en Naucratis itself, still a flourishing place, in spite
of the rebellions in the Delta and the suppressive measures of the
Persians. All this region seemed to them to be merely an extension of
Greece under the African sky: to their minds the real Egypt began at
Sais, a few miles further eastwards. Sais was full in memories of the
XXVIth dynasty; there they had pointed out to them the tombs of
the Pharaohs in the enclosure of Nit, the audience hall in which
Psammetichus II. received the deputation of the Eleians, the prison
where the unfortunate Apries had languished after his defeat. The
gateways of the temple of Nit seemed colossal to eyes accustomed to the
modest dimensions of most Greek sanctuaries; these were, moreover, the
first great monuments that the strangers had seen since they landed, and
the novelty of their appearance had a good deal to do with the keenness
of the impression produced. The goddess showed herself in hospitable
guise to the visitors; she welcomed them all, Greek or Persian, at her
festivals, and initiated them into several of her minor rites, without
demanding from them anything beyond tolerance on certain points of
doctrine.

[Illustration: 346.jpg FOUNTAIN AND SCHOOL OF THE MOTHER OF LITTLE
MOHAMAD]

Her dual attributes as wielder of the bow and shuttle had inspired the
Greeks with the belief that she was identical with that one of their own
goddesses who most nearly combined in her person this complex mingling
of war and industry: in her they Fountain and School of the Mother of
Little Mohammed worshipped the prototype of their own Pallas. On the
evening of the 17th day of Thoth, Herodotus saw the natives, rich and
poor, placing on the fronts of their dwellings large flat lamps filled
with a mixture of salt and oil which they kept alight all night in
honour of Osiris and of the dead.*

* In my opinion it is not the festivals of Athyr that are
here referred to, but those of the month of Thoth, when, as
the inscriptions show, it was the practice to _light the new
fire_, according to the ritual, after first extinguishing
the fire of the previous year, not only in the temple of the
god, but in all the houses of the city.

He made his way into the dwelling of the ineffable god, and there,
unobserved among the crowd, he witnessed scenes from the divine life
represented by the priests on the lake by the light of torches, episodes
of his passion, mourning, and re