of plans.' A large
temple was dedicated to him at Karnak, but otherwise he was not of
religious importance.

+Neit+ was a goddess of the Libyan people; but her worship was firmly
implanted by them in Egypt. She was a goddess of hunting and of
weaving, the two arts of a nomadic people. Her emblem was a distaff
with two crossed arrows, and her name was written with a figure of a
weaver's shuttle. She was adored in the first dynasty, when the name
Merneit, 'loved by Neit,' occurs; and her priesthood was one of the
most {49} usual in the pyramid period. She was almost lost to sight
during some thousands of years, but she became the state goddess of the
twenty-sixth dynasty, when the Libyans set up their capital in her city
of Sais. In later times she again disappears from customary religion.

{50}

CHAPTER VII

THE COSMIC GODS

The gods which personify the sun and sky stand apart in their essential
idea from those already described, although they were largely mixed and
combined with other classes of gods. So much did this mixture pervade
all the later views that some writers have seen nothing but varying
forms of sun-worship in Egyptian religion. It will have been noticed
however in the previous chapters what a large body of theology was
entirely apart from the sun-worship, while here we treat the latter as
separate from the other elements with which it was more or less
combined.

_Ra_ was the great sun-god, to whom every king pledged himself, by
adopting on his accession a motto-title embodying the god's name, such
as _Ra-men-kau_, 'Ra established the kas,' _Ra-sehotep-ab_, 'Ra
satisfies the heart,' _Ra-neb-maat_, 'Ra is the lord of truth'; and
these titles were those by {51} which the king was best known ever
after. This devotion was not primitive, but began in the fourth
dynasty, and was established by the fifth dynasty being called sons of
Ra, and every later king having the title 'son of Ra' before his name.
The obelisk was the emblem of Ra, and in the fifth dynasty a great
obelisk temple was built in his honour at Abusir, followed also by
others. Heliopolis was the centre of his worship, where Senusert I, in
the twelfth dynasty, rebuilt the temple and erected the obelisks, one
of which is still standing. But Ra was preceded there by another
sun-god Atmu, who was the true god of the nome; and Ra, though
worshipped throughout the land, was not the aboriginal god of any city.
In Heliopolis he w