e appeased, and
it is not only the natives who give themselves up to these
superstitious practices. Part of the grounds belonging to
the Karnak hotel at Luxor having been carried away during
the autumn of 1884, the manager, a Greek, made the customary
offerings to the serpent of the Nile.

** The character of Apopi and of his struggle with the sun
was, from the first, excellently defined by Champollion as
representing the conflict of darkness with light.
Occasionally, but very rarely, Apopi seems to win, and his
triumph over Ra furnishes one explanation of a solar
eclipse. A similar explanation is common to many races. In
one very ancient form of the Egyptian legend, the sun is
represented by a wild ass running round the world along the
sides of the mountains that uphold the sky, and the serpent
which attacks it is called _Haiu_.

Apart from these temporary eclipses, which no one could foretell, the
Sun-King steadily followed his course round the world, according to laws
which even his will could not change. Day after day he made his oblique
ascent from east to south, thence to descend obliquely towards the west.
During the summer months the obliquity of his course diminished, and
he came closer to Egypt; during the winter it increased, and he went
farther away. This double movement recurred with such regularity from
equinox to solstice, and from solstice to equinox, that the day of
the god's departure and the day of his return could be confidently
predicted. The Egyptians explained this phenomenon according to their
conceptions of the nature of the world. The solar bark always kept close
to that bank of the celestial river which was nearest to men; and when
the river overflowed at the annual inundation, the sun was carried along
with it outside the regular bed of the stream, and brought yet closer
to Egypt. As the inundation abated, the bark descended and receded, its
greatest distance from earth corresponding with the lowest level of the
waters. It was again brought back to us by the rising strength of the
next flood; and, as this phenomenon was yearly repeated, the periodicity
of the sun's oblique movements was regarded as the necessary consequence
of the periodic movements of the celestial Nile.

The same stream also carried a whole crowd of gods, whose existence was
revealed at night only to the inhabitants of earth. At an interval of
t