At some very remote period, so remote that we cannot even surmise its date, the scarabæus symbol was considered as embodying not only the idea of the creator but also, the idea of the life beyond the grave in eternal futurity. Some scholars assert that the Egyptians rejected every abstraction and did not have any philosophy. This I do not and cannot believe from my investigations of their learning, but I do think, that we have not yet grasped nor understood that philosophy in its fullness, from the few remnants of it which have reached our day. The oldest texts and monuments show, a high condition of culture and thought as well as artistic feeling; the unknown deity was idealized and never represented to the eye on the monuments of early times; the Great Sphinx, itself a philosophical abstraction, was made long before the historical period; and the Book of the Dead, shows beneath its pages, a hidden religious metaphysical philosophy not yet unraveled. This was, likely, secretly taught by word of mouth as Qabbalah or Oral Tradition to the initiates, and was never put into writing. Some of these ideas we have just grasped, for instance, we now have some knowledge of the Egyptian divisions of the spiritual or immaterial part of man, of his psychology, and upon studying these divisions one can readily imagine, a secret religious philosophy accompanying those separations of the spiritual in man. We are also obtaining some knowledge, of their idea of God and of their kosmology and kosmogony. Six thousand years ago Egypt had attained great advancement. "Its religion was established. It possessed a language and writing. Art under the IVth and Vth Dynasties had reached a height which the following Dynasties[63] never surpassed. It had an especially complicated administration, the result of many years. The Egyptians had civil grades and religious grades, bishops as well as prefects. Registration of land surveys existed. The pharaoh had his organized court, and a large number of functionaries, powerfully and wisely arranged, gravitated around him. Literature was honored and books were composed on morals, some of which have reached our day. This was under the Ancient Empire during which existed the builders of the Pyramids."[64] The deities of literature and of libraries already existed, they were Thoth, the Greek Hermes; Atmu, of Thebes; _Ma_ or _Maat_, goddess of the harmony of the entire universe, or its law of existence, and of righteousness; Pacht, the mistress of thoughts; Safekh, goddess of books, who presided over the foundations of monuments and who was venerated at Memphis as early as the IVth Dynasty; Selk, who was also the goddess of libraries.