1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a stella in the museum of
Gîzeh. This is not the goose of Sibû, but the goose of Amon,
which was nurtured in the temple of Karnak, and was called
Smonû. Pacing it is the cat of Maût, the wife of Amon. Amon,
originally an earth-god, was, as we see, confounded with
Sibû, and thus naturally appropriated that deity's form of a
goose.
The planets, and especially the sun, varied in form and nature according to the prevailing conception of the heavens. The fiery disk Atonû, by which the sun revealed himself to men, was a living god, called Râ, as was also the planet itself.[*] Where the sky was regarded as Horus, Râ formed the right eye of the divine face: when Horus opened his eyelids in the morning, he made the dawn and day; when he closed them in the evening, the dusk and night were at hand.
* The name of Râ has been variously explained. The
commonest etymology is that deriving the name from a verb
râ, to give, to make to be a person or a thing, so that Râ
would thus be the great organizer, the author of all things.
Lauth goes so far as to say that "notwithstanding its
brevity, Râ is a composite word (r-a, maker—to be)" As a
matter of fact, the word is simply the name of the
planet applied to the god. It means the sun, and nothing
more.
3 Drawn by Boudier, from a XXXth dynasty statue of green
basalt in the Gîzeh Museum (Maspero, Guide du Visiteur, p.
345, No. 5243). The statue was also published by Mariette,
Monuments divers, pl. 96 A-B, and in the Album
photographique du Musée de Boulaq, pl. x.
Where the sky was looked upon as the incarnation of a goddess, Râ was considered as her son,[**] his father being the earth-god, and he was born again with every new dawn, wearing a sidelock, and with his finger to his lips as human children were conventionally represented.
** Several passages from the Pyramid texts prove that the
two eyes were very anciently considered as belonging to
the face of Nûît, and this conception persisted to the last
days of Egyptian paganism. Hence, we must not be surprised
if the inscriptions generally represent the god Râ as coming
forth from Nûît under the form of a disc, or a scarabaeus,
and born of her even as human children are born.