by Tanis
in the north than by Ombos in the south. The effect of the localization
of gods in many different places was to give them a double aspect; so,
for instance, Khnum the god of Elephantine could in one minute be
regarded as identical with Khnum the god of Esna, while in the next
minute and without any conscious sense of contradiction the two might be
looked upon as entirely separate beings. In order that there might be no
ambiguity as to what divinity was meant, it became usual, in speaking of
any local deity, to specify the place of which he was "lord." The
tendency to create new forms of a god by instituting his worship in new
local centres persisted throughout the whole course of Egyptian history,
unhindered by the opposite tendency which made national out of local
gods. Some of the cosmic gods, like the sun-god Re of Heliopolis and of
Hermonthis, early acquired a local in addition to their cosmic aspect.

In the innermost principle of their existence, as patrons and protectors
of restricted communities, the primitive tribal gods did not differ from
one another. But externally they were distinguishable by the various
shapes that their worshippers ascribed to them; and there can be little
doubt that even in the beginning each had his own special attributes and
particular mythical traits. These, however, may have borne little
resemblance to the later conceptions of the same gods with which we are
made familiar by the Pyramid texts. Thus we have no means of
ascertaining what the earliest people of Sais thought about their
goddess Neith, though her fetish would seem to point to her warlike
nature. Nor are we much wiser in respect of those primitive tribal gods
that are represented on the oldest monuments in animal form. For though
we may be sure that the shape of an animal was that in which these gods
were literally visible to their worshippers, yet it is impossible to
tell whether some one living animal was chosen to be the earthly
tenement of the deity, or whether he revealed himself in every
individual of a species, or whether merely the cult-image was roughly
hewn into the shape of an animal. Not too much weight must be attached
to later evidence on this point; for the New Kingdom and still more the
Graeco-Roman period witnessed a strange recrudescence of supposed
primitive cults, to which they gave a form that may or may not have been
historically exact. In some places whole classes of animals came to be
deeme