on, and the small ones at his supper; the old were
rendered more tender by roasting.

[Illustration: 131.jpg AMON-RA, AS MINU OF COPTOS, AND INVESTED WITH HIS
EMBLEMS. 1]

1 Scene on the north wall of the Hypostyle Hall at Karnak;
drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Insinger, taken in
1882. The king, Seti I., is presenting bouquets of leaves to
Amon-Minu. Behind the god stands Isis (of Coptos), sceptre
and _crux ansata_ in hand.

As each god was assimilated by him, its most precious virtues were
transfused into himself; by the wisdom of the old was his wisdom
strengthened, the youth of the young repaired the daily waste of his
own youth, and all their fires, as they penetrated his being, served to
maintain the perpetual splendour of his light.

The nome gods who presided over the destinies of Egyptian cities, and
formed a true feudal system of divinities, belonged to one or other of
these natural categories. In vain do they present themselves under
the most shifting aspects and the most deceptive attributes; in vain
disguise themselves with the utmost care; a closer examination generally
discloses the principal features of their original physiognomies. Osiris
of the Delta, Khuumu of the Cataract, Harshafitu of Heracleopolis, were
each of them, incarnations of the fertilizing and life-sustaining Nile.
Wherever there is some important change in the river, there they are
more especially installed and worshipped: Khnumu at the place of its
entering into Egypt, and again at the town of Haurit, near the point
where a great arm branches off from the Eastern stream to flow towards
the Libyan hills and form the Bahr-Yusuf: Harshafitu at the gorges of
the Fayum, where the Bahr-Yusuf leaves the valley; and, finally, Osiris
at Mendes and at Busiris, towards the mouth of the middle branch, which
was held to be the true Nile by the people of the land. Isis of Buto
denoted the black vegetable mould of the valley, the distinctive soil of
Egypt annually covered and fertilized by the inundation.[*]

* In the case of Isis, as in that of Osiris, we must mark
the original character; and note her characteristics as
goddess of the Delta before she had become a multiple and
contradictory personality through being confounded with
other divinities.

But the earth in general, as distinguished from the sky--the earth with
its continents, its seas, its alternation of barren deserts and fer