gypt, who personified, as elsewhere, the totemic divinity
of tribe or district. Postponing further discussion of the number 42,
associated with nomes and gods, let us examine further data concerning the
territorial organization of ancient Egypt.

Dr. Wallis Budge tells us that, "during the rule of the Greeks (B.C.
342-332), Egypt was divided into three parts: Upper, Central and Lower
Egypt. Central Egypt consisted of seven nomes, and was called Heptanomis"
(Nile, p. 28). The seven-storied pyramid of Sakkarah and the employment of
the signs expressing "three regions" and "four regions or lands," to
signify the whole land or universe, prove that, long before Greek rule,
the ancient Egyptians, like the Babylonians, employed the heptameredal
system. Thus, according to Herodotus, "There are seven classes of
Egyptians, and of these some are called priests, others warriors, others
herdsmen, others swineherds, others tradesmen, others interpreters and
lastly pilots; such are the classes of Egyptians; they take their names
from the employments they exercise" (Euterpe II, 164). Passages from Prof.
Flinders Petrie's History of Egypt (Vol. II, pp. 156 and 185) afford,
moreover, instances of the conquest of a heptarchic government by an
Egyptian king and the employment, in about B.C. 1500, of the number seven,
as a mystic or sacred number, in a letter from a Syrian prince to the
Egyptian king.

In the record of the triumphal return of Aa-kheperu-ra, the seventh king
of the eighteenth dynasty (B.C. 1449-1423), it is said: "His Majesty
returned in joy of heart to his father Amen; his own hand, with his mace,
had struck down the seven chiefs, which were of the territory of Pakhsi
(near Aleppo)".... "Six of these enemies were hanged in front of the walls
of Thebes; the seventh [probably the chief of chiefs], was brought to
Nubin and was hanged on the wall of the town of Napata, to show forth for
all time the victories of the king among all people of the negro land,
inasmuch as he had taken possession of the nations of the south and he had
bound the nations of the north and the ends of the whole extent of the
earth on which the sun rises and sets, without finding any opposition,
according to the command of his father Amen-ra of Thebes." A letter from a
Syrian prince to Amenhotep III (B.C. 1414-1379), opens thus: "To the king,
my master, my god, my sun, this is said: Yatibiri, the servant, the dust
of thy feet, at the feet of my king, my