The opinion has been widely entertained that the prototype of the brazen serpent of Moses, simply “Nehushtan”[195] in later times, was the _bonus dæmon_, the _Agathodæmon_[196] of the Greeks, Egyptians, and others. This “good genius” was regarded with great favor, and doubtless many were in the habit of according it power over disease. In the grove of Epidaurus, as in Indian temples and elsewhere among early peoples, the serpent was the _genius loci_, and hence the Agathodæmon, the bringer of health and good fortune, the teacher of wisdom, the oracle of future events. One was kept in the Erechtheum, close to the sacred olive-tree, and in each of many other temples. One was to be found, according to Ebers, “in every temple”[197] in Egypt. Evidence has recently been brought forward which goes to show that the serpent called the “good genius” in Egypt, in general, was in the part familiar to the Israelites, in the district of Suket, called also the dwelling-place of Ankh, “the Living One,” whose chief city was Piton,[198] regarded as the simulacrum of the sun-god Ra, or, rather, Atum, Tum, or Tom, the sun as he sets.[199] Brugsch, who has studied the matter carefully, says: “The god Tom represents solely the Egyptian type, corresponding to the divinity of Piton, who is called by the name of Ankh, and surnamed ‘the great god.’... A serpent to which the Egyptian texts give the epithet of ‘the Magnificent,’ ‘the Splendid,’ was regarded as the living symbol of the god of Piton. It bore the name of Kereh; that is, ‘the Smooth.’ And this serpent again transports us into the camp of the Children of Israel in the Wilderness; it recalls to us the brazen serpent of Moses, to which the Hebrews offered the perfumes of incense, until the time when King Hezekiah[200] decreed the abolition of this ancient serpent-worship.”[201] He further says: “I will not venture to decide the question whether the god, ‘He who lives,’ of the Egyptian text is identical with the Jehovah of the Hebrews, but, at all events, everything tends to this belief when we remember that the name of Jehovah[202] contains the same meaning as the Egyptian word Ankh, ‘He who lives.’”[203] These are highly interesting statements of this learned Egyptologist. Bearing in mind what has just been said, it is interesting to turn to what Solomon (?) says about the “brazen serpent,” and the cures wrought by it. In the “Book of Wisdom,” it is spoken of as a symbol, “a sign of salvation;”[204] and, it is said: “For it was neither herb nor molifying plaster that healed them, but thy word, O Lord, which healeth all things.”[205] And to this it is added: “For it was thou, O Lord, that hath power of life and death and leadest down to the gates of death and bringest back again.”[206]