and consecrate them, dedicating them in the temples to the gods - by this plainly indicating that God sees and hears all things. Besides, the lion is with them the symbol of strength and prowess, as the ox clearly is of the earth itself, and husbandry and food, and the horse of fortitude and confidence; while, on the other hand, the sphinx, of strength combined with intelligence - as it had a body entirely that of a lion, and the face of a man. Similarly to these, to indicate intelligence, and memory, and power, and art, a man is sculptured in the temples. And in what is called among them the Komasiae of the gods, they carry about golden images - two dogs, one hawk, and one ibis; and the four figures of the images they call four letters. For the dogs are symbols of the two hemispheres, which, as it were, go round and keep watch; the hawk, of the sun, for it is fiery and destructive (so they attribute pestilential diseases to the sun); the ibis, of the moon, likening the shady parts to that which is dark in plumage, and the luminous to the light. And some will have it that by the dogs are meant the tropics, which guard and watch the sun's passage to the south and north. The hawk signifies the equinoctial line, which is high and parched with heat, as the ibis the ecliptic. For the ibis seems, above other animals, to have furnished to the Egyptians the first rudiments of the invention of number and measure, as the oblique line did of circles.

(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."

(13) Therefore also the Egyptians place Sphinxes before their temples, to signify that the doctrine respecting God is enigmatical and obscure; perhaps also that we ought both to love and fear the Divine Being: to love Him as gentle and benign to the pious; to fear Him as inexorably just to the impious; for the sphinx shows the image of a wild beast and of a man together.

(1) The doubts also that follow in the next place require for their solution the assistance of the same divinely-wise Muse. But I am desirous, previous to this, to unfold to you the peculiarity of the theology of the Egyptians. For they, imitating the nature of the universe, and the fabricative energy of the Gods, exhibit certain images through symbols of mystic, occult, and invisible intellections; just as nature, after a certain manner, expresses invisible reasons [or productive powers] through visible forms. But the fabricative energy of the Gods delineates the truth of forms, through visible images. Hence the Egyptians, perceiving that all superior natures rejoice in the similitude to them of inferior beings, and thus wishing to fill the latter with good, through the greatest possible imitation of the former, very properly exhibit a mode of theologizing adapted to the mystic doctrine concealed in the symbols.

(1) But it was not only the most highly intellectual of the Egyptians, but also such of other barbarians as prosecuted philosophy, that affected the symbolical style. They say, then, that Idanthuris king of the Scythians, as Pherecydes of Syros relates, sent to Darius, on his passing the Ister in threat of war, a symbol, instead of a letter, consisting of a mouse, a frog, a bird, a javelin, a plough. And there being a doubt in reference to them, as was to be expected, Orontopagas the Chiliarch said that they were to resign the kingdom; taking dwellings to be meant by the mouse, waters by the frog, air by the bird, land by the plough, arms by the javelin. But Xiphodres interpreted the contrary; for he said, "If we do not take our flight like birds, or like mice get below the earth, or like frogs beneath the water, we shall not escape their arrows; for we are not lords of the territory."

(1) Thou art a lion, thou art a sphinx, thou art Horus who avengeth his father; thou art these four gods, those glorious ones who are shouting for joy, who are making incantations, and who bring out water by the power of the tramp of their feet. Thou risest on the right, thou risest on the left. Seb has opened thy blind eyes, he has loosened thy legs which were fettered. Thou hast received thy heart of thy mother, thy whole heart of thy own body; thy soul is in the sky, thy body is under the ground. There is bread for thy body, water for thy throat, sweet breeze for thy nostrils

(68) For so long as the Image stands in the Anger, it is the Image of the Serpent; but if it goes forth [from the Lust of Sin, or Desire of Evil] into the breaking [or destroying thereof,] then a heavenly Image is figured by the Treader upon the Serpent, and uthe Serpent's Head is broken; the two Kingdoms fight [or wrestle] one with another, and that which overcomes, figures the Image.

