[75] Khons was the son of Amen and of Mut, the ‘divine mother,’ and formed with them the sacred triad of Thebes: but his worship never assumed a prominent place before this period. In many respects resembling Thoth, and, like him, connected with the moon, he was the especial god of the priesthood and giver of oracles.
[76] Tiele, Hist. of Egyp. Relig.
[77] The Hidden or Unseen.
[78] Villiers Stuart, Nile Gleanings.
[79] The Egyptian Pa-Bast, or the city of Bast. It was situated in the eastern portion of the Delta, and was of immemorial antiquity. Under the kings of the twenty-second dynasty, it attained great splendour, and the worship of Bast became wide-spread and popular. Herodotus saw her magnificent temple, and the festival celebrated in her honour with such splendour and revelry. Bast was almost identical with Sechet—the lioness and the cat were sacred to her. Her worship was exceedingly popular under the later dynasties, and this led to the wide-spread reverence with which the cat was regarded in those days.
[80] Probably a princess of the dynasty ruling at Tanis; the priest-kings, whose seat of power was in the far south, are less likely to have connected themselves with the kingdom of Israel.
[81] The Apis must be black, with certain white marks of mystical import.
[82] One mode of consulting the sacred bull was by offering him food. Germanicus is said to have thus consulted him; the Apis refused to eat, and this unfavourable reception was considered to have foreboded his untimely fate.
[83] The country known as Nubia then formed part of the land of Kush, i.e. Ethiopia.
[84] A descendant, doubtless, of the twenty-second dynasty kings, of Assyrian origin.