During the _second_ period they were received as shepherds in Egypt Here they learnt for the first time the arts of a settled people. They found a mighty hierarchy already established; astronomy, chemistry, architecture, and sculpture were practised by priests, who were well-versed theologians, lawyers, physicians, and philosophers. Not only the Jews, who lived amongst the Egyptians, but also the wisest and most learned men of Greece, owed much to the land of hidden wisdom, which was undoubtedly the cradle of the Jewish faith and of Greek philosophy. Moses, Lykurgus, and Solon sat piously listening to the oracular instructions of the Egyptian priests, who taught in mystic symbols. Thales, Pythagoras and Plato borrowed their philosophical theories and systems largely from the Egyptians. The Egyptians worked out the incarnation theory with mystic refinement. Osiris, the concealed Lord of heaven, had to become flesh, to conquer evil. He condescended to become a redeemer--had to suffer a cruel death in order to paralyse the influences of Typhon. The Greeks and Jews never could grasp the mystery of a god changing his almighty subjectivity into an objective human form, in order to attain, through suffering and death, what he could have fulfilled in a thousand other ways. Osiris was not only the supreme ruler in heaven, but he was also the supremely just and inexorable judge in hell. The division of the universe into an abode of bliss for the departed just, and of eternal darkness and fire for the unjust, was an Indian, Persian, and Egyptian dogma. To the blessed it was promised that they should pluck the sweetest fruits in heaven, ‘for they have given food to the hungry, and water to the thirsty; they clothed the naked, and lived in truth; for their heart was with God and God was with them, and they will enjoy eternal life in his presence,’ Of the wicked, on the contrary, it was said: ‘that they could not see the countenance of the Lord of heaven, nor ever hear his voice; they would go about without heads, drag after them their hearts, be boiled for ever in a cauldron, be hanged for ever by their legs.’