68 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and BabyloniaAbydos, two hawks stand above the wall of a city which seems
to bear the name of“the city of the kings,”^39 and a slate plaque
found by Mr. Quibell at Kom el-A%mar shows us on one side
the Pharaoh of Nekhen inspecting the decapitated bodies of his
enemies with two hawks on standards carried before him, while,
on the other side, a hawk leads the bridled“North”to him under
the guise of a prisoner, through whose lips a ring has been
passed.^40 In the first case, the hawks may represent the districts
of which the god they symbolised was the protecting deity;^41 in
the second case, the god and the king must be identified together.
It was as Horus, the hawk, that the Pharaoh had conquered the
Egyptians of the north, and it was Horus, therefore, who had
given them into his hand.
If Dr. Naville is right, Horus the hawk-god is again represented
on the same plaque, with the symbol of“follower,”above a boat
which is engraved over the bodies of the decapitated slain.^42
[073] Countenance is given to this view by a drawing on the rocks
near El-Kab, in which the cartouches of two kings of the Fourth
(^39) De Morgan,Recherches sur les Origines de l'Égypte, ii. pl. iii. line 2.
(^40) Zeitschrift für Aegyptische Sprache, xxxvi. pls. xii. and xiii.; Quibell,
Hierakonpolis, pt. i. pl. xxix.
(^41) Professor Maspero, however, proposes to see in them a symbol of the king
of Upper Egypt destroying a hostile city.
(^42) Recueil de Travaux, xxi. pp. 116, 117. Dr. Naville points out that on
the Palermo Stela the festival of the Shesh-Hor, with the determinative of a
sacred bark, occurs repeatedly in that part of the inscription which relates to
the festivals of the kings of the first two dynasties. Professor Petrie has found
the same festival mentioned on two ivory tablets from the tomb of a king of
the First Dynasty at Abydos (Petrie,The Royal Tombs of the First Dynasty, pt,
i. pl. xvii.); and it may be added that in the Pyramid texts (Pepi670;Recueil de
Travaux, viii. p. 105) the Mât or Mâdit bark of the sun-god is identified with
the bark of the Shesh-Hor, while the Semkett or bark in which the sun-god
voyages at night becomes a bark in which the place of the hawk is taken by
a picture of the ben or tomb of Osiris—here identified with that of Akhem
the mummified hawk, which forms part of the symbol for the Thinite nome.
Elsewhere it is the Semkett or day-bark of the sun which is identified with the
festival of the Shesh-Hor (Recueil de Travaux, iii. p. 205).