Among the ancient Egyptians the firmament was conceived as being so close to the mountains of the earth that it was possible to get up to it with the aid of a ladder. The early texts of the Pyramids describe the gods helping the king to climb the last rungs of the ladder, when he ascended to their high dwelling. Such ideas are found elsewhere, among the Chinese as well as in Europe. We are told that a priest-king of a people of Thrace joined tall wooden ladders together in order that he might go to Hera to complain of his unruly subjects.[369] Although the stars had been relegated to an infinite distance in space, the ladder still survived in Roman paganism as an amulet and as a symbol. Many people continued to place in tombs a small bronze ladder, which recalled the naïve beliefs of distant ages. This means of attaining to the upper world has been given to the dead man in several graves of the Rhine border. In the mysteries of Mithras a ladder of seven steps, made of seven different metals, still symbolised the passage of the soul across the planetary spheres.[370] Philo, and after him Origen,[371] interpreted Jacob’s ladder as the air through which the disincarnate souls ascended and descended; and the patriarch’s dream in the symbolism of the Middle Ages was still considered as a pledge of the ladder of salvation leading the elect to heaven. A naïve miniature of the illustrated manuscripts of St. John Climacus—one of them is preserved in the Freer collection—shows monks climbing the heavenly ladder of virtues and welcomed at the top by Christ or by an angel, while winged demons try to pull them down and make them fall into the jaws of a dragon below, which represents hell.[372] On the other hand, even in antiquity the emblem of the ladder had been adopted by magic,[373] which retained it throughout the centuries, and to this day little ladders are sold in Naples as charms against the _jettatura_ or evil eye.