uits, and
thought that they could call down the blessing of heaven upon their
fields by gorging the snake with offerings. Everywhere on the confines
of cultivated ground, and even at some distance from the valley, are
fine single sycamores, flourishing as though by miracle amid the sand.

[Illustration: 171.jpg THE PEASANT'S OFFERING TO THE SYCAMORE. 1]

1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin from a scene in the tomb of
Khopirkerisonbu. The sacred sycamore here stands at the end
of a field of corn, and would seem to extend its protection
to the harvest.

Their fresh greenness is in sharp contrast with the surrounding
fawn-coloured landscape, and their thick foliage defies the midday sun
even in summer. But, on examining the ground in which they grow, we soon
find that they drink from water which has infiltrated from the Nile, and
whose existence is in nowise betrayed upon the surface of the soil. They
stand as it were with their feet in the river, though no one about them
suspects it. Egyptians of all ranks counted them divine and habitually
worshipped them,[**] making them offerings of figs, grapes, cucumbers,
vegetables, and water in porous jars daily replenished by good and
charitable people.

** Maspero, _Etudes de Mythologie et d'Archeologie
Egyptiennes_, vol. ii. pp. 224--227. They were represented
as animated by spirits concealed within them, but which
could manifest themselves on occasion. At such times the
head or whole body of the spirit of a tree would emerge from
its trunk, and when it returned to its hiding-place the
trunk reabsorbed it, or _ate_ it again, according to the
Egyptian expression, which I have already had occasion to
quote above; see p. 110, note 3.

Passers-by drank of the water, and requited the unexpected benefit with
a short prayer. There were several such trees in the Memphite nome, and
in the Letopolite nome from Dashur to Gizeh, inhabited, as every one
knew, by detached doubles of Nuit and Hathor. These combined districts
were known as the "Land of the Sycamore," a name afterwards extended
to the city of Memphis; and their sacred trees are worshipped at the
present day both by Mussulman and Christian fellahin.[*]

* The tree at Matarieh, commonly called the _Tree of the
Virgin_, seems to me to be the successor of a sacred tree of
Heliopolis in which a goddess, perhaps Hathor, was
worshipped.

The most famo