The status of the Jewish settlers in Egypt was influential. Oniah, the heir of the High-Priesthood, was associated with Dositheos, another Jew, as generals of the whole army of Ptolemy VII.[32] He later supported the widowed queen against the attacks of Ptolemy Physcon.[32] He lived at Alexandria, and seems to have been powerful in the court. We also read of an adventurous Jew named Yosef,[33] who outbid all the tax farmers and obtained great power, which was extortionately used in the Ptolemaic province of Palestine. Under Ptolemy VII also we find the Jews of Athribis,[34] the central city of the Delta, dedicating a synagogue. The spread of Jewish settlement was far beyond the city of Oniah, as in Caesar’s time the march of troops from Pelusium to Alexandria was dependent on the goodwill of the Jews of Onion.[35] The road between those cities is more than fifty miles north of the city of Oniah, and it seems therefore that the settlement which was in allegiance to that city must have extended over most of the eastern side of the Delta. As the Jews were already sharing Alexandria on equal terms with the Greeks, they must have pretty well absorbed the management of the Delta. It is in this connection that we must view the statement that they had “entire custody of the Nile on all occasions.”[36] Probably as holding mortgages on interest in much of the land of the Delta, they organized a management of the inundation to ensure the solvency of their securities. The modern Debt Control taking over the management of the Irrigation Department is the parallel to the Jewish custody of the Nile. There was also another and entirely different side of Jewish life in Egypt. In Josephus we read a long account of the Essenes,[37] to which sect this Pharisee of the High-Priestly family had devoted himself in his youth. This account of the Ascetics of Palestine so closely accords with the account that the Alexandrian Jew Philo gives of the Therapeutae in Egypt[38] that they seem to be identical. This spread of asceticism appears to have been started by the Buddhist mission from India. It was entirely foreign to the Western ideals, yet it took root quickly after Asoka’s mission. Indian figures are found of this period at Memphis, and a multitude of modelled heads of foreigners also found there,[17] can only be paralleled by the modelled heads of foreigners made now for a Buddhist festival in Tibet, and thrown away as soon as the ceremony is over. The influence which thus came into Egypt with the Indians of the Persian occupation is found in working order by 340 B.C., and it was probably strengthened and organized by the Buddhist mission in 260 B.C., and so grew until we meet with the full description of long-established communities in the pages of Philo and Josephus. These bodies were apparently composed of philosophical Jews and proselytes largely influenced by the Alexandrine mixture of Oriental beliefs with Greek theorizing.