Lecture IX. The Popular Religion Of Egypt. 197
Shêkh equally with the Mohammedans, only they explain them
as due to a demon who clothes himself in a serpent's form.^173
Saint or demon, however, Shêkh Herîdî is really the lineal
descendant of a serpent which has been worshipped in its
neighbourhood since the prehistoric days of Egypt. A bronze
serpent with the head of Zeus Serapis has been found in the
mounds of Benâwît, on the western side of the Nile, which face
the entrance to the shrine of the Shêkh; and the nome in which
the shrine is situated was that of Du-Hefi,“the mountain of the
snake.”The serpent of Shêkh Herîdî, with his miraculous powers
of healing, must thus have been already famous in the days when
the nomes of Upper Egypt first received their names. The old
neolithic population of the desert must have already venerated
the snake that dwelt in the cleft of the rock above which now
rises the sacred“tomb”of Shêkh Herîdî.^174 [215]
The faith of the people dies hard. The gods and goddesses,
the theology and speculations of the official religion of Egypt,
have passed away, but the old beliefs and superstitions which
were already in possession of the land when the Pharaonic
Egyptians first entered it, have survived both Christianity and
Mohammedanism. The theological systems of Heliopolis or
Thebes are like the sacred trees, which, according to Dr.
Schweinfurth,^175 were brought from Southern Arabia along with
the deities with whose cult they were associated; when the deities
(^173) Voyage d'Égypte et de Nubie, nouv. édit. par L. Langlés, ii. pp. 64-69.
(^174) See my article on“Serpent Worship in Ancient and Modern Egypt,”in the
Contemporary Review, Oct. 1893. On a rock called Hagar el-Ghorâb, a few
miles north of Assuan, I have foundgraffitiof the age of the Twelfth Dynasty,
which show that a chapel of“the living serpent”stood on the spot; and a native
informed me that the rock is still haunted by a monstrous serpent,“as long as
an oar and as thick as a man,”which appears at night and destroys, with the
fire that blazes from its eyes, whoever is unfortunate enough to fall in its way.
SeeRecueil de Travaux, xvi. p. 174.
(^175) In theVerhandlungen der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin, 1889, No.
7.