taking the form of the winged disk, and accompanied by the two serpent-goddesses, Nekhebet and Uatchet, attacked the rebels, but there was no fierce fighting this time, for the hearts of the enemy melted through fear of him.  His foes cast themselves before him on the ground in submission, they offered no resistance, and they died straightway.  Horus then returned to the town of Behutet (Edfu), and the gods acclaimed him, and praised his prowess.  Ra was so pleased with him that he ordered Thoth to have a winged disk, with a serpent on each side of it, placed in every temple in Egypt in which he (i.e. Ra) was worshipped, so that it might act as a protector of the building, and drive away any and every fiend and devil that might wish to attack it.  This is the reason why we find the winged disk, with a serpent on each side of it, above the doors of temples and religious buildings throughout the length and breadth of Egypt.

In many places in the text that contains the above Legend there are short passages in which attempts are made to explain the origins of the names of certain towns and gods.  All these are interpolations in the narrative made by scribes at a late period of Egyptian history.  As it would be quite useless to reproduce them without many explanatory notes, for which there is no room in this little book, they have been omitted.

THE LEGEND OF KHNEMU AND A SEVEN YEARS’ FAMINE

This Legend is cut in hieroglyphs on a large rounded block of granite, which stands on the south-east portion of Sahal, a little island in the First Cataract in Upper Egypt, two or three miles to the south of the modern town of Aswan, the ancient Syene.  The form of the Legend, and the shapes of the hieroglyphs, and the late spelling of the words, prove that the inscription is the work of the Ptolemaic Period, though it is possible that the Legend in its simplest form is as old as the period to which it is ascribed in the Sahal text, namely, the third dynasty, about 4100 B.C.  The subject of the Legend is a terrible famine, which lasted for seven years, in the reign of King Tcheser, and which recalls the seven years’ famine that took place in Egypt when Joseph was there.  This famine was believed to have been caused by the king’s neglect to worship properly the god Khnemu, who was supposed to control the springs of the Nile, which were asserted by the sages to be situated between two great rocks on the Island of Elephantine.  The Legend sets forth that the Viceroy of Nubia, in the reign of Tcheser, was a nobleman called Meter, who was also the overseer of all the temple properties in the South.  His residence was in Abu, or Elephantine, and in the eighteenth year of his reign the king sent him a despatch in which it was written thus:  “This is to inform thee that misery hath laid hold upon me as I sit upon the great throne, and I grieve for those who dwell in the Great House.[1] My heart is grievously afflicted by reason of a very great calamity, which