The Egyptian priests also taught that there was a judgment of the dead, and that new comers had to appear before Osiris, with his forty-two Assessors, and disclaim the commission of each one of forty-two sins; all of which was a magic formula for obtaining bliss according to their notion rather than anything intended as a true statement. The hippopotamus figured as an active agent in the Book of the Dead, appearing always as the accuser, when the sins and the good deeds were being weighed in the balance, while the God Thot was the "attorney for the defense." All these secret doctrines of a priestcraft necessitated secret associations, at least of the higher priests, to which the king was always admitted, the only Egyptian outside of the priesthood to be thus taught their secrets. This was purely for protection; having less fear of foreigners these priests often initiated distinguished men from foreign lands, Greeks especially. Thus Orpheus, Homer, Lycurgus, Solon, Herodotus, Pythagoras, Plato, Archimedes, and many others, received the secret doctrine. The ritual was a long and tedious but significant ceremony, taught by degrees like the Masonry of to-day, and necessitated in some cases the right of circumcision; all who passed it were pledged to the most strict silence. According to Diodorus the Orphic Mysteries were in large degree a repetition of the Egyptian, while the Greek legislators, philosophers and mathematicians whom I have named drew their knowledge from the same source; all of which is probably a very gross exaggeration. Nevertheless it would appear from the hieroglyphic remains that high grade schools were conducted by the Egyptian priests, and that foreign scholars could obtain for themselves instruction in the exact sciences of the day. Only the priests, however, were able to write the hieroglyphics, at least in the earlier centuries of Egyptian history. There can be no doubt but that the secret doctrine of the Egyptian priests was both philosophic and religious, and was sharply distinguished from the popular belief which mistook tradition for truth; that it was monotheistic, that it rejected polytheism and zoölatry, and that the true signification of Egyptian mythology was expounded in private. Moreover an essential part of this mystery concerned the interpretation of myths as allegorical accounts of personified natural phenomena. For instance Plutarch ("Isis and Osiris") writes--"When we hear of the Egyptian myths of the Gods, their wanderings, their dismemberment and other like incidents, we must recall the remarks already made, so as to understand that the stories told are not to be taken literally as recounting actual occurrences."