which personified the elements, or presided over the operations of
nature, the seasons, and events." The Egyptians themselves speak not
unfrequently of "the _thousand_ gods," sometimes further qualifying
them, as "the gods male, the gods female, those which belong to the land
of Egypt." Practically, there were before the eyes of worshippers some
scores, if not some hundreds, of deities, who invited their approach and
challenged their affections.

Nor was this the whole, or the worst. The Egyptian was taught to pay a
religious regard to animals. In one place goats, in another sheep, in a
third hippopotami, in a fourth crocodiles, in a fifth vultures, in a
sixth frogs, in a seventh shrew-mice, were sacred creatures, to be
treated with respect and honour, and under no circumstances to be slain,
under the penalty of death to the slayer. And besides this local
animal-cult, there was a cult which was general. Cows, cats, dogs,
ibises, hawks, and cynocephalous apes, were sacred throughout the whole
of Egypt, and woe to the man who injured them! A Roman who accidentally
caused the death of a cat was immediately "lynched" by the populace.
Inhabitants of neighbouring villages would attack each other with the
utmost fury if the native of one had killed or eaten an animal held
sacred in the other. In any house where a cat or a dog died, the inmates
were expected to mourn for them as for a relation. Both these and the
other sacred animals were carefully embalmed after death, and their
bodies were interred in sacred repositories.

The animal-worship reached its utmost pitch of grossness and absurdity
when certain individual brute beasts were declared to be incarnate
deities, and treated accordingly. At Memphis, the ordinary capital,
there was maintained, at any rate from the time of Aahmes I. (about B.C.
1650), a sacred bull, known as Hapi or Apis, which was believed to be an