Egyptian civilisation dates back to a no less remote period than that of Babylon. Not less careful observers than the Babylonish astrologers of the meteors and the atmospheric revolutions, they could predict certain phenomena, and they gave it out that they had themselves been the cause of them. Diodorus Siculus tells us that the Egyptian priests pretty generally predicted the years of barrenness or abundance, the contagions, the earthquakes, inundations, and comets. The knowledge of celestial phenomena made an essential part of the theology of the Egyptians as it did of the Chaldaeans. They had colleges of priests specially attached to the study of the stars, at which Pythagoras, Plato, and Eudoxus were instructed. Religion was besides completely filled with the symbols relating to the sun or moon. Each month, each decade, each day was consecrated to a particular god. These gods, to the number of thirty, were called in the Alexandrine astronomy _decans_ ([Greek: dekavoi]). The festivals were marked by the periodical return of certain astronomical phenomena, and those heliacal risings to which any mythological ideas were attached, were noted with great care. We find even now proof of this old sacerdotal science in the zodiac sculptured on the ceilings of certain temples, and in the hieroglyphic inscriptions relating to celestial phenomena. According to the Egyptians, who were no less aware than the Greeks, of the influence of atmospheric changes on our organs, the different stars had a special action on each part of the body. In the funeral rituals which were placed at the bottom of the coffins, constant allusion is made to this theory. Each limb of the dead body was placed under the protection of a particular god. The divinities divided between them, so to speak, the spoils of the dead. The head belonged to Ra, or the Sun, the nose and lips to Anubis, and so on. To establish the horoscope of anyone, this theory of specific influences was combined with the state of the heavens at the time of his birth. It seems even to have been the doctrine of the Egyptians, that a particular star indicated the coming of each man into the world, and this opinion was held also by the Medes, and is alluded to in the Gospels. In Egypt, as in Persia and Chaldaea, the science of nature was a sacred doctrine, of which magic and astrology constituted the two branches, and in which the phenomena of the universe were attached very firmly to the divinities or genii with which they believed it filled. It was the same in the primitive religions of Greece.