Is Michael the heir of Thoth or Rashnu? He passed into the Christian Church from the Jewish Synagogue, where he was specially connected with the destinies of the dead. He guided the souls of the just to the heavenly world, where he led them into the mystic city, the counterpart of Jerusalem below; or he stood at the gate as the angel of righteousness to decide who should be admitted. So for the Greeks Hermes was the guardian of the spirits of the departed, whom he conducted {10} to the judgment in the under-world. In this respect, then, Hermes and Michael were akin. But Hermes also played many other parts, and the Greeks identified him with the Egyptian Thoth. When the destinies of Hector and Achilles were weighed against each other, ere the last mortal combat, the vase-painter could represent Hermes as holding the balance in the presence of Zeus, much as Thoth had presided over it before Osiris. The Etruscan artists depicted Mercury, the Italian equivalent of Hermes, fulfilling the same function. True, the purport of the test was different. But the symbol was the same; and when Hermes gave place to Michael, as Christianity was carried to the West, the scales passed from the Hellenic to the Jewish Christian figure, though they had in the one case been used to decide the allotment of fate, and in the other were employed for judgment. Why they remained so long unused in Christian symbolism is obscure. The revival of intercourse with the East through the Crusades may have given new force to the idea as part of the great judgment-process; and the figure to which it was most natural to assign it was that of Thoth-Hermes-Michael.