* In my opinion it is not the festivals of Athyr that are here referred to, but those of the month of Thoth, when, as the inscriptions show, it was the practice to light the new fire, according to the ritual, after first extinguishing the fire of the previous year, not only in the temple of the god, but in all the houses of the city.

He made his way into the dwelling of the ineffable god, and there, unobserved among the crowd, he witnessed scenes from the divine life represented by the priests on the lake by the light of torches, episodes of his passion, mourning, and resurrection.  The priests did not disclose their subtler mysteries before barbarian eyes, nor did they teach the inner meaning of their dogmas, but the little they did allow him to discern filled the traveller with respect and wonder, recalling sometimes by their resemblance to them the mysteries in which he was accustomed to take part in his own country.  Then, as now, but little attention was paid to the towns in the centre and east of the Delta; travellers endeavoured to visit one or two of them as types, and collected as much information as they could about the remainder.  Herodotus and his rivals attached little importance to those details of landscape which possess so much attraction for the modern tourist.  They bestowed no more than a careless glance on the chapels scattered up and down the country like the Mohammedan shrines at the present day, and the waters extending on all sides beneath the acacias and palm trees during the inundation, or the fellahin trotting along on their little asses beside the pools, did not strike them as being of sufficient interest to deserve passing mention in an account of their travels.

[Illustration:  348.jpg MODERN MOHAMMEDAN SHEKHS TOMBS]

     Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Gautier.

They passed by the most picturesque villages with indifference, and it was only when they reached some great city, or came upon some exceptionally fine temple or eccentric deity, that their curiosity was aroused.  Mendes worshipped its patron god in the form of a live ram,* and bestowed on all members of the same species some share of the veneration it lavished on the divine animal.  The inhabitants of Atarbekhis,** on the island of Prosopitis, gave themselves up to the worship of the bull.

* Herodotus says that both the goats and the god were named Mendes in Egyptian, but he is here confusing ordinary goats with the special goat which was supposed to contain the soul of Osiris.  It was the latter that the Egyptians named after the god himself, Bainibdiduit, i.e. the soul of the master of the city of Diduit.

** The old explanation of this name as the City of Hathor has been rightly rejected as inconsistent with one of the elementary rules of hieroglyphic grammar.  The name, when properly divided into its three constituent parts,