four
thick locks of hair; these were the pillars which upbore the firmament
and prevented its falling into ruin. A no less ancient tradition
disregarded as fabulous all tales told of the sparrow-hawk, or of the
face, and taught that heaven and earth are wedded gods, Sibu, and Nuit,
from whose marriage came forth all that has been, all that is, and all
that shall be.

[Illustration: 115.jpg NUIT THE STARRY ONE. 1]

1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a painted coffin of the XXIth
dynasty in Leyden.

Most people invested them with human form, and represented the earth-god
Sibu as extended beneath Nuit the Starry One; the goddess stretched out
her arms, stretched out her slender legs, stretched out her body above
the clouds, and her dishevelled head drooped westward. But there were
also many who believed that Sibu was concealed under the form of a
colossal gander, whose mate once laid the Sun Egg, and perhaps still
laid it daily. From the piercing cries wherewith he congratulated her,
and announced the good news to all who cared to hear it--after the
manner of his kind--he had received the flattering epithet of _Ngagu
oiru_, the Great Cack-ler. Other versions repudiated the goose in favour
of a vigorous bull, the father of gods and men, whose companion was a
cow, a large-eyed Hathor, of beautiful countenance. The head of the
good beast rises into the heavens, the mysterious waters which cover
the world flow along her spine; the star-covered underside of her body,
which we call the firmament, is visible to the inhabitants of earth, and
her four legs are the four pillars standing at the four cardinal points
of the world.

[Illustration: 116.jpg THE GOOSE-GOD FACING THE CAT-GODDESS, THE LADY OF
HEAVEN. 1]

1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a stella in the museum of
Gizeh. This is not the goose of Sibu, but the goose of Amon,
which was nurtured in the temple of Karnak, and was called
Smonu. Pacing it is the cat of Maut, the wife of Amon. Amon,
originally an earth-god, was, as we see, confounded with
Sibu, and thus naturally appropriated that deity's form of a
goose.

The planets, and especially the sun, varied in form and nature according
to the prevailing conception of the heavens. The fiery disk _Atonu_, by
which the sun revealed himself to men, was a living god, called Ra, as
was also the planet itself.[*] Where the sky was regarded as Horus, Ra
formed the right eye of the divi