Lecture IX. The Popular Religion Of Egypt. 195
goddess; that is all.^169
The serpent, however, was not always venerated because it
was feared. It lived underground, and was thus, in a special
sense, the oldest inhabitant of the land, and the guardian of the
soil. The Telmessians told Krœsus that it was“a child of the
earth.”^170 The harmless snakes that frequent the village houses
of modern Egypt are still regarded as the“protectors”of the
household. The bowl of milk is provided for them as regularly as
it once was in Wales for the fairies, and many tales are told of the
punishment a neglect of the household%arrâsor“guardian”will
entail. For its poison continues to exist, though held in reserve,
and is communicable by other means than the fangs. At Helwân
near Cairo, for instance, I was told of one of these guardian
snakes which once missed its female mate and supposed it had
been killed. Thereupon it crept into thezîror jar in which water
is kept, and poisoned the water in it. But the female having soon
afterwards made its appearance, it was observed to glide into a
basin of milk, then to crawl along the ground so that the clotted
dust might adhere to its body, and again to enter thezîr. As
the dust fouled the water, the people of the house knew that the
latter must have been poisoned, and accordingly poured it on
the ground. In this case the snake provided the remedy for the [213]
mischief it had the power to cause.^171
But the Agathodæmon or serpent guardian of the house not
only still survives among the fellahin of Egypt, serpent worship
still holds undiminished sway in the valley of the Nile. In a
(^169) The Belmore collection of Egyptian antiquities contains several stelæ which
commemorate the popular worship of the serpent; seeBelmore Collection, pls.
7, 8, and 12. In one of them the uræus has the human head of the official
deity; in another it stands on the top of a shrine; but on one (given in pl. 7) the
worshipper is kneeling before a coluber of great length, which has none of the
attributes of the State gods, and whose numerous coils remind us of Apophis.
(^170) Herodotos, i. 78.
(^171) Sayce, “Serpent Worship in Ancient and Modern Egypt,” in the
Contemporary Review, Oct. 1893.