Egypt

• political matters › last battle between orange and green men in

64:6.13The last great strug­gle be­tween the or­ange and the green men oc­curred in the re­gion of the lower Nile val­ley in Egypt. This long-drawn-out bat­tle was waged for al­most one hun­dred years, and at its close very few of the or­ange race were left alive. The shat­tered rem­nants of these peo­ple were ab­sorbed by the green and by the later ar­riv­ing in­digo men. But as a race the or­ange man ceased to ex­ist about one hun­dred thou­sand years ago.

• migrations in Egypt by › successive racial domination

64:7.15And so it ap­pears that Egypt was first dom­i­nated by the or­ange man, then by the green, fol­lowed by the in­digo (black) man, and still later by a mon­grel race of in­digo, blue, and mod­i­fied green men. But long be­fore Adam ar­rived, the blue men of Eu­rope and the mixed races of Ara­bia had driven the in­digo race out of Egypt and far south on the African con­ti­nent.

• caste systems based on color

70:8.119. Racial—the pres­ence of two or more races within a given na­tion or ter­ri­to­rial unit usu­ally pro­duces color castes. The orig­i­nal caste sys­tem of In­dia was based on color, as was that of early Egypt.

• accurate reform of calendar 7000 years ago

77:2.12The reck­on­ing of time by the twenty-eight-day month per­sisted long af­ter the days of Adam. But when the Egyp­tians un­der­took to re­form the cal­en­dar, about seven thou­sand years ago, they did it with great ac­cu­racy, in­tro­duc­ing the year of 365 days.

• in 15,000 B.C.

78:3.6A blended col­ored race, about this time greatly re­in­forced by ar­rivals from Mes­o­po­ta­mia, held forth in Egypt and pre­pared to take over the dis­ap­pear­ing cul­ture of the Eu­phrates val­ley. The black peo­ples were mov­ing far­ther south in Africa and, like the red race, were vir­tu­ally iso­lated.

• migrations in Egypt by › Andites

78:6.5Ten per cent of these flee­ing And­ites made their way across Ara­bia and en­tered Egypt.

• migrations in Egypt by › Andites

78:6.8The cul­tural age of the sec­ond gar­den was ter­mi­nated by the in­creas­ing in­fil­tra­tion of the sur­round­ing in­fe­rior stocks. Civ­i­liza­tion moved west­ward to the Nile and the Med­i­ter­ra­nean is­lands, where it con­tin­ued to thrive and ad­vance long af­ter its foun­tain­head in Mes­o­po­ta­mia had de­te­ri­o­rated. And this unchecked in­flux of in­fe­rior peo­ples pre­pared the way for the later con­quest of all Mes­o­po­ta­mia by the north­ern bar­bar­ians who drove out the resid­ual strains of abil­ity. Even in later years the cul­tured residue still re­sented the pres­ence of these ig­no­rant and un­couth in­vaders.

• migrations in Egypt by › Andites

79:1.3By 8000 B.C. the slowly in­creas­ing arid­ity of the high­land re­gions of cen­tral Asia be­gan to drive the And­ites to the river bot­toms and the seashores. This in­creas­ing drought not only drove them to the val­leys of the Nile, Eu­phrates, In­dus, and Yel­low rivers, but it pro­duced a new de­vel­op­ment in And­ite civ­i­liza­tion. A new class of men, the traders, be­gan to ap­pear in large num­bers.

• appearance of cities

79:1.4When cli­matic con­di­tions made hunt­ing un­prof­itable for the mi­grat­ing And­ites, they did not fol­low the evo­lu­tion­ary course of the older races by be­com­ing herders. Com­merce and ur­ban life made their ap­pear­ance. From Egypt through Mes­o­po­ta­mia and Tur­kes­tan to the rivers of China and In­dia, the more highly civ­i­lized tribes be­gan to as­sem­ble in cities de­voted to man­u­fac­ture and trade. Ado­nia be­came the cen­tral Asian com­mer­cial metropo­lis, be­ing lo­cated near the pres­ent city of Ashkhabad. Com­merce in stone, metal, wood, and pot­tery was ac­cel­er­ated on both land and wa­ter.

• at lowest cultural level 15,000 years ago

80:1.3For more than thirty thou­sand years Egypt re­ceived a steady stream of Mes­o­po­ta­mi­ans, who brought along their art and cul­ture to en­rich that of the Nile val­ley. But the ingress of large num­bers of the Sa­hara peo­ples greatly de­te­ri­o­rated the early civ­i­liza­tion along the Nile so that Egypt reached its low­est cul­tural level some fif­teen thou­sand years ago.

