In all the ancient systems this reverence for light, as the symbol of truth, was predominant. In the Mysteries of every nation, the candidate was made to pass, during his initiation, through scenes of utter darkness, and at length terminated his trials by an admission to the splendidly-illuminated sacellum, or sanctuary, where he was said to have attained pure and perfect light, and where he received the necessary instructions which were to invest him with that knowledge of the divine truth which it had been the object of all his labors to gain, and the design of the institution, into which he had been initiated, to bestow. _Light_, therefore, became synonymous with truth and knowledge, and _darkness_ with falsehood and ignorance. We shall find this symbolism pervading not only the institutions, but the very languages, of antiquity. Thus, among the Hebrews, the word AUR, in the singular, signified _light_, but in the plural, AURIM, it denoted the revelation of the divine will; and the _aurim _ and _thummim_, literally the _lights_ and _truths_, constituted a part of the breastplate whence the high priest obtained oracular responses to the questions which he proposed.[99] There is a peculiarity about the word "light," in the old Egyptian language, which is well worth consideration in this connection. Among the Egyptians, the _hare_ was the hieroglyphic of _eyes that are open_; and it was adopted because that timid animal was supposed never to close his organs of vision, being always on the watch for his enemies. The hare was afterwards adopted by the priests as a symbol of the mental illumination or mystic light which was revealed to the neophytes, in the contemplation of divine truth, during the progress of their initiation; and hence, according to Champollion, the hare was also the symbol of Osiris, their chief god; thus showing the intimate connection which they believed to exist between the process of initiation into their sacred rites and the contemplation of the divine nature. But the Hebrew word for hare is ARNaBeT. Now, this is compounded of the two words AUR, _light_, and NaBaT, _to behold_, and therefore the word which in the Egyptian denoted _initiation_, in the Hebrew signified _to behold the light_. In two nations so intimately connected in history as the Hebrew and the Egyptian, such a coincidence could not have been accidental. It shows the prevalence of the sentiment, at that period, that the communication of light was the prominent design of the Mysteries--so prominent that the one was made the synonyme of the other.[100]