They ascribed life to this Didu, and represented it with a somewhat grotesque face, big cheeks, thick lips, a necklace round its throat, a long flowing dress which hid the base of the columns beneath its folds, and two arms bent across the breast, the hands grasping one a whip and the other a crook, symbols of sovereign authority. This, perhaps, was the most ancient form of Osiris; but they also represented him as a man, and supposed him to assume the shapes of rams and bulls,[*] or even those of water-birds, such as lapwings, herons, and cranes, which disported themselves about the lakes of that district.[**] * The ram of Mendes is sometimes Osiris, and sometimes the soul of Osiris. The ancients took it for a he-goat, and to them we are indebted for the record of its exploits. According to Manetho, the worship of the sacred ram is not older than the time of King Kaiekhos of the second dynasty. A Ptolemaic necropolis of sacred rams was discovered by Mariette at Tmai el-Amdid, in the ruins of Thmuis, and some of their sarcophagi are now in the Gizeh Museum. ** The Bonu, the chief among these birds, is not the phoenix, as has so often been asserted. It is a kind of heron, either the _Ardea cinerea_, which is common in Egypt, or else some similar species. The goddess whom we are accustomed to regard as inseparable from him, Isis the cow, or woman with cow's horns, had not always belonged to him. Originally she was an independent deity, dwelling at Buto in the midst of the ponds of Adhu. She had neither husband nor lover, but had spontaneously conceived and given birth to a son, whom she suckled among the reeds--a lesser Horus who was called Harsiisit, Horus the son of Isis, to distinguish him from Haroeris. At an early period she was married to her neighbour Osiris, and no marriage could have been better suited to her nature. For she personified the earth--not the earth in general, like Sibu, with its unequal distribution of seas and mountains, deserts and cultivated land; but the black and luxuriant plain of the Delta, where races of men, plants, and animals increase and multiply in ever-succeeding generations. To whom did she owe this inexhaustible productive energy if not to her neighbour Osiris, to the Nile? The Nile rises, overflows, lingers upon the soil; every year it is wedded to the earth, and the earth comes forth green and fruitful from its embraces. [Illustration: 187.jpg ISIS, WEARING THE COW-HORN HEAD-DRESS. 1] 1 Drawn by Boudier from a green basalt statue in the Gizeh Museum. Prom a photograph by Emil Brugsch-Bey.