t," "the bark of
the dusk," which bore him back from west to east during the night. Later
theories symbolized Re in many different ways. For some he was identical
with Horus, and then he was falcon-headed and was called Hor-akhti, the
Horus of the horizons. Others pictured him to themselves as a tiny
infant in the early dawn, as full-grown at noon, and as an infirm old
man in the evening. When the sky was imagined as a cow, he was a calf
born anew every morning. The moon was a male deity, who likewise fared
across the heavens in a boat; hence he was often named Chons, "the
sailor." The ibis-god Thoth was early identified with the moon. The
stars and planets were likewise gods. Among them the bright star Sirius
was held in special esteem; it was a goddess Sothis (Sopde), often
identified by the Egyptians with Isis. The constellations that seemed
unceasingly to speed across the sky were named "the never-resting ones,"
and the circumpolar stars, which never sink beneath the horizon, were
known as "the imperishables." Concerning earth and sky there were many
different opinions. Some thought that the sky was a goddess Nut, whom
the god Show held aloof from her husband Keb the earth, on whose back
the plants and trees grew. Others believed in a celestial ocean,
personified under the name of Nun, over which the heavenly bodies sailed
in boats. At a later date the sky was held to be a cow (Hathor) whose
four feet stood firm upon the soil; or else a vast face, in which the
right eye was the sun and the left eye the moon. Alongside these
fanciful conceptions there existed a more sober view, according to which
the earth was a long oval plain, and the sky an iron roof supported by
the tops of mountains or by four pillars [HRG] at the cardinal points.
Beneath the ground lay a dark and mysterious region, now conceived as an
inverse heaven (Nenet), now as a vast series of caverns whose gates were
guarded by demons. This nether world was known as the Duat (Dat, Tei),
and through it passed the sun on his journey during the hours of night;
here too, as many thought, dwelt the dead and their king Osiris. That
great natural feature of Egypt, the Nile, was of course one of the gods;
his name was Hapi, and as a sign of his fecundity he had long pendulous
breasts like a woman. In contradistinction to the tribal gods, it rarely
happened that the cosmic deities enjoyed a cult. But there are a few
important exceptions: Re in Heliopolis (here ident