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the foundation of our religion, are distinctly transmitted from classic 
mythology, and in all probability they passed from Egypt to Greece and 
Rome. With regard to the word Hesperides itself, many learned men derive 
it from the Hebrew word ets peri — a tree of fruit. The serpent, according to 
Apollonius, is called Ladon, which learned men derive from El A don , the 
God of Eden, attributing to the serpent divine power, and making it a god. 
These matters are important. I do not know whether Mr. Cooper would 
tell us that the mythology of Greece and Rome was mainly derived from 
an Egyptian source. 
Mr. Cooper. — Oh no, not in your sense. No doubt Egypt is the mother 
of those mythologies, but she has very bad daughters. 
Mr. Graham. — Just so. But in these cases the mythology of Greece and 
Rome is more distinct and illustrative, even than that of ancient Egypt. The 
great facts of the Fall and of the Redemption come out most distinctly in the 
mythology of Greece and Rome. 
Mr. Cooper. — Far less so as matters of doctrine, to my belief, than they 
do in Egypt ; the great distinction between physical and moral evil, and 
the sense of human responsibility prevailing far more largely in the Egyptian 
faith than it did either in Hellene or Latin theology. Plato doubted of what 
God was made, and Pliny doubted if there were a Supreme Deity at all. 
The great men were philosophical sensualists, and the people unreflecting 
fetischists. 
Mr. J. Allen. — You spoke of the Egyptian mythology being perfect 4,000 
years before Christ. I suppose you mean according to the chronology of the 
Egyptians themselves. 
Mr. Cooper. — Chronologists differ very much. There are those who, like 
Sharpe, fix the initial date at about 2,200 before Christ, and others, like 
Bunsen and Lenormant, who throw it back to 5,000 years ; but those are 
mere theories until we get more astronomical facts. We have got some 
atronomical facts however ; — in the reign of Rameses III. eclipses and 
stellar phenomena are recorded at the temple of Medinet Habou, which, some 
say, could only have occurred 4,000 or 5,000 years ago. But then a great 
deal depends upon how far the inscriptions can be chronologically arranged. 
With regard to the Bible, the Pentateuch is full of Egypt. I think that it was 
written in the Egyptian alphabet, for a people saturated with the symbolism 
and the culture of Egypt ; and I consider that the Hebrew characters did not 
exist at that time, or for centuries afterwards. If this be so, when Moses 
wrote the early sacred books the writing must have been ideographic or in 
pictorial hieroglyphic characters; and in all probability he followed out 
the plan of the Egyptians, conveying partly by symbols, partly by signs, 
and partly by a mixture of both, the doctrines which were afterwards 
put into good Hebrew by Ezra and the later priests.* That does not 
* The present Hebrew character was introduced to the Jews from Chaldaea, 
probably about the time of the Babylonian captivity ; but that is no reason 