• migrations in Egypt by › by Arabians, Saharans, blacks

80:2.2The purer in­digo el­e­ments moved south­ward to the forests of cen­tral Africa, where they have ever since re­mained. The more mixed groups spread out in three di­rec­tions: The su­pe­rior tribes to the west mi­grated to Spain and thence to ad­ja­cent parts of Eu­rope, form­ing the nu­cleus of the later Med­i­ter­ra­nean long-headed brunet races. The least pro­gres­sive di­vi­sion to the east of the Sa­hara pla­teau mi­grated to Ara­bia and thence through north­ern Mes­o­po­ta­mia and In­dia to far­away Cey­lon. The cen­tral group moved north and east to the Nile val­ley and into Pales­tine.

• succeeded Mesopotamia as headquarters of most advanced group on earth

80:6.1From the times of the ter­mi­nal And­ite mi­gra­tions, cul­ture de­clined in the Eu­phrates val­ley, and the im­me­di­ate cen­ter of civ­i­liza­tion shifted to the val­ley of the Nile. Egypt be­came the suc­ces­sor of Mes­o­po­ta­mia as the head­quar­ters of the most ad­vanced group on earth.

• culture derived from Euphrates region

80:6.2The Nile val­ley be­gan to suf­fer from floods shortly be­fore the Mes­o­po­ta­mian val­leys but fared much bet­ter. This early set­back was more than com­pen­sated by the con­tin­u­ing stream of And­ite im­mi­grants, so that the cul­ture of Egypt, though re­ally de­rived from the Eu­phrates re­gion, seemed to forge ahead. But in 5000 B.C., dur­ing the flood pe­riod in Mes­o­po­ta­mia, there were seven dis­tinct groups of hu­man be­ings in Egypt; all of them, save one, came from Mes­o­po­ta­mia.

80:6.3When the last ex­o­dus from the Eu­phrates val­ley oc­curred, Egypt was for­tu­nate in gain­ing so many of the most skill­ful artists and ar­ti­sans. These And­ite ar­ti­sans found them­selves quite at home in that they were thor­oughly fa­mil­iar with river life, its floods, ir­ri­ga­tions, and dry sea­sons. They en­joyed the shel­tered po­si­tion of the Nile val­ley; they were there much less sub­ject to hos­tile raids and at­tacks than along the Eu­phrates. And they added greatly to the met­al­work­ing skill of the Egyp­tians. Here they worked iron ores com­ing from Mount Sinai in­stead of from the Black Sea re­gions.

• Andite Imhotep erected first stone pyramid
• religion › extensive theology; burdensome priesthood

80:6.4The Egyp­tians very early as­sem­bled their mu­nic­i­pal de­i­ties into an elab­o­rate na­tional sys­tem of gods. They de­vel­oped an ex­ten­sive the­ol­ogy and had an equally ex­ten­sive but bur­den­some priest­hood. Sev­eral dif­fer­ent lead­ers sought to re­vive the rem­nants of the early re­li­gious teach­ings of the Sethites, but these en­deav­ors were short-lived. The And­ites built the first stone struc­tures in Egypt. The first and most ex­qui­site of the stone pyra­mids was erected by Imhotep, an And­ite ar­chi­tec­tural ge­nius, while serv­ing as prime min­is­ter. Pre­vi­ous build­ings had been con­structed of brick, and while many stone struc­tures had been erected in dif­fer­ent parts of the world, this was the first in Egypt. But the art of build­ing steadily de­clined from the days of this great ar­chi­tect.

• migrations in Egypt by › by Arabians, Saharans, blacks

80:6.5This bril­liant epoch of cul­ture was cut short by in­ter­nal war­fare along the Nile, and the coun­try was soon over­run, as Mes­o­po­ta­mia had been, by the in­fe­rior tribes from in­hos­pitable Ara­bia and by the blacks from the south. As a re­sult, so­cial prog­ress steadily de­clined for more than five hun­dred years.

• culture derived from Euphrates region

80:7.5Pres­ently Greece and the Aegean Is­lands re­gion suc­ceeded Mes­o­po­ta­mia and Egypt as the Oc­ci­den­tal cen­ter of trade, art, and cul­ture. But as it was in Egypt, so again prac­ti­cally all of the art and sci­ence of the Aegean world was de­rived from Mes­o­po­ta­mia ex­cept for the cul­ture of the Ad­am­son­ite fore­run­ners of the Greeks. All the art and ge­nius of these lat­ter peo­ple is a di­rect legacy of the pos­ter­ity of Adam­son, the first son of Adam and Eve, and his ex­traor­di­nary sec­ond wife, a daugh­ter de­scended in an un­bro­ken line from the pure Nod­ite staff of Prince Cali­gas­tia. No won­der the Greeks had mytho­log­i­cal tra­di­tions that they were di­rectly de­scended from gods and super­hu­man be­ings.

