The Instructor 3.2.4

It is not, then, the appearance of the outer man but the soul that must be adorned with the ornament of goodness; and one might say the flesh too, with the adornment of self-control. Those women who adorn the surface and leave the depths barren unwittingly adorn themselves like the temples of the Egyptians. Among them, gateways and forecourts are elaborately built, and groves and sacred meadows; the courts are crowned with many columns; the walls gleam with foreign stones and lack nothing of artful painting; the temples glitter with gold and silver and electrum, and flash, varied with little stones from India and Ethiopia; and the inner shrines are shaded with gold-embroidered curtains. But if you go into the depth of the enclosure, hurrying to see the higher being, and look for the statue that dwells in the temple, a shrine-bearer or some other of those who perform the rites in the precinct, looking solemn and singing a paean in the Egyptian tongue, draws back the curtain a little as if to show the god, and gives us a broad laugh at the object of worship. For the god we hurried to will not be found within, but a cat or a crocodile or a native snake or some such beast, unworthy of the temple, fit rather for a hole or a den or mud. The god of the Egyptians appears on a purple couch