The oldest books of law, were attributed to _Hermes_ (Toth), implying, that the first germ of an hierarchical organisation of society sprung from the sacred songs, and that law was entirely based upon the religious conceptions of the secret forces of nature by which man had been impressed. Like the Code of Manû, which took its origin in the Vedas, or the Laws of Zoroaster based on the Zend-Avesta, or the injunctions of Confucius founded on the holy records and songs of by-gone ages, the Egyptian laws took their origin in the first poetical feelings of awakened humanity, excited by the mysteries of nature under the rule of an incomprehensible first cause. 6. The _six_ books of the Dead. The only books still extant, written in hieroglyphs, and divided by Lepsius into 165 sections. The first fifteen chapters form a distinct and connected whole, with the superscription: ‘Here begin the Sections of the glorification in the Light of Osiris.’ It concludes with a book entitled ‘The Book of Deliverance in the Hall of the _twofold_ Justice (Reward and Punishment), and the Book of Redemption.’ With such a deep and mystic literature, encompassing the gods, nature, and man, in life and death, it is no wonder that a mystic and symbolic art should have succeeded in Egypt. Their mythology was not less profound than that of the Trans-Himâlâyans; there was more of symmetry, at least architectural symmetry, in their conceptions and representations than in those of the Brahmans, though Egyptian priests and Brahmans have apparently taken their conceptions from one and the same source. The Egyptian had eight gods of the first order, twelve gods of the second, and seven gods of the third order, pointing by these very numbers to an astronomical basis, thus:-- 1. The cosmical forces of creative nature. 2. The twelve months of the year. 3. The seven days of the week. Astronomy is the first powerful divisor of time and the supreme lord of agriculture. Only when the ‘Sacred Nile’ deposited its fructifying alluvium on the barren limestone of the valleys, formed by the Libyan and Arabian mountain ranges, man could exist and develop in that region. The regular inundation appeared to have taken place under the influence of the sun, moon, and stars. The sun (Osiris) was, therefore, believed to call forth the Nile (Isis) from regions _unknown down to our own days_, and sun and water became, as with the Indians (_Indra and Agni_), the first visible, creative forces of nature. The eight gods of the first order were:-- I. AMN (Brahm), Am-Ra, Ammon, the Greek Zeus (the son of Kronos and Rhea), the Roman Jupiter; the ‘Concealed God,’ the ‘Lord of Heaven,’ the ‘Lord of Thrones’; the first creative, incomprehensible, invisible force of the universe. The Brahmă of the Indians, the Zeruane-Akerene of the Persians.