The Egyptians had in their temples a special interior sanctuary, more holy than the rest.  So the Jews had their Holy of Holies, into which only the high-priest went, separated by a veil from the other parts of the Temple.  The Jews were commanded on the Day of Atonement to provide a scapegoat, to carry away the sins of the people, and the high-priest was to lay his hands on the head of the goat and confess the national sins, “putting them upon the head of the goat” (Lev. xvi. 21, 22), and it was said that “the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a land not inhabited.”  So, among the Egyptians, whenever a victim was offered, a prayer was repeated over its head, “that if any calamity were about to befall either the sacrifices or the land of Egypt, it might be averted on this head."[196]

Such facts as these make it highly probable that Moses allowed in his ritual many ceremonies borrowed from the Egyptian worship.

That Egyptian Christianity had a great influence on the development of the system of Christian doctrine is not improbable.[197] The religion of ancient Egypt was very tenacious and not easily effaced.  Successive waves of Syrian, Persian, Greek, and Roman conquest rolled over the land, scarcely producing any change in her religion or worship.  Christianity conquered Egypt, but was itself deeply tinged with the faith of the conquered.  Many customs found in Christendom may be traced back to Egypt.  The Egyptian at his marriage put a gold ring on his wife’s finger, as a token that he intrusted her with all his property, just as in the Church of England service the bridegroom does the same, saying, “With all my worldly goods I thee endow.”  Clemens tells us that this custom was derived by the Christians from the Egyptians.  The priests at Philae threw a piece of gold into the Nile once a year, as the Venetian Doge did into the Adriatic.  The Feast of Candles at Sais is still marked in the Christian calendar as Candlemas Day.  The Catholic priest shaves his head as the Egyptian priest did before him.  The Episcopal minister’s linen surplice for reading the Liturgy is taken from the dress of obligation, made of linen, worn by the priest in Egypt.  Two thousand years before the Pope assumed to hold the keys, there was an Egyptian priest at Thebes with the title of “Keeper of the two doors of Heaven."[198]

In the space which we have here at command we are unable to examine the question of doctrinal influences from Egypt upon orthodox Christianity.  Four doctrines, however, are stated by the learned Egyptologist, Samuel Sharpe, to be common to Egyptian mythology and church orthodoxy.  They are these:—­

   1.  That the creation and government of the world is not the work of one
   simple and undivided Being, but of one God made up of several persons. 
   This is the doctrine of plural unity.

   2.  That salvation cannot be expected from the justice or mercy of the
   Supreme Judge, unless an atoning sacrifice is made to him by a divine
   being.