rdered Thoth to have a winged disk, with a serpent on each side of
it, placed in every temple in Egypt in which he (_i.e._ Ra) was
worshipped, so that it might act as a protector of the building, and
drive away any and every fiend and devil that might wish to attack it.
This is the reason why we find the winged disk, with a serpent on each
side of it, above the doors of temples and religious buildings
throughout the length and breadth of Egypt.

In many places in the text that contains the above Legend there are
short passages in which attempts are made to explain the origins of the
names of certain towns and gods. All these are interpolations in the
narrative made by scribes at a late period of Egyptian history. As it
would be quite useless to reproduce them without many explanatory notes,
for which there is no room in this little book, they have been omitted.

THE LEGEND OF KHNEMU AND A SEVEN YEARS' FAMINE

This Legend is cut in hieroglyphs on a large rounded block of granite,
which stands on the south-east portion of Sahal, a little island in the
First Cataract in Upper Egypt, two or three miles to the south of the
modern town of Aswan, the ancient Syene. The form of the Legend, and the
shapes of the hieroglyphs, and the late spelling of the words, prove
that the inscription is the work of the Ptolemaic Period, though it is
possible that the Legend in its simplest form is as old as the period to
which it is ascribed in the Sahal text, namely, the third dynasty, about
4100 B.C. The subject of the Legend is a terrible famine, which lasted
for seven years, in the reign of King Tcheser, and which recalls the
seven years' famine that took place in Egypt when Joseph was there. This
famine was believed to have been caused by the king's neglect to worship
properly the god Khnemu, who was supposed to control the springs of the
Nile, which were asserted by the sages to be situated between two great
rocks on the Island of Elephantine. The Legend sets forth that the
Viceroy of Nubia, in the reign of Tcheser, was a nobleman called Meter,
who was also the overseer of all the temple properties in the South. His
residence was in Abu, or Elephantine, and in the eighteenth year of his
reign the king sent him a despatch in which it was written thus: "This
is to inform thee that misery hath laid hold upon me as I sit upon the
great throne, and I grieve for those who dwell in the Great House.[1] My
heart is grievously affl