king "as soon as he showed signs of failing
health or growing infirmity". The king-elect was afterwards conducted to
the centre of the town, called Head of the Elephant, where he was made
to lie down on a bed. Then a black ox was slaughtered and its blood
allowed to pour all over his body. Next the ox was flayed, and the
remains of the dead king, which had been disembowelled and smoked for
seven days over a slow fire, were wrapped up in the hide and dragged
along to the place of burial, where they were interred in a circular
pit. (Frazer, _op. cit._, p. 35).]

[195: "Gods of the Egyptians," vol. i., p. 392.]

[196: "The eye of the sun-god, which was subsequently called the eye of
Horus and identified with the Uraeus-snake on the forehead of Re and of
the Pharaohs, the earthly representatives of Re, finally becoming
synonymous with the crown of Lower Egypt, was a mighty goddess, Uto or
Buto by name" (Alan Gardiner, Article "Magic (Egyptian)" in Hastings'
_Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics_, p. 268, quoting Sethe.)]

[197: For an account of the distribution of this story see E. Sidney
Hartland, "The Legend of Perseus"; also W. J. Perry, "The Megalithic
Culture of Indonesia".]

[198: The original "boat of the sky" was the crescent moon, which, from
its likeness to the earliest form of Nile boat, was regarded as the
vessel in which the moon (seen as a faint object upon the crescent), or
the goddess who was supposed to be personified in the moon, travelled
across the waters of the heavens. But as this "boat" was obviously part
of the moon itself, it also was regarded as an animate form of the
goddess, the "Eye of Re". When the Sun, as the other "Eye," assumed the
chief role, Re was supposed to traverse the heavens in his own "boat,"
which was also brought into relationship with the actual boat used in
the Osirian burial ritual.

The custom of employing the name "dragon" in reference to a boat is
found in places as far apart as Scandinavia and China. It is the direct
outcome of these identifications of the sun and moon with a boat
animated by the respective deities. In India the _Makara_, the prototype
of the dragon, was sometimes represented as a boat which was looked upon
as the fish-_avatar_ of Vishnu, Buddha or some other deity.]

[199: This is an instance of the well-known tendency of the human mind
to blend numbers of different incidents into one story. An episode of
one experience, having been transferred to a