The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

96 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

have been one closely akin to African fetishism. The gods appear
frequently, but they always appear under the form of what in later
times were regarded as their symbols. Sometimes the symbol is
an animal or bird, but sometimes also it is a lifeless object. The
human forms, to which we are accustomed in later Egyptian art,
are absent;^67 there is nothing to tell us that the religion of the time
was in any way distinguished from the fetishism of Dahomey or
the Congo.
Thus on a slate plaque from Kom el-A%mar (opposite El-
Kab^68 ) we see the Pharaoh entering the hall in which lie the
bodies of his decapitated foes, while four standards are borne
before him. On the first two are the hawks of Horus, on the
[104] third the jackal of Anubis, on the last an object which may be
intended for a lock of hair.^69 On the reverse of the plaque the
god is bringing before him the prisoners of the north. But the
god is a hawk, whose human hand grasps the rope by which the
conquered enemy is dragged along. On a plaque of equally early
date, found at Abydos, five standards are depicted, the foot of
each of which is shaped like a hand holding a rope. Above the

(^67) Except in the case of Osiris at Abydos; Petrie,The Royal Tombs of the First
Dynasty, pt. i. pl. xv. 16; comp. also at Kom el-A%mar,Hierakonpolis, pt. i.
pl. xxvi. B, though here it seems to be the Pharaoh who is represented.
(^68) Quibell in theZeitschrift für Aegyptische Sprache, xxxvi. pls. xii., xiii.;
Hierakonpolis, pt. i. pl. xxix.
(^69) On a stela in the Wadi Maghara, in the Sinaitic Peninsula, Sahu-Ra of the
Fifth Dynasty, divided into two figures, one with the crown of Lower Egypt
the other with that of Upper Egypt, is standing before a standard on which
are the two emblems of Southern and Northern Egypt, Set and Horus. Set
is represented by his usual animal, but Horus by an uræus serpent and the
same symbol as that on the plaque (de Morgan,Recherches sur les Origines
de l'Égypte, i. p. 233). As we learn from the legend of Seb recounted at
At-Nebes (Saft el-Henna), the two relics preserved there were the uræus and
lock of hair of Ra. The lock of hair has practically the same form as the symbol
we are considering here, and long before the legend had been concocted,
Ra and Horus had been identified together (see Griffith,Antiquities of Tell
el-Yahudiyeh, Seventh Memoir of the Egypt Exploration Fund, pl. xxiii.).