found at Thebes, which is supposed to belong to the first centuries of the restoration of the monarchy. A section of this deals with diseases of the eye.[281] Egyptian physicians were much sought after in the East (the founder of the Persian kingdom, Cyrus, procured an oculist from Egypt), until the fame of the Greek medicine about 500 B.C. threw Egyptian physicians into the shade.[282] In the sacred books of the priests was drawn up the religious system into which the original conceptions of the gods were shaped and developed in the circles of the priests. The gods who passed for the greatest and mightiest in the various districts out of which Egypt was made up, the protecting deities of the separate localities, were here arranged in definite ranks and classes. And if, nevertheless, considerable differences can be observed in the teaching of the priests of Memphis and Thebes, they are sufficiently explained by the mode in which religion and state were developed in Egypt, and the rival position of the two great centres of ecclesiastical life. According to the doctrine of Memphis the seven highest deities were Ptah, the creative god of light of the lower country; Ra, the sun-god of Heliopolis; and Shu (Sosis, p. 50), the deity of the clear air; these three were followed by the forms belonging to the Osiris circle, on whose nature rested the moral basis of the life of the Egyptians; Seb, the father of Osiris; Osiris himself; then his opposite, Typhon; and lastly, Horus, the conqueror of Typhon.[283] The doctrine of Thebes placed Ammon at the head instead of Ptah, and in the place of Ra stood the two sun-gods of Upper Egypt, Tum (Atum, p. 51) and Mentu; these were followed by Shu, and the gods of the Osiris circle. To the seven or eight great gods was appended a circle of twelve gods, and among these Thoth and Anubis. The twelve were followed by a number of spirits, genii and demigods. With this system of gods the doctrine of the priests was connected. Even from the attributes of Ptah, Neith, and other deities, it is clear that there was among the priests a strong tendency to gather up the divine powers into the forms of Ptah, Tum, Osiris, and Ra. The teaching of the priests evidently desired to grasp the connection of life, and attain to a theogony and a theory of creation. It has been already pointed out on the authority of documents belonging to the times of the Amenemha and Sesurtesen, that the priests in their doctrine were at pains to discover the unity of the divine spirits, and to conceive the forms of the gods as manifestations of one being. They regarded the animals as the manifestations of special characteristics of the gods, and men as phænomena of a divine origin and nature, who would return to the place whence they came. To go further and grasp the heart of the system is impossible in the present condition of our researches. Conceptions and inferences of the Græco-Egyptian speculation of the time of the