"medicine-women," or "witch-women." She had used her spells on men,
and was tired of exercising her powers on them, and she craved the
opportunity of making herself mistress of gods and spirits as well as
of men. She meditated how she could make herself mistress both of
heaven and earth, and finally she decided that she could only obtain
the power she wanted if she possessed the knowledge of the secret name
of Ra, in which his very existence was bound up. Ra guarded this name
most jealously, for he knew that if he revealed it to any being he
would henceforth be at that being's mercy. Isis saw that it was
impossible to make Ra declare his name to her by ordinary methods, and
she therefore thought out the following plan. It was well known in
Egypt and the Sudan at a very early period that if a magician obtained
some portion of a person's body, e.g., a hair, a paring of a nail, a
fragment of skin, or a portion of some efflux from the body, spells
could be used upon them which would have the effect of causing grievous
harm to that person. Isis noted that Ra had become old and feeble, and
that as he went about he dribbled at the mouth, and that his saliva
fell upon the ground. Watching her opportunity she caught some of the
saliva of the and mixing it with dust, she moulded it into the form of
a large serpent, with poison-fangs, and having uttered her spells over
it, she left the serpent lying on the path, by which Ra travelled day
by day as he went about inspecting Egypt, so that it might strike at
him as he passed along. We may note in passing that the Banyoro in the
Sudan employ serpents in killing buffaloes at the present day. They
catch a puff-adder in a noose, and then nail it alive by the tip of its
tail to the round in the middle of a buffalo track, so that when an
animal passes the reptile may strike at it. Presently a buffalo comes
along, does what it is expected to do, and then the puff-adder strikes
at it, injects its poison, and the animal dies soon after. As many as
ten buffaloes have been killed in a day by one puff-adder. The body of