eputation, and
endeavoured to disguise his name or true character as much
as possible.

v Azai is generally considered to be the Osiris of the
Fayum, but he was only transformed into Osiris, and that by
the most daring process of assimilation. His full name
defines him as _Osiri Azai hi halt To-sit (Osiris the
Brigand, who is in the Fayum)_, that is to say, as Sovku
identified with Osiris.

[Illustration: 138.jpg THE CAT-HEADED BAST. 4]

4 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a green enamelled figure in
my possession (Saite period).

We cannot always understand what led the inhabitants of each nome to
affect one animal rather than another. Why, towards Graeco-Roman times,
should they have worshipped the jackal, or even the dog, at Siut?[**]
How came Sit to be incarnate in a fennec, or in an imaginary
quadruped?[***] Occasionally, however, we can follow the train of
thought that determined their choice.

** Uapuaitu, the _guide of the celestial ways_, who must not
be confounded with Anubis of the Cynopolite nome of Upper
Egypt, was originally the feudal god of Siut. He guided
human souls to the paradise of the Oasis, and the sun upon
its southern path by day, and its northern path by night.

*** Champollion, Rosellini, Lepsius, have held that the
Typhonian animal was a purely imaginary one, and Wilkinson
says that the Egyptians themselves admitted its unreality by
representing it along with other fantastic beasts. This
would rather tend to show that they believed in its actual
existence (cf. p. 112 of this History). Plbyte thinks that
it may be a degenerated form of the figure of the ass or
oryx.

The habit of certain monkeys in assembling as it were in full court,
and chattering noisily a little before sunrise and sunset, would almost
justify the as yet uncivilized Egyptians in entrusting cynocephali with
the charge of hailing the god morning and evening as he appeared in the
east, or passed away in the west.

[Illustration: 139.jpg TWO IMAGES]

If Ra was held to be a grasshopper under the Old Empire, it was because
he flew far up in the sky like the clouds of locusts driven from Central
Africa which suddenly fall upon the fields and ravage them. Most of the
Nile-gods, Khnumu, Osiris, Harshafitu, were incarnate in the form of a
ram or of a buck. Does not the masculine vigour and procreative rag