In religious art Sebek is often represented as a crocodile-headed man wearing the solar disk with a uræus, or, again, with a pair of horns and the plumes of Amen.
The Lion
The lion could hardly fail to be the centre of a cult, and there is ample proof that this animal was, from early dynastic times, worshipped for his great strength and courage. He was identified with the solar deities, with the sun-god Horus or Ra. The Delta was the home of the Egyptian lion, and the chief centre of the cult was the city of Leontopolis, in the Northern Delta, where, according to Ælian, the sacred lions were fed upon slaughtered animals, and sometimes a live calf was put in the den that they might have the pleasure of killing it. Whilst the feeding was proceeding the priests chanted and sang. But the same writer also states that lions were kept in the temple at Heliopolis, as well as at many other places throughout Egypt.
Rameses II accompanied by a Lion—Evelyn Paul.
The Lion Guardian
The outstanding characteristic of the lion was that of guardianship, and this is to be found in the part played by the ancient lion-god Aker, who guarded the gate of the dawn through which the sun passed each morning. The later idea that the sun-god passed through a dark passage in the earth which hid his light, and so caused the darkness of night, while his emergence therefrom was the signal of day, necessitated the existence of two guardian lions, who were called Sef and Dua—that is, 'Yesterday' and 'To-morrow.' From this was derived the practice of placing statues of lions at the doors of palaces and tombs as guardians of both living and dead against all evil. These statues were often given the heads of men, and are familiar under the Greek name of 'Sphinxes,' though the characteristics of the Egyptian lion-statue were very different from those of the Grecian 'Sphinx.'
The most famous of all is, of course, the wonderful 'Sphinx' at Gizeh, the symbol of the sun-god Ra, or rather his colossal abode erected there, facing the rising sun that he might protect the dead sleeping in the tombs round about.