At Philæ, Ptolemy Philometor appears with a group of vanquished Asiatics, the vulture once more in attendance.
In the papyrus of Hunefer (Book of the Dead) a winged Utchat, with Eye of Horus, waves the fan emblem over the head of Osiris.
In the papyrus of Anhai, over the Standard of the West, which crowns the Solar Mount and supports the hawk Rā-Harmachis, two winged Hori appear as the protecting principle.
This symbol of the vulture forms a motif for surface decoration on the ceiling of the hypostyle hall of the Rhamessium. Above the great bell capital, the vulture, grasping in each talon a fan emblem, is treated as a repeated ornamental pattern; it also appears as decoration of the umbrella or canopy of the chariot of Rameses III. (Sesostris).
We are thus enabled to realise the great part played by the fan alike in the military, civil, and religious life of Egypt. As an instrument in the hands of private persons, or even of slaves in attendance on individuals, it is less in evidence on the monuments, although we may naturally assume that in a climate such as Egypt this instrument would be in constant requisition. We strain the eye of imagination to the very earliest period of the history of this mystic land, and see in fancy the Queen of Menes the Thinite, surrounded by slaves only a little less fair than herself, waving the fan of square form actually appearing on a cylinder in the Louvre; we see, also in fancy, the famed and beautiful Queen Nitôcris, the handsomest woman of her time, builder of the third Pyramid, reclining upon her couch, the air being rendered less oppressive by the waving of the soft feather fan with which the monuments have made us familiar. Lastly, have we not Shakespeare’s glowing picture of the fanning of the voluptuous ‘serpent of old Nile,’ Cleopatra?
‘For her owne person,
It begger’d all description: she did lye
In her Pavillion, Cloth of Gold, of tissue,
O’er-picturing that Venus, where we see
The fancie out-worke nature; on each side her