1 Bisu, pp. 111-184. The tail-piece to the summary of this chapter is a figure of Bisu, drawn by Faucher-Gudin from an amulet in blue enamelled pottery. The sky, the earth, the stars, the sun, the Nile, were so many breathing and thinking beings whose lives were daily manifest in the life of the universe. They were worshipped from one end of the valley to the other, and the whole nation agreed in proclaiming their sovereign power. But when the people began to name them, to define their powers and attributes, to particularize their forms, or the relationships that subsisted among them, this unanimity was at an end. Each principality, each nome, each city, almost every village, conceived and represented them differently. Some said that the sky was the Great Horus, Haroeris, the sparrow-hawk of mottled plumage which hovers in highest air, and whose gaze embraces the whole field of creation. Owing to a punning assonance between his name and the word _horu_, which designates the human countenance, the two senses were combined, and to the idea of the sparrow-hawk there was added that of a divine face, whose two eyes opened in turn, the right eye being the sun, to give light by day, and the left eye the moon, to illumine the night. The face shone also with a light of its own, the zodiacal light, which appeared unexpectedly, morning or evening, a little before sunrise, and a little after sunset. These luminous beams, radiating from a common centre, hidden in the heights of the firmament, spread into a wide pyramidal sheet of liquid blue, whose base rested upon the earth, but whose apex was slightly inclined towards the zenith. The divine face was symmetrically framed, and attached to earth by four thick locks of hair; these were the pillars which upbore the firmament and prevented its falling into ruin. A no less ancient tradition disregarded as fabulous all tales told of the sparrow-hawk, or of the face, and taught that heaven and earth are wedded gods, Sibu, and Nuit, from whose marriage came forth all that has been, all that is, and all that shall be. [Illustration: 115.jpg NUIT THE STARRY ONE. 1] 1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a painted coffin of the XXIth dynasty in Leyden.