In course of time men perceived his decrepitude. They took counsel against him: "Lo! his Majesty waxeth old, his bones are of silver, his flesh is of gold, his hair of lapis-lazuli." As soon as his Majesty perceived that which they were saying to each other, his Majesty said to those who were of his train, "Call together for me my Divine Eye, Shu, Tafnuit, Sibu, and Nuit, the father and the mother gods who were with me when I was in the Nu, with the god Nu. Let each bring his cycle along with him; then, when thou shalt have brought them in secret, thou shalt take them to the great mansion that they may lend me their counsel and their consent, coming hither from the Nu into this place where I have manifested myself." So the family council comes together: the ancestors of Ra, and his posterity still awaiting amid the primordial waters the time of their manifestation--his children Shu and Tafnuit, his grandchildren Sibu and Nuit. They place themselves, according to etiquette, on either side his throne, prostrate, with their foreheads to the ground, and thus their conference begins: "O Nu, thou the eldest of the gods, from whom I took my being, and ye the ancestor-gods, behold! men who are the emanation of mine eye have taken counsel together against me! Tell me what ye would do, for I have bidden you here before I slay them, that I may hear what ye would say thereto." Nu, as the eldest, has the right to speak first, and demands that the guilty shall be brought to judgment and formally condemned. "My son Ra, god greater than the god who made him, older than the gods who created him, sit thou upon thy throne, and great shall be the terror when thine eye shall rest upon those who plot together against thee!" But Ra not unreasonably fears that when men see the solemn pomp of royal justice, they may suspect the fate that awaits them, and "flee into the desert, their hearts terrified at that which I have to say to them." The desert was even then hostile to the tutelary gods of Egypt, and offered an almost inviolable asylum to their enemies. The conclave admits that the apprehensions of Ra are well founded, and pronounces in favour of summary execution; the Divine Eye is to be the executioner. "Let it go forth that it may smite those who have devised evil against thee, for there is no Eye more to be feared than thine when it attacketh in the form of Hathor." So the Eye takes the form of Hathor, suddenly falls upon men, and slays them right and left with great strokes of the knife. After some hours, Ra, who would chasten but not destroy his children, commands her to cease from her carnage; but the goddess has tasted blood, and refuses to obey him. "By thy life," she replies, "when I slaughter men then is my heart right joyful!" [Illustration: 236.jpg SOKHIT, THE LIONESS-HEADED. 1] 1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin from a bronze statuette of the Saite period in the Gizeh Museum (Mariette, _Album photographique du Musee de Boulaq_, pl. 6).