ferent source from that of Ptah
or Ra, and was the creative principle in the period of animal gods, as
he is almost always shown with the head of a ram. He was popular down
to late times, where amulets of his figure are often found.

+Tahuti+ or +Th[=o]th+ was the god of writing and learning, and was the
chief deity of Hermopolis. He almost always has the head of an ibis,
the bird sacred to him. The baboon is also a frequent emblem of his,
but he is never figured with the {33} baboon head. The ibis appears
standing upon a shrine as early as on a tablet of Mena; Th[=o]th is the
constant recorder in scenes of the judgment, and he appears down to
Roman times as the patron of scribes. The eighteenth dynasty of kings
incorporated his name as Th[=o]thmes, 'born of Th[=o]th,' owing to
their Hermopolite origin.

+Sekhmet+ is the lion goddess, who represents the fierceness of the
sun's heat. She appears in the myth of the destruction of mankind as
slaughtering the enemies of Ra. Her only form is that with the head of
a lioness. But she blends imperceptibly with

+Bastet+, who has the head of a cat. She was the goddess of Pa-bast or
Bubastis, and in her honour immense festivals were there held. Her
name is found in the beginning of the pyramid times; but her main
period of popularity was that of the Shishaks who ruled from Bubastis,
and in the later times images of her were very frequent as amulets. It
is possible from the name that this feline goddess, whose foreign
origin is acknowledged, was the female form of the god Bes, who is
dressed in a lion's skin, and also came in from the east (see chap. ix).

+Mentu+ was the hawk-god of Erment south of Thebes, who became in the
eighteenth to {34} twentieth dynasties especially the god of war. He
appears with the hawk head, or sometimes as a hawk-headed sphinx; and
he became confused with Ra and with Amon.

+Sebek+ is figured as a man with the crocodile's head; but he has no
theologic importance, and always remained the local god of certain
districts.

+Heqt+, the goddess symbolised by the frog, was the patron of birth,
and assisted in the infancy of the kings. She was a popular and
general deity not mainly associated with particular places.

+Hershefi+ was the ram-headed god of Herakleopolis, but is never found
outside of that region.

We now come to three animal-headed gods who became associated with the
great Osiride group of human gods. +Set+ or +Setesh+ was