treated with respect, and death is the penalty for killing one, even by accident.  Danh-gbi has numerous wives, who until 1857 took part in a public procession from which the profane crowd was excluded; a python was carried round the town in a hammock, perhaps as a ceremony for the expulsion of evils.  The rainbow-god of the Ewe was also conceived to have the form of a snake; his messenger was said to be a small variety of boa; but only certain individuals, not the whole species, were sacred.  In many parts of Africa the serpent is looked upon as the incarnation of deceased relatives; among the Amazulu, as among the Betsileo of Madagascar, certain species are assigned as the abode of certain classes; the Masai, on the other hand, regard each species as the habitat of a particular family of the tribe.

In America some of the Amerindian tribes reverence the rattlesnake as grandfather and king of snakes who is able to give fair winds or cause tempest.  Among the Hopi (Moqui) of Arizona the serpent figures largely in one of the dances.  The rattlesnake was worshipped in the Natchez temple of the sun; and the Aztec deity Quetzalcoatl was a serpent-god.  The tribes of Peru are said to have adored great snakes in the pre-Inca days; and in Chile the Araucanians made a serpent figure in their deluge myth.

Over a large part of India there are carved representations of cobras (N[=a]gas) or stones as substitutes; to these human food and flowers are offered and lights are burned before the shrines.  Among the Dravidians a cobra which is accidentally killed is burned like a human being; no one would kill one intentionally; the serpent-god’s image is carried in an annual procession by a celibate priestess.

Serpent cults were well known in ancient Europe; there does not, it is true, appear to be much ground for supposing that Aesculapius was a serpent-god in spite of his connexion with serpents.  On the other hand, we learn from Herodotus of the great serpent which defended the citadel of Athens; the Roman genius loci took the form of a serpent; a snake was kept and fed with milk in the temple of Potrimpos, an old Slavonic god.  To this day there are numerous traces in popular belief, especially in Germany, of respect for the snake, which seems to be a survival of ancestor worship, such as still exists among the Zulus and other savage tribes; the “house-snake,” as it is called, cares for the cows and the children, and its appearance is an omen of death, and the life of a pair of house-snakes is often held to be bound up with that of the master and mistress themselves.  Tradition says that one of the Gnostic sects known as the Ophites caused a tame serpent to coil round the sacramental bread and worshipped it as the representative of the Saviour.  See also SERPENT-WORSHIP.

Sheep.—­Only in Africa do we find a sheep-god proper; Ammon was the god of Thebes; he was represented as ram-headed; his worshippers held the ram to be sacred; it was, however, sacrificed once a year, and its fleece formed the clothing of the idol.