natural objects
or things manufactured--such as statues of stone, metal, or wood.[**]
Several of the gods were incarnate in rams: Osiris at Mendes, Harshafitu
at Heracleopolis, Khnumu at Elephantine. Living rams were kept in their
temples, and allowed to gratify any fancy that came into their
animal brains. Other gods entered into bulls: Ra at Heliopolis, and,
subsequently, Phtah at Memphis, Minu at Thebes, and Montu at Hermonthis.
They indicated beforehand by certain marks such beasts as they intended
to animate by. their doubles, and he who had learnt to recognize these
signs was at no loss to find a living god when the time came for
seeking one and presenting it to the adoration of worshippers in the
temple.[***]

* Thus at Denderah, it is said that the soul of Hathor
likes to leave heaven "in the form of a human-headed
sparrow-hawk of lapis-lazuli, accompanied by her divine
cycle, to come and unite herself to the statue." "Other
instances," adds Mariette, "would seem to justify us in
thinking that the Egyptians accorded a certain kind of life
to the statues and images which they made, and believed
(especially in connection with tombs) that the spirit
haunted images of itself."

** Maspero, _Etudes de Mythologie et l'Archeologie
Egyptiennes_, vol. i. p. 77, et seq.; _Archeologie
Egyptienne_, pp. 106, 107; English edition, pp. 105, 106.
This notion of actuated statues seemed so strange and so
unworthy of the wisdom of the Egyptians that Egyptologists
of the rank of M. de Rouge have taken in an abstract and
metaphorical sense expressions referring to the automatic
movements of divine images.

*** The bulls of Ra and of Phtah, the Mnevis and the Hapis,
are known to us from classic writers. The bull of Minu at
Thebes may be seen in the procession of the god as
represented on monuments of Ramses II. and Ramses III. Bakhu
(called Bakis by the Greeks), the bull of Hermonthis, is
somewhat rare, and mainly represented upon a few later
stelae in the Gizeh Museum; it is chiefly known from the
texts. The particular signs distinguishing each of these
sacred animals have been determined both on the authority of
ancient writers, and from examination of the figured
monuments; the arrangement and outlines of some of the black
markings of the Hapis are clearly shown in the illustrat