head of the
Pharaoh Amenothes III., who kneels before him, proceeds to
_impose the sa_.

By using or transmitting it the gods themselves exhausted their _sa_ of
life; and the less vigorous replenished themselves from the stronger,
while the latter went to draw fresh fulness from a mysterious pond
in the northern sky, called the "pond of the Sa."[*] Divine bodies,
continually recruited by the influx of this magic fluid, preserved their
vigour far beyond the term allotted to the bodies of men and beasts.
Age, instead of quickly destroying them, hardened and transformed them
into precious metals. Their bones were changed to silver, their flesh to
gold; their hair, piled up and painted blue, after the manner of great
chiefs, was turned into lapis-lazuli.[**]

* It is thus that in the _Tale of the Daughter of the
Prince of Bakhtan_ we find that one of the statues of the
Theban Konsu supplies itself with _sa_ from another statue
representing one of the most powerful forms of the god. The
_pond of Sa_, whither the gods go to draw the magic fluid,
is mentioned in the Pyramid texts.

** Cf. the text of the _Destruction of Men_ (Il. 1, 2)
referred to above, where age produces these transformations
in the body of the sun. This changing of the bodies of the
gods into gold, silver, and precious stones, explains why
the alchemists, who were disciples of the Egyptians, often
compared the transmutation of metals to the metamorphosis of
a genius or of a divinity: they thought by their art to
hasten at will that which was the slow work of nature.

This transformation of each into an animated statue did not altogether
do away with the ravages of time. Decrepitude was no less irremediable
with them than with men, although it came to them more slowly; when the
sun had grown old "his mouth trembled, his drivelling ran down to earth,
his spittle dropped upon the ground."

None of the feudal gods had escaped this destiny; for them as for
mankind the day came when they must leave the city and go forth to the
tomb.[*]

* The idea of the inevitable death of the gods is expressed
in other places as well as in a passage of the eighth
chapter of the Booh of the Dead (Naville's edition), which
has not to my knowledge hitherto been noticed: "I am that
Osiris in the West, and Osiris knoweth his day in which he
shall be no more;" th