(50) This chapter is in itself most interesting, and it is one of the most important as illustrative of Egyptian mythology. It is impossible at present to explain every detail, but the general drift of the chapter is not to be mistaken. And the same drift is to be recognised in the whole course of Egyptian religious literature from the beginning

(5) And for this cause it comes to pass that these are called the “sacred animals” by the Egyptians, and that each several state gives service to the souls of those whose souls have been made holy, while they were still alive; so that [the several states] are governed by the laws [of their peculiar sacred animals], and called after their names. It is because of this, Asclepius, those [animals] which are considered by some states deserving of their worship, in others are thought otherwise; and on account of this the states of the Egyptians wage with each other frequent war. XXXVIII

(1) Hear, therefore, the intellectual interpretation of symbols, according to the conceptions of the Egyptians; at the same time removing from your imagination and your ears the image of things symbolical, but elevating yourself to intellectual truth. By “ mire ,” therefore, understand every thing corporeal-formed and material; or that which is nutritive and prolific; or such as the material species of nature is, which is borne along in conjunction with the unstable flux of matter; or a thing of such a kind as that which the river of generation receives, and which subsides together with it; or the primordial cause of the elements, and of all the powers distributed about the elements, and which must be antecedently conceived to exist analogous to a foundation. Being, therefore, a thing of this kind, the God who is the cause of generation, of all nature, and of all the powers in the elements, as transcending these, and as being immaterial, incorporeal, and supernatural, unbegotten and impartible, wholly derived from himself, and concealed in himself,—this God precedes all things, and comprehends all things in himself. And because, indeed, he comprehends all things, and imparts himself to all mundane natures, he is from these unfolded into light. Because, however, he transcends all things, and is by himself expanded above them, on this account he presents himself to the view as separate, exempt, elevated, and expanded by himself above the powers and elements in the world.

(5) Be silent Ovid, of Cadmus and Arethusa; For if him to a snake, her to fountain, Converts he fabling, that I grudge him not; Because two natures never front to front Has he transmuted, so that both the forms To interchange their matter ready were. Together they responded in such wise, That to a fork the serpent cleft his tail, And eke the wounded drew his feet together. The legs together with the thighs themselves Adhered so, that in little time the juncture No sign whatever made that was apparent. He with the cloven tail assumed the figure The other one was losing, and his skin Became elastic, and the other's hard. I saw the arms draw inward at the armpits, And both feet of the reptile, that were short, Lengthen as much as those contracted were. Thereafter the hind feet, together twisted, Became the member that a man conceals, And of his own the wretch had two created. While both of them the exhalation veils With a new colour, and engenders hair On one of them and depilates the other,

(220) 194 The two doors of the horizon are open; its bolts slide. I 94 He has come to thee, N.t (Crown of Lower Egypt); he has come to thee, Nsr.t (Uraeus); 194 he has, come to thee, Great One; he has come to thee, Great-inmagic (Crown of Lower Egypt). 194 He is pure for thee; he is in awe of thee. 195 Mayest thou be satisfied with him; mayest thou be satisfied with his purity; 195 mayest thou be satisfied with his word, which he speaks to thee: 195 "How beautiful is thy face, when it is peaceful, new, young, for a god, father of the gods, has begotten thee!" 195 He has come to thee, Great-in-magic (Crown of Lower Egypt). 195 It is Horus, who has fought in protection of his eye, Great-inmagic.

(378) 663 To say: The uraeus-serpent belongs to heaven; the centipede of Horus belongs in the earth. 663 It is the sandal (or, sole of the foot) of Horus which has trod upon the (dangerous) serpent, 663 the serpent (dangerous) for Horus, a young child, his finger in his mouth. 664 N. is also a Horus, a little child, his finger in his mouth. 664 If it is dangerous for N., he will tread upon thee (serpent); 664 be wise for N., so will he not tread upon thee, 665 for thou art indeed the mysterious, the hidden, as the gods call thee, 665 because thou hast no legs, because thou hast no arms, 665 with which thou mayest go in the following of thy brothers, thy gods. 666 O ye both who are unlucky, O ye both who are unlucky; O ye both who arise, O ye both who arise, 666 ye who make the mti-knot of the god, protect N. that he may protect you.

