There may perhaps be a single exception to this statement.  According to Brugsch[194] and other writers, the Papyrus buried with the mummy contained the doctrine of the Divine unity.  The name of God was not given, but instead the words NUK PU NUK, “I am the I am,” corresponding to the name given in Exodus iii. 14, Jahveh (in a corrupt form Jehovah).  This name, Jahveh, has the same meaning with the Egyptian Nuk pu Nuk, “I am the I am.”  At least so say Egyptologists.  If this is so, the coincidence is certainly very striking.

That some of the ritualism to which the Jews were accustomed in Egypt should have been imported into their new ceremonial, is quite in accordance with human nature.  Christianity, also, has taken up many of the customs of heathenism.[195] The rite of circumcision was probably adopted by the Jews from the Egyptians, who received it from the natives of Africa.  Livingstone has found it among the tribes south of the Zambesi, and thinks this custom there cannot be traced to any Mohammedan source.  Prichard believes it, in Egypt, to have been a relic of ancient African customs.  It still exists in Ethiopia and Abyssinia.  In Egypt it existed far earlier than the time of Abraham, as appears by ancient mummies.  Wilkinson affirms it to have been “as early as the fourth dynasty, and probably earlier, long before the time of Abraham.”  Herodotus tells us that the custom existed from the earliest times among the Egyptians and Ethiopians, and was adopted from them by the Syrians of Palestine.  Those who regard this rite as instituted by a Divine command may still believe that it already existed among the Jews, just as baptism existed among them before Jesus commanded his disciples to baptize.  Both in Egypt and among the Jews it was connected with a feeling of superiority.  The circumcised were distinguished from others by a higher religious position.  It is difficult to trace the origin of sentiments so alien to our own ways of thought; but the hygienic explanation seems hardly adequate.  It may have been a sign of the devotion of the generative power to the service of God, and have been the first step out of the untamed license of the passions, among the Africans.

It has been supposed that the figure of the Cherubim among the Jews was derived from that of the Sphinx.  There were three kinds of Sphinxes in Egypt,—­the andro-sphinx, with the head of a man and the body of a lion; the crio-sphinx, with the head of a ram and the body of a lion; and the hieraco-sphinx, with the head of a hawk and a lion’s body.  The first was a symbol of the union of wisdom and strength.  The Sphinx was the solemn sentinel, placed to watch the temple and the tomb, as the Cherubim watched the gates of Paradise after the expulsion of Adam.  In the Cherubim were joined portions of the figure of a man with those of the lion, the ox, and the eagle.  In the Temple the Cherubim spread their wings above the ark; and Wilkinson gives a picture from the Egyptian tombs of two kneeling figures with wings spread above the scarabaeus.  The Persians and the Greeks had similar symbolic figures, meant to represent the various powers of these separate creatures combined in one being; but the Hebrew figure was probably imported from Egypt.