• western end of cradle of civilization

81:1.1For about thirty-five thou­sand years af­ter the days of Adam, the cra­dle of civ­i­liza­tion was in south­west­ern Asia, ex­tend­ing from the Nile val­ley east­ward and slightly to the north across north­ern Ara­bia, through Mes­o­po­ta­mia, and on into Tur­kes­tan. And cli­mate was the de­ci­sive fac­tor in the es­tab­lish­ment of civ­i­liza­tion in that area.

• growth of commerce

81:3.1The cli­matic de­struc­tion of the rich, open grass­land hunt­ing and graz­ing grounds of Tur­kes­tan, be­gin­ning about 12,000 B.C., com­pelled the men of those re­gions to re­sort to new forms of in­dus­try and crude man­u­fac­tur­ing. Some turned to the cul­ti­va­tion of do­mes­ti­cated flocks, oth­ers be­came agri­cul­tur­ists or col­lec­tors of wa­ter-borne food, but the higher type of And­ite in­tel­lects chose to en­gage in trade and man­u­fac­ture. It even be­came the cus­tom for en­tire tribes to ded­i­cate them­selves to the de­vel­op­ment of a sin­gle in­dus­try. From the val­ley of the Nile to the Hindu Kush and from the Ganges to the Yel­low River, the chief busi­ness of the su­pe­rior tribes be­came the cul­ti­va­tion of the soil, with com­merce as a side line.

• religion › belief soul and body remained together after death; hence, tomb construction

86:4.8Al­most ev­ery group had a dif­fer­ent idea re­gard­ing the des­tiny of the ghost soul. The Greeks be­lieved that weak men must have weak souls; so they in­vented Hades as a fit place for the re­cep­tion of such ane­mic souls; these un­ro­bust spec­i­mens were also sup­posed to have shorter shad­ows. The early And­ites thought their ghosts re­turned to the an­ces­tral home­lands. The Chi­nese and Egyp­tians once be­lieved that soul and body re­mained to­gether. Among the Egyp­tians this led to care­ful tomb con­struc­tion and ef­forts at body preser­va­tion. Even mod­ern peo­ples seek to ar­rest the de­cay of the dead. The He­brews con­ceived that a phan­tom replica of the in­di­vid­ual went down to Sheol; it could not re­turn to the land of the liv­ing. They did make that im­por­tant ad­vance in the doc­trine of the evo­lu­tion of the soul.

• religion › taboo on pork

89:1.5The early food taboos orig­i­nated in fet­ish­ism and to­tem­ism. The swine was sa­cred to the Phoeni­cians, the cow to the Hin­dus. The Egyp­tian taboo on pork has been per­pet­u­ated by the He­braic and Is­lamic faiths. A vari­ant of the food taboo was the be­lief that a preg­nant woman could think so much about a cer­tain food that the child, when born, would be the echo of that food. Such viands would be taboo to the child.

• profligate sacrifices by ruler

89:4.9It was no empty boast that a cer­tain Egyp­tian ruler made when he stated that he had sac­ri­ficed: 113,433 slaves, 493,386 head of cat­tle, 88 boats, 2,756 golden im­ages, 331,702 jars of honey and oil, 228,380 jars of wine, 680,714 geese, 6,744,428 loaves of bread, and 5,740,352 sacks of corn. And in or­der to do this he must needs have sorely taxed his toil­ing sub­jects.

• migrations in Egypt by › superior Nodites, Adamites, and Andites arrived from Euphrates valley
• religion › Salem teachings took deepest root in

95:2.1The orig­i­nal Mel­chiz­e­dek teach­ings re­ally took their deep­est root in Egypt, from where they sub­se­quently spread to Eu­rope. The evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion of the Nile val­ley was pe­ri­od­i­cally aug­mented by the ar­rival of su­pe­rior strains of Nod­ite, Adamite, and later And­ite peo­ples of the Eu­phrates val­ley. From time to time, many of the Egyp­tian civil ad­min­is­tra­tors were Sume­ri­ans. As In­dia in these days har­bored the high­est mix­ture of the world races, so Egypt fos­tered the most thor­oughly blended type of re­li­gious phi­los­o­phy to be found on Uran­tia, and from the Nile val­ley it spread to many parts of the world. The Jews re­ceived much of their idea of the cre­ation of the world from the Baby­lo­ni­ans, but they de­rived the con­cept of di­vine Prov­i­dence from the Egyp­tians.

