gh communication was regularly established, at least as far south
as Elephantine. Possibly in an earlier period the long narrow valley, or
even a section of it, may have suggested the figure of a man lying prone
upon his back. Such was Keb, the Earth-god, whose counterpart in the
sky was the goddess Nut, her feet and hands resting at the limits of
the world and her curved body forming the vault of heaven. Perhaps still
more primitive, and dating from a pastoral age, may be the notion that
the sky was a great cow, her body, speckled with stars, alone visible
from the earth beneath. Reference has already been made to the dominant
influence of the Sun in Egyptian religion, and it is not surprising
that he should so often appear as the first of created beings. His orb
itself, or later the god in youthful human form, might be pictured as
emerging from a lotus on the primaeval waters, or from a marsh-bird's
egg, a conception which influenced the later Phoenician cosmogeny. The
Scarabaeus, or great dung-feeding beetle of Egypt, rolling the ball
before it in which it lays its eggs, is an obvious theme for the early
myth-maker. And it was natural that the Beetle of Khepera should
have been identified with the Sun at his rising, as the Hawk of Ra
represented his noonday flight, and the aged form of Attun his setting
in the west. But in all these varied conceptions and explanations of the
universe it is difficult to determine how far the poetical imagery of
later periods has transformed the original myths which may lie behind
them.

As the Egyptian Creator the claims of Ra, the Sun-god of Heliopolis,
early superseded those of other deities. On the other hand, Ptah of
Memphis, who for long ages had been merely the god of architects and
craftsmen, became under the Empire the architect of the universe and is
pictured as a potter moulding the world-egg. A short poem by a priest of
Ptah, which has come down to us from that period, exhibits an attempt to
develop this idea on philosophical lines.(1) Its author represents
all gods and living creatures as proceeding directly from the mind and
thought of Ptah. But this movement, which was more notably reflected in
Akhenaton's religious revolution, died out in political disaster, and
the original materialistic interpretation of the myths was restored with
the cult of Amen. How materialistic this could be is well illustrated
by two earlier members of the XVIIIth Dynasty, who have left us vivid