Priests, in Egypt, held the second rank to kings. They had great privileges and revenues; their lands were exempted from all imposts; of which some traces are seen in Genesis, where it is said, “Joseph made it a law over the land of Egypt, that Pharaoh should have the fifth part, except the land of the priests only, which became not Pharaoh’s.”(337) The prince usually honoured them with a large share in his confidence and government, because they, of all his subjects, had received the best education, had acquired the greatest knowledge, and were most strongly attached to the king’s person and the good of the public. They were at one and the same time the depositaries of religion and of the sciences; and to this circumstance was owing the great respect which was paid them by the natives as well as foreigners, by whom they were alike consulted upon the most sacred things relating to the mysteries of religion, and the most profound subjects in the several sciences. The Egyptians pretend to be the first institutors of festivals and processions in honour of the gods.(338) One festival was celebrated in the city of Bubastus, whither persons resorted from all parts of Egypt, and upwards of seventy thousand, besides children, were seen at it. Another, surnamed the feast of the lights, was solemnized at Sais. All persons, throughout Egypt, who did not go to Sais, were obliged to illuminate their windows. Different animals were sacrificed in different countries, but one common and general ceremony was observed in all sacrifices, _viz._ the laying of hands upon the head of the victim, loading it at the same time with imprecations; and praying the gods to divert upon that victim all the calamities which might threaten Egypt.(339) It is to Egypt that Pythagoras owed his favourite doctrine of the Metempsychosis or transmigration of souls.(340) The Egyptians believed, that at the death of men their souls transmigrated into other human bodies; and that, if they had been vicious, they were imprisoned in the bodies of unclean or ill-conditioned beasts, to expiate in them their past transgressions; and that after a revolution of some centuries they again animated other human bodies.