95:2.2It was po­lit­i­cal and moral, rather than philo­sophic or re­li­gious, ten­den­cies that ren­dered Egypt more fa­vor­able to the Salem teach­ing than Mes­o­po­ta­mia. Each tribal leader in Egypt, af­ter fight­ing his way to the throne, sought to per­pet­u­ate his dy­nasty by pro­claim­ing his tribal god the orig­i­nal de­ity and cre­ator of all other gods. In this way the Egyp­tians grad­u­ally got used to the idea of a super­god, a step­ping­stone to the later doc­trine of a uni­ver­sal cre­ator De­ity. The idea of mono­the­ism wa­vered back and forth in Egypt for many cen­turies, the be­lief in one God al­ways gain­ing ground but never quite dom­i­nat­ing the evolv­ing con­cepts of poly­the­ism.

95:2.3For ages the Egyp­tian peo­ples had been given to the wor­ship of na­ture gods; more par­tic­u­larly did each of the two-score sep­a­rate tribes have a spe­cial group god, one wor­ship­ing the bull, an­other the lion, a third the ram, and so on. Still ear­lier they had been totem tribes, very much like the Amerinds.

95:2.4In time the Egyp­tians ob­served that dead bod­ies placed in brick­less graves were pre­served—em­balmed—by the ac­tion of the soda-im­preg­nated sand, while those buried in brick vaults de­cayed. These ob­ser­va­tions led to those ex­per­i­ments which re­sulted in the later prac­tice of em­balm­ing the dead. The Egyp­tians be­lieved that preser­va­tion of the body fa­cil­i­tated one’s pas­sage through the fu­ture life. That the in­di­vid­ual might prop­erly be iden­ti­fied in the dis­tant fu­ture af­ter the de­cay of the body, they placed a burial statue in the tomb along with the corpse, carv­ing a like­ness on the cof­fin. The mak­ing of these burial stat­ues led to great im­prove­ment in Egyp­tian art.

95:2.5For cen­turies the Egyp­tians placed their faith in tombs as the safe­guard of the body and of con­se­quent plea­sur­able sur­vival af­ter death. The later evo­lu­tion of mag­i­cal prac­tices, while bur­den­some to life from the cra­dle to the grave, most ef­fec­tu­ally de­liv­ered them from the re­li­gion of the tombs. The priests would in­scribe the coffins with charm texts which were be­lieved to be pro­tec­tion against a “man’s hav­ing his heart taken away from him in the nether world.” Pres­ently a di­verse as­sort­ment of these mag­i­cal texts was col­lected and pre­served as The Book of the Dead. But in the Nile val­ley mag­i­cal rit­ual early be­came in­volved with the realms of con­science and char­ac­ter to a de­gree not of­ten at­tained by the rit­u­als of those days. And sub­se­quently these eth­i­cal and moral ide­als, rather than elab­o­rate tombs, were de­pended upon for sal­va­tion.

95:2.6The su­per­sti­tions of these times are well il­lus­trated by the gen­eral be­lief in the ef­fi­cacy of spit­tle as a heal­ing agent, an idea which had its ori­gin in Egypt and spread there­from to Ara­bia and Mes­o­po­ta­mia. In the leg­endary bat­tle of Ho­rus with Set the young god lost his eye, but af­ter Set was van­quished, this eye was re­stored by the wise god Thoth, who spat upon the wound and healed it.

95:2.7The Egyp­tians long be­lieved that the stars twin­kling in the night sky rep­re­sented the sur­vival of the souls of the wor­thy dead; other sur­vivors they thought were ab­sorbed into the sun. Dur­ing a cer­tain pe­riod, so­lar ven­er­a­tion be­came a species of an­ces­tor wor­ship. The slop­ing en­trance pas­sage of the great pyra­mid pointed di­rectly to­ward the Pole Star so that the soul of the king, when emerg­ing from the tomb, could go straight to the sta­tion­ary and es­tab­lished con­stel­la­tions of the fixed stars, the sup­posed abode of the kings.

95:2.8When the oblique rays of the sun were ob­served pen­e­trat­ing earth­ward through an aper­ture in the clouds, it was be­lieved that they be­to­kened the let­ting down of a ce­les­tial stair­way whereon the king and other righ­teous souls might as­cend. “King Pepi has put down his ra­di­ance as a stair­way un­der his feet whereon to as­cend to his mother.”

