Thousands of the orthodox Jews fled to Egypt, where they found shelter and welcome. Among them was Onias, the eldest son of Onias III. Philomêtor granted him land in the nome of Heliopolis, and allowed him to build there a temple in which the worship of the Hebrew God should be carried on as it had been at Jerusalem. Excavation goes to show that the temple was erected at the spot now called Tel el-Yehudîyeh, “the Mound of the Jewess,” not far from Shibîn el-Kanâtir. Here was an old deserted palace and temple of Ramses III., and here the Jews were permitted to establish themselves and found a city, which they called Onion. According to Josephus, its older name had been Leontopolis. The temple, which was destroyed by Vespasian after the Jewish war, was fortified like that at Jerusalem, and the porcelain plaques enamelled with rosettes and lotus-buds, which had been made for Ramses III., were employed once more to ornament it. Long ago the _fellahin_ discovered among its ruins, and then broke up, a marble bath, such as is used to-day by the Jewish women for the purpose of purification, and in the adjoining necropolis Dr. Naville found the tombs of persons who bore Jewish names. Onias was not allowed to build his new temple without a protest from the stricter adherents of the Law that it was forbidden to raise one elsewhere than in the sacred city of David. But he was a man of ready resource, and all opposition was overcome when he pointed to the prophecy of Isaiah (xix. 19): “In that day there shall be an altar to the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt.” The Egyptian Jews had already secured their own version of the Scriptures; they now had their own temple, their own priesthood, and their own high-priest. True, their co-religionists in Judæa never ceased to protest against this rival centre of their religious faith, and to denounce Onias as the first schismatic; but their brethren in Egypt paid no attention to their words, and the temple of Onion continued to exist as long as that of Jerusalem.