rink, and rest for the dead, has still kept
its hold upon the feelings of the people in spite of the teachings of
Islam.

{20}

CHAPTER IV

ANIMAL WORSHIP

The worship of animals has been known in many countries; but in Egypt
it was maintained to a later pitch of civilisation than elsewhere, and
the mixture of such a primitive system with more elevated beliefs
seemed as strange to the Greek as it does to us. The original motive
was a kinship of animals with man, much like that underlying the system
of totems. Each place or tribe had its sacred species that was linked
with the tribe; the life of the species was carefully preserved,
excepting in the one example selected for worship, which after a given
time was killed and sacramentally eaten by the tribe. This was
certainly the case with the bull at Memphis and the ram at Thebes.
That it was the whole species that was sacred, at one place or another,
is shown by the penalties for killing any animal of the species, by the
wholesale burial and even mummifying of every example, and by the
plural form of {21} the names of the gods later connected with the
animals, _Heru_, hawks, _Khnumu_, rams, etc.

In the prehistoric times the serpent was sacred; figures of the coiled
serpent were hung up in the house and worn as an amulet; similarly in
historic times a figure of the agathodemon serpent was placed in a
temple of Amenhotep III at Benha. In the first dynasty the serpent was
figured in pottery, as a fender round the hearth. The hawk also
appears in many predynastic figures, large and small, both worn on the
person and carried as standards. The lion is found both in life-size
temple figures, lesser objects of worship, and personal amulets. The
scorpion was similarly honoured in the prehistoric ages.

It is difficult to separate now between animals which were worshipped
quite independently, and those which were associated as emblems of
anthropomorphic gods. Probably we shall be right in regarding both
classes of animals as having been sacred at a remote time, and the
connection with the human form as being subsequent. The ideas
connected with the animals were those of their most prominent
characteristics; hence it appears that it was for the sake of the
character that each animal was worshipped, and not because of any
fortuitous association with a tribe.

{22}

The baboon was regarded as the emblem of Tahuti, the god of wisdom; the
serious expression a