95:2.9When Mel­chiz­e­dek ap­peared in the flesh, the Egyp­tians had a re­li­gion far above that of the sur­round­ing peo­ples. They be­lieved that a dis­em­bod­ied soul, if prop­erly armed with magic for­mu­las, could evade the in­ter­ven­ing evil spir­its and make its way to the judg­ment hall of Osiris, where, if in­no­cent of “mur­der, rob­bery, false­hood, adul­tery, theft, and self­ish­ness,” it would be ad­mit­ted to the realms of bliss. If this soul were weighed in the bal­ances and found want­ing, it would be con­signed to hell, to the De­vouress. And this was, rel­a­tively, an ad­vanced con­cept of a fu­ture life in com­par­i­son with the be­liefs of many sur­round­ing peo­ples.

95:2.10The con­cept of judg­ment in the here­after for the sins of one’s life in the flesh on earth was car­ried over into He­brew the­ol­ogy from Egypt. The word judg­ment ap­pears only once in the en­tire Book of He­brew Psalms, and that par­tic­u­lar psalm was writ­ten by an Egyp­tian.

95:3.1Al­though the cul­ture and re­li­gion of Egypt were chiefly de­rived from And­ite Mes­o­po­ta­mia and largely trans­mit­ted to sub­se­quent civ­i­liza­tions through the He­brews and Greeks, much, very much, of the so­cial and eth­i­cal ide­al­ism of the Egyp­tians arose in the val­ley of the Nile as a purely evo­lu­tion­ary de­vel­op­ment. Not­with­stand­ing the im­por­ta­tion of much truth and cul­ture of And­ite ori­gin, there evolved in Egypt more of moral cul­ture as a purely hu­man de­vel­op­ment than ap­peared by sim­i­lar nat­u­ral tech­niques in any other cir­cum­scribed area prior to the be­stowal of Mi­chael.

95:3.2Moral evo­lu­tion is not wholly de­pen­dent on rev­e­la­tion. High moral con­cepts can be de­rived from man’s own ex­pe­ri­ence. Man can even evolve spir­i­tual val­ues and de­rive cos­mic in­sight from his per­sonal ex­pe­ri­en­tial liv­ing be­cause a di­vine spirit in­dwells him. Such nat­u­ral evo­lu­tions of con­science and char­ac­ter were also aug­mented by the pe­ri­odic ar­rival of teach­ers of truth, in an­cient times from the sec­ond Eden, later on from Mel­chiz­e­dek’s head­quar­ters at Salem.

95:3.3Thou­sands of years be­fore the Salem gospel pen­e­trated to Egypt, its moral lead­ers taught jus­tice, fair­ness, and the avoid­ance of avarice. Three thou­sand years be­fore the He­brew scrip­tures were writ­ten, the motto of the Egyp­tians was: “Es­tab­lished is the man whose stan­dard is righ­teous­ness; who walks ac­cord­ing to its way.” They taught gen­tle­ness, mod­er­a­tion, and dis­cre­tion. The mes­sage of one of the great teach­ers of this epoch was: “Do right and deal justly with all.” The Egyp­tian triad of this age was Truth-Jus­tice-Righ­teous­ness. Of all the purely hu­man re­li­gions of Uran­tia none ever sur­passed the so­cial ide­als and the moral grandeur of this one­time hu­man­ism of the Nile val­ley.

95:3.4In the soil of these evolv­ing eth­i­cal ideas and moral ide­als the sur­viv­ing doc­trines of the Salem re­li­gion flour­ished. The con­cepts of good and evil found ready re­sponse in the hearts of a peo­ple who be­lieved that “Life is given to the peace­ful and death to the guilty.” “The peace­ful is he who does what is loved; the guilty is he who does what is hated.” For cen­turies the in­hab­i­tants of the Nile val­ley had lived by these emerg­ing eth­i­cal and so­cial stan­dards be­fore they ever en­ter­tained the later con­cepts of right and wrong—good and bad.

• religion › great prophets were Amenemope, Okhban, Ikhnaton, and Moses
• religion › intellectual and moral but not overly spiritual

95:3.5Egypt was in­tel­lec­tual and moral but not overly spir­i­tual. In six thou­sand years only four great proph­ets arose among the Egyp­tians. Amen­emope they fol­lowed for a sea­son; Okhban they mur­dered; Ikh­na­ton they ac­cepted but half­heart­edly for one short gen­er­a­tion; Moses they re­jected. Again was it po­lit­i­cal rather than re­li­gious cir­cum­stances that made it easy for Abra­ham and, later on, for Joseph to ex­ert great in­flu­ence through­out Egypt in be­half of the Salem teach­ings of one God. But when the Salem mis­sion­ar­ies first en­tered Egypt, they en­coun­tered this highly eth­i­cal cul­ture of evo­lu­tion blended with the mod­i­fied moral stan­dards of Mes­o­po­ta­mian im­mi­grants. These early Nile val­ley teach­ers were the first to pro­claim con­science as the man­date of God, the voice of De­ity.

