History Online - Chronology

For example, the principal holy shrine of Mithras had been in the Vatican in the place of today's San Pietro. Mithras-Attis was then called "father's father". The high priest serving this god was also called "father" (father's father) just as the Roman pope is still called the "Holy Father" [82]. Mithraism as well as Christianity accepts the tenet of purgatory, use of a holy-water basin, and the ritual of crossing oneself. The rituals of public service, Mass, host, wafer of consecration, communion bread, and so forth, are perfectly the same [82]. Mithras' and Christian cults are practically indistinguishable, and the difference between them in hundreds of years is noted only by traditional chronology. It turns out that the mixed cult of the Egyptian goddess Isis, whose worshippers had matins, liturgies, and vespers surprisingly similar to the Catholic and even partly Orthodox religious services, is nearly coincident with the medieval Christian cult [82] .

Without putting traditional chronology to doubt, which has moved the. Isis-Osiris-Serapis cult into hoary antiquity, the historian of religions N. V. Rumyantsev had to declare that
"... this coincidence of prayers of the Egyptian religious service with Christian liturgical prayers is too complete and striking to be accidental" ([S3]).

The "land of crosses" is traditionally believed to be ancient Egypt. The same Christian crosses were spread in ancient India, Mesopotamia, and Persia. A great deal of the Egyptian images of gods contained the anagram of Christ ' [83. Summarizing his study, Rumyantsev wrote:
"A series of suffering, dying and resurrecting gods of the ancient world have passed before us; we saw their myths, grew familiar with the holidays, rituals, and so forth, devoted to them. In spite of the difference in their names, myths, birthplaces or historical arena, it can still be felt, even against one's own will, that they all have something in common. Moreover, the people of antiquity noticed this fact, too.... In fact, if we look at the recent centuries before and after the so-called Nativity, then we shall notice a curious thing. All the divinities listed above have been closely linked with everything related to them, even sometimes indistinguishably. Osiris, Tanunuz, Attis, Dionysius, and others, formed some unique, common, and conjoint image, thus creating a certain syncretic (mixed) divinity almost undividedly reigning over the whole vast territory of the Roman state.... The divinities, in fact, turned into one Savior with many names. This tight conjunction occurred especially in the epoch of the Roman Empire and, in particular, in Rome itself" ([S3]).

Egyptian chronology yawns with enormous gaps and is a set of separate fragments quite unrelated to each other or even completely independent. As in the history of Europe, the "restoration" effect can be made manifest in Egyptian history during the Saite restoration when the cults, customs, written language, and so on, forgotten long ago were revived again. Being intimately related with Biblical and Roman chronology, the whole of Egyptian history also undergoes "glueing together" (of "different" Egyptian epochs) and "compression". As a result, the ancient and medieval Egyptian history became shorter, similarly to the history of Europe (see the GCD). The forward shift is consistent with the results obtained even by Isaac Newton while investigating the chronology of Egypt.