Thither gathered the students of all countries before Alexandria was founded. “How comes it,” Ennemoser goes on to say, “that so little has become known of these mysteries? through so many ages and amongst so many different times and people? The answer is that it is owing to the universally strict silence of the initiated. Another cause may be found in the destruction and total loss of all the written memorials of the secret knowledge of the remotest antiquity.” Numa’s books, described by Livy, consisting of treatises upon natural philosophy, were found in his tomb; but they were not allowed to be made known, lest they should reveal the most secret mysteries of the state religion. The senate and {25} the tribune of the people determined that the books themselves should be burned, which was done in public.[82] _Magic was considered a divine science which led to a participation in the attributes of Divinity itself._ “It unveils the operations of nature,” says Philo Judæus, “and leads to the contemplation of celestial powers.”[83] In later periods its abuse and degeneration into sorcery made it an object of general abhorrence. We must therefore deal with it only as it was in the remote past, during those ages when every true religion was based on a knowledge of the occult powers of nature. It was not the sacerdotal class in ancient Persia that established magic, as it is commonly thought, but the Magi, who derive their name from it. The Mobeds, priests of the Parsis—the ancient Ghebers—are named, even at the present day, _Magoï_, in the dialect of the Pehlvi.[84] _Magic appeared in the world with the earlier races of men._ Cassien mentions a treatise, well-known in the fourth and fifth centuries, which was accredited to Ham, the son of Noah, who in his turn was reputed to have received it from Jared, the fourth generation from Seth, the son of Adam.[85] Moses was indebted for his knowledge to the mother of the Egyptian princess, Thermuthis, who saved him from the waters of the Nile. The wife of Pharaoh,[86] Batria, was an initiate herself, and the Jews owe to her the possession of their prophet, “learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and mighty in words and deeds.”[87] Justin Martyr, giving as his authority Trogus Pompeius, shows Joseph as having acquired a great knowledge in magical arts with the high priests of Egypt.[88]