• migrations in Egypt by › Bedouin Semites entered as laborers; were enslaved

96:2.2Again and again the Ara­bian Semites fought their way into the north­ern Prom­ised Land, the land that “flowed with milk and honey,” but just as of­ten were they ejected by the bet­ter-or­ga­nized and more highly civ­i­lized north­ern Semites and Hit­tites. Later, dur­ing an un­usu­ally se­vere famine, these rov­ing Bed­ou­ins en­tered Egypt in large num­bers as con­tract la­bor­ers on the Egyp­tian pub­lic works, only to find them­selves un­der­go­ing the bit­ter ex­pe­ri­ence of en­slave­ment at the hard daily toil of the com­mon and down­trod­den la­bor­ers of the Nile val­ley.

• migrations in Egypt by › Bedouin Semites entered as laborers; were enslaved

96:2.4The Mel­chiz­e­dek teach­ing con­cern­ing El Elyon, the Most High, and the covenant of di­vine fa­vor through faith, had been largely for­got­ten by the time of the Egyp­tian en­slave­ment of the Semite peo­ples who were shortly to form the He­brew na­tion. But through­out this pe­riod of cap­tiv­ity these Ara­bian no­mads main­tained a lin­ger­ing tra­di­tional be­lief in Yah­weh as their racial de­ity.

• influence on Judaism

97:8.2In or­der to un­der­stand how the dev­as­tat­ing pres­sure and the in­es­cap­able co­er­cion of sec­u­lar his­tory so ter­ror­ized the cap­tive and alien-ruled Jews that they at­tempted the com­plete rewrit­ing and re­cast­ing of their his­tory, we should briefly sur­vey the rec­ord of their per­plex­ing na­tional ex­pe­ri­ence. It must be re­mem­bered that the Jews failed to evolve an ad­e­quate non­the­o­logic phi­los­o­phy of life. They strug­gled with their orig­i­nal and Egyp­tian con­cept of di­vine re­wards for righ­teous­ness cou­pled with dire pun­ish­ments for sin. The drama of Job was some­thing of a protest against this er­ro­neous phi­los­o­phy. The frank pes­simism of Ec­cle­si­astes was a worldly wise re­ac­tion to these overop­ti­mistic be­liefs in Prov­i­dence.

• political matters › E. put Judah under tribute

97:9.17By this time Yah­weh’s tem­ple at Shiloh was dis­cred­ited, and all the wor­ship of the na­tion was cen­tered at Je­bus in the gor­geous royal chapel. The north­ern king­dom re­turned more to the wor­ship of Elo­him. They en­joyed the fa­vor of the Pharaohs, who later en­slaved Ju­dah, putting the south­ern king­dom un­der trib­ute.

• political matters › Israel conspired with E. to refuse Assyria tribute

97:9.21But the north­ern king­dom did not van­ish from his­tory un­til the king of Is­rael con­spired with the king of Egypt and re­fused to pay fur­ther trib­ute to As­syria. Then be­gan the three years’ siege fol­lowed by the to­tal dis­per­sion of the north­ern king­dom. Ephraim (Is­rael) thus van­ished. Ju­dah—the Jews, the “rem­nant of Is­rael”—had be­gun the con­cen­tra­tion of land in the hands of the few, as Isa­iah said, “Adding house to house and field to field.” Pres­ently there was in Je­ru­sa­lem a tem­ple of Baal along­side the tem­ple of Yah­weh. This reign of ter­ror was ended by a mono­the­is­tic re­volt led by the boy king Joash, who cru­saded for Yah­weh for thirty-five years.

• political matters › ascendancy of E. brought deliverance to Judah

97:9.23The real un­do­ing of Ju­dah was ef­fected by a cor­rupt and rich ring of politi­cians op­er­at­ing un­der the rule of a boy king, Man­asseh. The chang­ing econ­omy fa­vored the re­turn of the wor­ship of Baal, whose pri­vate land deal­ings were against the ide­ol­ogy of Yah­weh. The fall of As­syria and the as­cen­dancy of Egypt brought de­liv­er­ance to Ju­dah for a time, and the coun­try folk took over. Un­der Josiah they de­stroyed the Je­ru­sa­lem ring of cor­rupt politi­cians.

