ified with a local god
Etom) and in Hermonthis; Hathor at Dendera and elsewhere. Certain of the
tribal gods early became identified with cosmic divinities, and the
latter thus became the objects of a cult; so, for instance, the Horus of
Edfu was a sun-god, and Thoth in Hermopolis Magna was held to be the
moon.

Minor deities and demons.

An extension of the principle that created the cosmic gods gave rise to
a large number of minor deities and demons. Day and night, the year, the
seasons, eternity, and many similar conceptions were each represented by
a god or goddess of their own, who nevertheless possessed but a shadowy
and doubtful existence. Human attributes like Taste, Knowledge, Joy and
so forth were likewise personified, no less than abstract ideas such as
Fate, Destiny and others; rather more clearly defined than the rest was
Maat, the goddess of Truth and Right, who was fabled to be the daughter
of Re and may even have had a cult. Certain gods were purely functional,
that is to say, they appeared at special times to perform some
appointed task, at the completion of which they vanished. Such were
Nepri, the god of the corn-harvest; Meskhonit, the goddess who attended
every child-bed; Tait, the goddess of weaving. Numberless semi-divine
beings had no other purpose than to fill out the myths, as, for
instance, the chattering apes that greeted the sun-god Re as he rose
above the eastern horizon, and the demons who opened the gates of the
nether world at the approach of the setting sun.

Foreign deities.

We take this opportunity of mentioning sundry other divinities who were
later introduced to swell the already overcrowded ranks of the pantheon.
Contact with foreign lands brought with it several new deities, Baal,
Anat and Resheph from Syria, and the misshapen dwarf Bes from the south;
earlier than these, the Astarte of Byblus, whom the Egyptians identified
with Hathor. In Thebes Amenophis I. and his spouse Nefertari were
worshipped as patron gods of the necropolis many centuries after their
death. Two men of exceptional wisdom received divine honours, and had
temples of their own in the Ptolemaic period; these were Imouthes, who
had lived under Zoser of the IIIrd Dynasty, and Amenophis son of Hapu, a
contemporary of the third king of the same name (XVIIIth Dyn.). The hill
of Sheikh Abd-el-gurna at Thebes was looked upon as a particularly holy
place, and was revered as a goddess. Almost anything that w