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(2) They were unsympathetic towards it and for the same reason destroyed it by fire.

(3) Clearly, the Temple of Delphi was a branch of the Egyptian Mystery System, projected in Greece. Sandford's Mediterranean World p. 135; 139.

John Kendrick's Ancient Egypt Bk. II. P. 363.

3. The abolition of Greek Philosophy together with the Egyptian Mysteries.

From the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great, the Greeks, who were always attracted by the mysterious worship of the Nile-land, began to imitate the Egyptian religion in its entirety; and during the Roman occupation, the Egyptian religion spread not only to Italy: but throughout the Roman Empire, including .

This assimilation of the Egyptian religion was confined to the Gods of the Osirian cycle and the Graeco-Egyptian Serapis, and aimed at a close imitation of the ancient traditions of the Nile-land. Owing to the splendour of architecture, the hieroglyphs of the temples, the obelisks and sphinxes before the shrines, the linen vestments and the shaven heads and faces of the priests, the endless and obscure ritual, filled the Greeks with awe, and wonderful mysteries were consequently believed to have underlain these incomprehensibles, and the Egyptian religion stood in the way of the rising Christianity.

The success of the Egyptian religion was due no doubt, on the one hand to its conservatism; while on the other to the shadowy philosophical abstractions which constituted Graeco-Roman religion, so that the staunch faith of the Egyptians, together with their mysterious forms of worship, led to the universal conviction among the Ancients, that Egypt was not only the Holy Land but the Holiest of lands or countries, and that indeed, the Gods dwelt there.

The Nile became a centre for pilgrimages in the ancient world, and the pilgrims who went there and experienced the marvellous revelations and spiritual blessings which it afforded

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