• religion › cult of Osiris and Isis

98:4.2The three mys­tery cults which be­came most pop­u­lar were:

98:4.31. The Phry­gian cult of Cy­bele and her son At­tis.

98:4.42. The Egyp­tian cult of Osiris and his mother Isis.

98:4.53. The Ira­nian cult of the wor­ship of Mithras as the sav­ior and re­deemer of sin­ful man­kind.

98:4.6The Phry­gian and Egyp­tian mys­ter­ies taught that the di­vine son (re­spec­tively At­tis and Osiris) had ex­pe­ri­enced death and had been res­ur­rected by di­vine power, and fur­ther that all who were prop­erly ini­ti­ated into the mys­tery, and who rev­er­ently cel­e­brated the an­niver­sary of the god’s death and res­ur­rec­tion, would thereby be­come par­tak­ers of his di­vine na­ture and his im­mor­tal­ity.

98:4.7The Phry­gian cer­e­monies were im­pos­ing but de­grad­ing; their bloody fes­ti­vals in­di­cate how de­graded and prim­i­tive these Lev­an­tine mys­ter­ies be­came. The most holy day was Black Fri­day, the “day of blood,” com­mem­o­rat­ing the self-in­flicted death of At­tis. Af­ter three days of the cel­e­bra­tion of the sac­ri­fice and death of At­tis the fes­ti­val was turned to joy in honor of his res­ur­rec­tion.

98:4.8The rit­u­als of the wor­ship of Isis and Osiris were more re­fined and im­pres­sive than were those of the Phry­gian cult. This Egyp­tian rit­ual was built around the leg­end of the Nile god of old, a god who died and was res­ur­rected, which con­cept was de­rived from the ob­ser­va­tion of the an­nu­ally re­cur­ring stop­page of veg­e­ta­tion growth fol­lowed by the spring­time restora­tion of all liv­ing plants. The frenzy of the ob­ser­vance of these mys­tery cults and the or­gies of their cer­e­mo­ni­als, which were sup­posed to lead up to the “en­thu­si­asm” of the re­al­iza­tion of di­vin­ity, were some­times most re­volt­ing.

• religion › triad gods

104:0.3As a con­se­quence of these nat­u­ral as­so­ci­a­tions in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence, the triad made its ap­pear­ance in re­li­gion, and this long be­fore the Par­a­dise Trin­ity of De­i­ties, or even any of their rep­re­sen­ta­tives, had been re­vealed to man­kind. Later on, the Per­sians, Hin­dus, Greeks, Egyp­tians, Baby­lo­ni­ans, Ro­mans, and Scan­di­na­vians all had triad gods, but these were still not true trin­i­ties. Triad de­i­ties all had a nat­u­ral ori­gin and have ap­peared at one time or an­other among most of the in­tel­li­gent peo­ples of Uran­tia. Some­times the con­cept of an evo­lu­tion­ary triad has be­come mixed with that of a re­vealed Trin­ity; in these in­stances it is of­ten im­pos­si­ble to dis­tin­guish one from the other.

• religion › ka and ba concept of spirit and soul

111:0.5The in­hab­i­tants of the Nile val­ley be­lieved that each fa­vored in­di­vid­ual had be­stowed upon him at birth, or soon there­after, a pro­tect­ing spirit which they called the ka. They taught that this guard­ian spirit re­mained with the mor­tal sub­ject through­out life and passed be­fore him into the fu­ture es­tate. On the walls of a tem­ple at Luxor, where is de­picted the birth of Amen­hotep III, the lit­tle prince is pic­tured on the arm of the Nile god, and near him is an­other child, in ap­pear­ance iden­ti­cal with the prince, which is a sym­bol of that en­tity which the Egyp­tians called the ka. This sculp­ture was com­pleted in the fif­teenth cen­tury be­fore Christ.

• political matters › Rome pitted Syria against E.