(10) And Simmias of Rhodes: "Parent of the Ignetes and the Telchines briny Zaps was born." And kqwn is the earth kekxmenh spread forth to bigness. And Plectron, according to some, is the sky (polos), according to others, it is the air, which strikes and moves to nature and increase, and which fills all things. But these have not read Cleanthes the philosopher, who expressly calls Plectron the sun; for darting his beams in the east, as if striking the world, he leads the light to its harmonious course. And from the sun it signifies also the rest of the stars, the Sphinx is not the comprehension of the universe, and the revolution of the world, according to the poet Aratus; but perhaps it is the spiritual tone which pervades and holds together the universe. But it is better to regard it as the ether, which holds together and presses all things; as also Empedocles says: "But come now, first will I speak of the Sun, the first principle of all things, From which all, that we look upon, has sprung, Both earth, and billowy deep, and humid air; Titan and Ether too, which binds all things around."

Then when Sophia Zoe saw that the rulers of darkness cursed her companions, she was angry. And when she came out of the first heaven with every power, she chased the rulers from their heavens, and she cast them down to the sinful world, that they might dwell there as evil demons upon the earth. She sent the bird that was in paradise so that, until the consummation of the age, it might spend the thousand years in the rulers’ world: a vital living being with soul, called the phoenix, which kills itself and reanimates itself for a witness to their judgment, because they dealt unjustly with Adam and his race. There are three human beings and their descendants in the world until the consummation of the age: the spiritual and the psychical and the earthly. This is like the three kinds of phoenixes of paradise: the first is immortal; the second attains one thousand years; as for the third, it is written in the Holy Book that it is consumed. Likewise three baptisms exist: the first is spiritual, the second is by fire, the third is by water. Just as the phoenix appears as a witness for the angels, so too the water serpents in Egypt have become a witness to those who go down for the baptism of a true person. The two bulls in Egypt, insofar as they indicate the sun and the moon as a mystery, exist for a witness to Sabaoth, that Sophia of the world has been exalted above the sun and the moon, from the day when she created them and sealed her heaven until the consummation of the age. And the worm that is brought forth from the phoenix is also a human being. It is written of it, “The just will sprout like the phoenix.” The phoenix first appears alive, and dies, and rises again, as a sign of what appears at the consummation of the age. These great signs appeared only in Egypt, not in other lands, signifying that it is like the paradise of god.

(15) The Great Circle of gods on the Two Regions of Rechit is of Isis, Nephthys, Emsta and Hapi

(1) [Asclepius] Thou dost not mean their statues, dost thou, O Thrice-greatest one?

[Trismegistus] [I mean their] statues, O Asclepius,—dost thou not see how much thou even, doubtest?—statues, ensouled with sense, and filled with spirit, which work such mighty and such [strange] results,—statues which can foresee what is to come, and which perchance can prophesy, foretelling things by dreams and many other ways,—[statues] that take their strength away from men, or cure their sorrow, if they do so deserve. Dost thou not know, Asclepius, that Egypt is the image of the Heaven ; or, what is truer still, the transference, or the descent, of all that are in governance or exercise in Heaven? And if more truly [still] it must be said,—this land of ours is Shrine of all the World.

(21) is not so much a text as a picture. It represents the funeral chamber. The four walls, which should be vertical, are drawn lying flat on the ground. In the middle of the chamber, under a canopy, is the mummy, on which Anubis lays his hands; under the bed is a bird with a human head, the symbol of the soul of the deceased. We must suppose that the god Anubis is a priest, or a member of the family, who has put on a jackal’s head, and who pronounces the words said to be those of the god. At the foot of the bed are the two goddesses Isis and Nephthys