it with the Bonu, which is either a heron or a lapwing.

[Illustration: 194.jpg THE PLAIN AND MOUNDS OF HELIOPOLIS FIFTY YEARS
AGO.2]

2 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a water-colour published by
Lepsius, _Denkm_., i. 56. The view is taken from the midst
of the ruins at the foot of the obelisk of Usirtasen. A
little stream runs in the foreground, and passes through a
muddy pool; to right and left are mounds of ruins, which
were then considerable, but have since been partially razed.
In the distance Cairo rises against the south-west.

In the beginning, Ra was the sun itself, whose fires appear to be
lighted every morning in the east and to be extinguished at evening
in the west; and to the people such he always remained. Among the
theologians there was considerable difference of opinion on the point.
Some held the disk of the sun to be the body which the god assumes when
presenting himself for the adoration of his worshippers. Others affirmed
that it rather represented his active and radiant soul. Finally, there
were many who defined it as one of his forms of being--_khopriu_--one of
his self-manifestations, without presuming to decide whether it was his
body or his soul which he deigned to reveal to human eyes; but whether
soul or body, all agreed that the sun's disk had existed in the Nu
before creation. But how could it have lain beneath the primordial ocean
without either drying up the waters or being extinguished by them? At
this stage the identification of Ra with Horus and his right eye served
the purpose of the theologians admirably: the god needed only to have
closed his eyelid in order to prevent his fires from coming in contact
with the water.[*]

* This is clearly implied in the expression so often used by
the sacred writers of Ancient Egypt in reference to the
appearance of the sun and his first act at the time of
creation: "_Thou openest the two eyes_, and earth is flooded
with rays of light."

He was also said to have shut up his disk within a lotus-bud, whose
folded petals had safely protected it. The flower had opened on the
morning of the first day, and from it the god had sprung suddenly as
a child wearing the solar disk upon his head. But all theories led the
theologians to distinguish two periods, and as it were two beings in
the existence of supreme deity: a pre-mundane sun lying inert within the
bosom of the dark waters, and ou