121:2.8The se­cret of the sur­vival of Pales­tine, the king­dom of the Jews, as a semi-in­de­pen­dent state was wrapped up in the for­eign pol­icy of the Ro­man gov­ern­ment, which de­sired to main­tain con­trol of the Pales­tinian high­way of travel be­tween Syria and Egypt as well as the west­ern ter­mi­nals of the car­a­van routes be­tween the Ori­ent and the Oc­ci­dent. Rome did not wish any power to arise in the Lev­ant which might curb her fu­ture ex­pan­sion in these re­gions. The pol­icy of in­trigue which had for its ob­ject the pit­ting of Se­leu­cid Syria and Ptole­maic Egypt against each other ne­ces­si­tated fos­ter­ing Pales­tine as a sep­a­rate and in­de­pen­dent state. Ro­man pol­icy, the de­gen­er­a­tion of Egypt, and the pro­gres­sive weak­en­ing of the Se­leu­cids be­fore the ris­ing power of Parthia, ex­plain why it was that for sev­eral gen­er­a­tions a small and un­pow­er­ful group of Jews was able to main­tain its in­de­pen­dence against both Se­leu­ci­dae to the north and Ptolemies to the south. This for­tu­itous lib­erty and in­de­pen­dence of the po­lit­i­cal rule of sur­round­ing and more pow­er­ful peo­ples the Jews at­tributed to the fact that they were the “cho­sen peo­ple,” to the di­rect in­ter­po­si­tion of Yah­weh. Such an at­ti­tude of racial su­pe­ri­or­ity made it all the harder for them to en­dure Ro­man su­zer­ainty when it fi­nally fell upon their land. But even in that sad hour the Jews re­fused to learn that their world mis­sion was spir­i­tual, not po­lit­i­cal.

• baby Jesus taken to

122:10.4The mas­sacre of these in­fants took place about the mid­dle of Oc­to­ber, 6 B.C., when Je­sus was a lit­tle over one year of age. But there were be­liev­ers in the com­ing Mes­siah even among Herod’s court attachés, and one of these, learn­ing of the or­der to slaugh­ter the Beth­le­hem boy ba­bies, com­mu­ni­cated with Zach­a­rias, who in turn dis­patched a mes­sen­ger to Joseph; and the night be­fore the mas­sacre Joseph and Mary de­parted from Beth­le­hem with the babe for Alexan­dria in Egypt. In or­der to avoid at­tract­ing at­ten­tion, they jour­neyed alone to Egypt with Je­sus. They went to Alexan­dria on funds pro­vided by Zach­a­rias, and there Joseph worked at his trade while Mary and Je­sus lodged with well-to-do rel­a­tives of Joseph’s fam­ily. They so­journed in Alexan­dria two full years, not re­turn­ing to Beth­le­hem un­til af­ter the death of Herod.

• baby Jesus taken to

123:0.3Through­out the two years of their so­journ at Alexan­dria, Je­sus en­joyed good health and con­tin­ued to grow nor­mally. Aside from a few friends and rel­a­tives no one was told about Je­sus’ be­ing a “child of prom­ise.” One of Joseph’s rel­a­tives re­vealed this to a few friends in Mem­phis, de­scen­dants of the dis­tant Ikh­na­ton, and they, with a small group of Alexan­drian be­liev­ers, as­sem­bled at the pala­tial home of Joseph’s rel­a­tive-bene­fac­tor a short time be­fore the re­turn to Pales­tine to wish the Naz­a­reth fam­ily well and to pay their re­spects to the child. On this oc­ca­sion the as­sem­bled friends pre­sented Je­sus with a com­plete copy of the Greek trans­la­tion of the He­brew scrip­tures. But this copy of the Jew­ish sa­cred writ­ings was not placed in Joseph’s hands un­til both he and Mary had fi­nally de­clined the in­vi­ta­tion of their Mem­phis and Alexan­drian friends to re­main in Egypt. These be­liev­ers in­sisted that the child of des­tiny would be able to ex­ert a far greater world in­flu­ence as a res­i­dent of Alexan­dria than of any des­ig­nated place in Pales­tine. These per­sua­sions de­layed their de­par­ture for Pales­tine for some time af­ter they re­ceived the news of Herod’s death.

• baby Jesus taken to

123:0.6By the first of Oc­to­ber Joseph had con­vinced Mary and all their friends that it was best for them to re­turn to Naz­a­reth. Ac­cord­ingly, early in Oc­to­ber, 4 B.C., they de­parted from Beth­le­hem for Naz­a­reth, go­ing by way of Ly­dda and Scythopo­lis. They started out early one Sun­day morn­ing, Mary and the child rid­ing on their newly ac­quired beast of bur­den, while Joseph and five ac­com­pa­ny­ing kins­men pro­ceeded on foot; Joseph’s rel­a­tives re­fused to per­mit them to make the trip to Naz­a­reth alone. They feared to go to Gal­i­lee by Je­ru­sa­lem and the Jor­dan val­ley, and the west­ern routes were not al­to­gether safe for two lone trav­el­ers with a child of ten­der years.