e a fantastic head
with a slender curved snout, upright and square-cut ears; his cloven
tail rose stiffly behind him, springing from his loins like a fork. He
also assumed a human form, or retained the animal head only upon a man's
shoulders. He was felt to be cruel and treacherous, always ready to
shrivel up the harvest with his burning breath, and to smother Egypt
beneath a shroud of shifting sand. The contrast between this evil being
and the beneficent couple, Osiris and Isis, was striking. Nevertheless,
the theologians of the Delta soon assigned a common origin to these
rival divinities of Nile and desert, red land and black. Sibu had
begotten them, Nuit had given birth to them one after another when the
demiurge had separated her from her husband; and the days of their birth
were the days of creation.[*]

* According to one legend which is comparatively old in
origin, the fous* children of Nuit, and Horus her grandson,
were born one after another, each on one of the intercalary
days of the year. This legend was still current in the Greek
period.

At first each of them had kept to his own half of the world. Moreover
Sit, who had begun by living alone, had married, in order that he might
be inferior to Osiris in nothing.

[Illustration: 189.jpg NEPHTHYS, AS A WAILING WOMAN. 1 and THE GOD SIT,
FIGHTING. 2]

1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin from a painted wooden statuette
in my possession, from a funeral couch found at Akhmim. On
her head the goddess bears the hieroglyph for her name; she
is kneeling at the foot of the funeral couch of Osiris and
weeps for the dead god.

2 Bronze statuette of the XXth dynasty, encrusted with
gold, from the Hoffmann collection: drawn by Faucher-Gudin
from a photograph taken by Legrain in 1891. About the time
when the worship of Sit was proscribed, one of the Egyptian
owners of this little monument had endeavoured to alter its
character, and to transform it into a statuette of the god
Khnumu. He took out the upright ears, replacing them with
ram's horns, but made no other change. In the drawing I have
had the later addition of the curved horns removed, and
restored the upright ears, whose marks may still be seen
upon the sides of the head-dress.

As a matter of fact, his companion, Nephthys, did not manifest any great
activity, and was scarcely more than an artificial counterpart