O Ra, give abounding life to Pharaoh, bestow bread for
his hunger (belly), water for his throat, perfumes for his hair."
=Animal-Headed Gods.=--The Egyptians often represented their gods with
human form, but more frequently under the form of a beast. Each god
has his animal: Phtah incarnates himself in the beetle, Horus in the
hawk, Osiris in the bull. The two figures often unite in a man with
the head of an animal or an animal with the head of a man. Every god
may be figured in four forms: Horus, for example, as a man, a hawk, as
man with the head of a hawk, as a hawk with the head of a man.
=Sacred Animals.=--What did the Egyptians wish to designate by this
symbol? One hardly knows. They, themselves, came to regard as sacred
the animals which served to represent the gods to them: the bull, the
beetle, the ibis, the hawk, the cat, the crocodile. They cared for
them and protected them. A century before the Christian era a Roman
citizen killed a cat at Alexandria; the people rose in riot, seized
him, and, notwithstanding the entreaties of the king, murdered him,
although at the same time they had great fear of the Romans.
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