ll retained
his control over womankind, and caused the phenomena of menstruation by
the exercise of his virile powers.[98] But the moon-god was also a
measurer of time and in this aspect was specially personified in Thoth.

The assimilation of the moon with these earth-deities was probably
responsible for the creation of the first sky-deity. For once the
conception developed of identifying a deity with the moon, and the
Osirian beliefs associated with the deification of a dead king grew up,
the moon became the impersonation of the spirit of womankind, some
mortal woman who by death had acquired divinity.

After the idea had developed of regarding the moon as the spirit of a
dead person, it was only natural that, in course of time, the sun and
stars should be brought within the scope of the same train of thought,
and be regarded as the deified dead. When this happened the sun not
unnaturally soon leapt into a position of pre-eminence. As the moon
represented the deified female principle the sun became the dominant
male deity Re. The stars also became the spirits of the dead.

Once this new conception of a sky-world was adumbrated a luxuriant crop
of beliefs grew up to assimilate the new beliefs with the old, and to
buttress the confused mixture of incompatible ideas with a complex
scaffolding of rationalization.

The sun-god Horus was already the son of Osiris. Osiris controlled not
only the river and the irrigation canals, but also the rain-clouds. The
fumes of incense conveyed to the sky-gods the supplications of the
worshippers on earth. Incense was not only "the perfume that deities,"
but also the means by which the deities and the dead could pass to their
doubles in the newly invented sky-heaven. The sun-god Re was represented
in his temple not by an anthropoid statue, but by an obelisk,[99] the
gilded apex of which pointed to heaven and "drew down" the dazzling rays
of the sun, reflected from its polished surface, so that all the
worshippers could see the manifestations of the god in his temple.

These events are important, not only for creating the sky-gods and the
sky-heaven, but possibly also for suggesting the idea that even a mere
pillar of stone, whether carved or uncarved, upon which no attempt had
been made to model the human form, could represent the deity, or rather
could become the "body" to be animated by the god.[100] For once it was
admitted, even in the home of these ancient ideas concerning the