Lecture VIII. The Sacred Books. 187
are reproduced in Gnosticism. Abraxas and the other curiously
composite creatures engraved on Gnostic gems have all sprung
from the Books of Am Duat and the Gates, along with the
allegorical meanings that were read into them. However much
the solar school of theology may have been for the old religion of
Egypt a teaching of death, in the Gnosticism of the first Christian
centuries it was born anew.
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