Pasmmetichas, king of Sais, who, as has been already mentioned, fought the Assyrians, must have been a most intelligent person, for during his reign, says Mr. Rawlinson (page 465), "a question was raised as to the relative antiquity of different races of mankind. Therefore the Pharaoh had two children isolated from their species and brought up by a herdsman who was dumb, and suckled by a goat, in order to see what language they would speak, presuming that they would revert to the primitive type of speech. The result of his experiment was thought to prove the Phrygians to be the most ancient nation, and the Egyptians, we are told by Herodotus, accepted it as an established fact." Thoth was revered as a great teacher, since his works treated of all things, such as the creation of the world, of divine power, of wisdom, of the art of presaging the issue of maladies by means of the planets. The work treating on this was dedicated to Ammon. Then there were the Aphorisms of Hermes, which consisted of astronomical propositions translated from the Arabic about the time of Manfred, king of Sicily. "The Cyranides of Trismegistus" treats of magic power and the medicinal virtues of precious stones, of plants, and of animals. Many of the other books of Thoth are treatises on chemistry or alchemy. One is called "The Seven Seals of Hermes Trismegistus," another, "Chemical Tinctures," and a third, "The Emerald Tablet," describing the art of making gold. It is said that Sara, the wife of Abraham, found the Emerald in the tomb of Hermes, on Mount Hebron. One essay is to Tat or Esculapius, another is entitled "The Virgin of the World," as Isis is sometimes called, and is a dialogue between her and her son Horus. Many small statues were found in a well in the temple of the Sphinx, that may have originally represented the gods now found among the Atouts. This would be a most valuable confirmation of the theory of their original position in the temple when the priests and initiates wished to consult the occult. In an age when letters were only used by the learned, and pictured emblems or symbols took the place of an alphabet, it was natural that the priests of Thoth, when pressed to divine the fate of men, should place sketches of the great gods on the walls of their temples, so that, by combining them with the rods of divination, the wishes of the supreme beings could be easily conveyed. The custom of adorning the walls of the temple is referred to in Ezekiel xxiii:14. "She saw men pourtrayed upon the wall, the images of the Chaldeans (or Nebo and his confrères) pourtrayed with vermilion, girdled with girdles upon their loins, exceeding in dyed attire upon their heads, all of them princes to look to, after the manner of the Babylonians of Chaldea." This was possibly the origin of the Tarots, or the Atout volume of the Book of Thoth. CHAPTER V NEBO, OR NABU