They went into the portico. An old priestess, who looked rather like her goddess, the Frog, was bathing in a copper basin of warm water two sacred ichneumons, water animals something between a cat and a rat, beloved by the god of the floods, Khnum-Ra. After the bath the creatures ran away, playing; the male chased the female.
"Pew-pew-pew!" the priestess called them quietly and began feeding them out of her hands with bread soaked in milk, muttering a prayer about a propitious flood.
Then she went down to the lake and called:
"Sob! Sob! Sob!"
There was a splash at the other end of the lake and, thrusting out its shining, slimy black head, a huge crocodile, some nine feet long, sacred to Sobek, the god of the Midnight Sun, rapidly swam across in answer to the call. Brass rings with bells glittered on its front paws, there were rings in its ears and a piece of red glass was stuck into the thick skin of the head in the place of the ruby that had been stripped from it. The crocodile was so tame that it allowed its attendant to clean its teeth with acacia charcoal.
It crawled out of the water and stretched itself at the feet of the priestess. Squatting before it she fed it with the meat and the honey cakes brought by Zenra, fearlessly thrusting her left hand into the open jaws of the beast; her right hand had been bitten off by the crocodile while she was still a child.
"I wish it had eaten me altogether," the old lady used to say, "I then wouldn't have to see what is going on now."
She did not go on to say "under the apostate king."
To be devoured by a sacred crocodile was regarded as a most happy death: there was no need to embalm or bury the body—one went straight from the holy belly into paradise.
With motherly tenderness the old priestess stroked the monster on its scaly back, calling it 'Sobby,' 'little one,' 'ducky.' And it was strange to see the beast's pig-like eyes gleam with responsive affection.