of the god, whom the faithful fed with their offerings—­cakes, fried fish, and drinks sweetened with honey.  Advantage was taken of the moment when one of these creatures, wallowing on the bank, basked contentedly in the sun:  two priests opened his jaws, and a third threw in the cakes, the fried morsels, and finally the liquid.  The crocodile bore all this without even winking; he swallowed down his provender, plunged into the lake, and lazily reached the opposite bank, hoping to escape for a few moments from the oppressive liberality of his devotees.

[Illustration:  387.jpg SOBKU, THE GOD OF THE FAYUM, UNDER THE FORM OF A SACRED CROCODILE]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Emil Brugsch- Bey, taken in 1885.  The original in black granite is now in the Berlin Museum.  It represents one of the sacred crocodiles mentioned by Strabo; we read on the base a Greek inscription in honour of Ptolemy Neos Dionysos, in which the name of the divine reptile “Petesukhos, the great god,” is mentioned.

As soon, however, as another of these approached, he was again beset at his new post and stuffed in a similar manner.  These animals were in their own way great dandies:  rings of gold or enamelled terra-cotta were hung from their ears, and bracelets were soldered on to their front paws.  The monuments of Shodit, if any still exist, are buried under the mounds of Medinet el-Fayum, but in the neighbourhood we meet with more than one authentic relic of the XIIth dynasty.  It was Usirtasen I. who erected that curious thin granite obelisk, with a circular top, whose fragments lie forgotten on the ground near the village of Begig:  a sort of basin has been hollowed out around it, which fills during the inundation, so that the monument lies in a pool of muddy water during the greater part of the year.  Owing to this treatment, most of the inscriptions on it have almost disappeared, though we can still make out a series of five scenes in which the king hands offerings to several divinities.  Near to Biahmu there was an old temple which had become ruinous:  Amenemhait III. repaired it, and erected in front of it two of those colossal statues which the Egyptians were wont to place like sentinels at their gates, to ward off baleful influences and evil spirits.

[Illustration:  388.jpg THE REMAINS OF THE OBELISK OF BEGIG]

     Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Golunischeff.

The colossi at Biahmu were of red sandstone, and were seated on high limestone pedestals, placed at the end of a rectangular court; the temple walls hid the lower part of the pedestals, so that the colossi appeared to tower above a great platform which sloped gently away from them on all sides.  Herodotus, who saw them from a distance at the time of the inundation, believed that they crowned the summits of two pyramids rising out of the middle of a lake.  Near Illahun, Queen Sovkunofriuri herself has left a few traces of her short reign.