to a human body; the only converse instance of a human head on an
animal body--the sphinxes--represented the king and not a god.
Possibly the combination arose from priests wearing the heads of
animals when personating the god, as the high priest wore the ram's
skin when personating Amon. But when we notice the frequent
combinations and love of symbolism, shown upon the early carvings, the
union of the ancient sacred animal with the human form is quite in
keeping with the views and feelings of the primitive Egyptians. Many
of these composite gods never emerged from the animal connection, and
these we must {31} regard as belonging to the earlier stage of theology.

+Seker+ was a Memphite god of the dead, independent of the worship of
Osiris and of Ptah, for he was combined with them as Ptah-Seker-Osiris;
as he maintained a place there in the face of the great worship of
Ptah, he was probably an older god, and this is indicated by his having
an entirely animal form down to a late date. The sacred bark of Seker
bore his figure as that of a mummified hawk; and along the boat is a
row of hawks which probably are the spirits of deceased kings who have
joined Seker in his journey to the world of the dead. As there are
often two allied forms of the same root, one written with _k_ and the
other with _g_,[1] it seems probable that Seker, the funeral god of
Memphis, is allied to

+Mert Seger+ (lover of silence). She was the funeral god of Thebes,
and was usually figured as a serpent. From being only known in animal
form, and unconnected with any of the elaborated theology, it seems
that we have in this goddess a primitive deity of the dead. It
appears, then, that the gods of the great cemeteries were known {32} as
Silence and the Lover of Silence, and both come down from the age of
animal deities. Seker became in late times changed into a hawk-headed
human figure.

Two important deities of early times were +Nekhebt+, the vulture
goddess of the southern kingdom, centred at Hierakonpolis, and +Uazet+,
the serpent goddess of the northern kingdom, centred at Buto. These
appear in all ages as the emblems of the two kingdoms, frequently as
supporters on either side of the royal names; in later times they
appear as human goddesses crowning the king.

+Khnumu+, the creator, was the great god of the cataract. He is shown
as making man upon the potter's wheel; and in a tale he is said to
frame a woman. He must belong to a dif