In Egypt the conflict between the exclusive worship of Jehovah and the less intolerant worship of the Nile-gods had been in existence for centuries before the Greeks. The pre-Greek Jewish immigrants were perhaps not of the sort that sought to accentuate the conflict, though friction was unavoidable. At the Greek conquest, it must be remembered, no great disposition was shown by the first Ptolemies to accept the native institutions or the native gods. The new god of Alexandria, the mighty Sarapis, was not, as has been generally supposed, a composite of Osiris and Apis, but an out and out Greek god, imported from his obscure shrine in direct opposition to the indigenous gods.[111] Membership in the civic communities, or residence in the country districts, can have involved no obligation to share the ritual localized there. Every group of foreigners might freely disregard it, and maintain unimpaired their own ancestral forms. We accordingly find Jewish synagogues—in the sense of cult-organizations, each having its own meeting-house, schola, or proseucha, and organized with magistrates and council, like miniature states—not only in Alexandria but in insignificant little towns of Upper and Lower Egypt.[112] Nor was the legal basis of such organization wanting, _i.e._ the corporate personality, since we find these synagogues enjoying the rights of property and subject to the imposts levied upon it.[113] The extent of each synagogue was limited by the physical capacity of the schola. There must have been in Alexandria very many of them. Who were members of them? The various classes of Jews in the city and country were divided by social and legal lines. In the synagogue social distinctions cannot have disappeared, but there can be no doubt that in many, if not in all, there would be found Jews representing every class of the community. In other parts of the Greek world it was no strange thing to see citizens, metics, foreigners, slaves, claiming membership in the same cult-organization, and jointly worshiping a native or foreign god. The synagogue likewise contained among its members nobles and slaves. The tendency for the wealthier classes to become completely Hellenized, and so completely to abandon the synagogue, did not show itself prominently for some time.