We cannot always understand what led the inhabitants of each nome to affect one animal rather than another. Why, towards Graeco-Roman times, should they have worshipped the jackal, or even the dog, at Siut?[**] How came Sit to be incarnate in a fennec, or in an imaginary quadruped?[***] Occasionally, however, we can follow the train of thought that determined their choice. ** Uapuaitu, the _guide of the celestial ways_, who must not be confounded with Anubis of the Cynopolite nome of Upper Egypt, was originally the feudal god of Siut. He guided human souls to the paradise of the Oasis, and the sun upon its southern path by day, and its northern path by night. *** Champollion, Rosellini, Lepsius, have held that the Typhonian animal was a purely imaginary one, and Wilkinson says that the Egyptians themselves admitted its unreality by representing it along with other fantastic beasts. This would rather tend to show that they believed in its actual existence (cf. p. 112 of this History). Plbyte thinks that it may be a degenerated form of the figure of the ass or oryx. The habit of certain monkeys in assembling as it were in full court, and chattering noisily a little before sunrise and sunset, would almost justify the as yet uncivilized Egyptians in entrusting cynocephali with the charge of hailing the god morning and evening as he appeared in the east, or passed away in the west. [Illustration: 139.jpg TWO IMAGES] If Ra was held to be a grasshopper under the Old Empire, it was because he flew far up in the sky like the clouds of locusts driven from Central Africa which suddenly fall upon the fields and ravage them. Most of the Nile-gods, Khnumu, Osiris, Harshafitu, were incarnate in the form of a ram or of a buck. Does not the masculine vigour and procreative rage of these animals naturally point them out as fitting images of the life-giving Nile and the overflowing of its waters? It is easy to understand how the neighbourhood of a marsh or of a rock-encumbered rapid should have suggested the crocodile as supreme deity to the inhabitants of the Fayum or of Ombos. The crocodiles there multiplied so rapidly as to constitute a serious danger; there they had the mastery, and could be appeased only by means of prayers and sacrifices. When instinctive terror had been superseded by reflection, and some explanation was offered of the origin of the various cults, the very nature of the animal seemed to justify the veneration with which it was regarded. The crocodile is amphibious; and Sobku was supposed to be a crocodile, because before the creation the sovereign god plunged recklessly into the dark waters and came forth to form the world, as the crocodile emerges from the river to lay its eggs upon the bank. Most of the feudal divinities began their lives in solitary grandeur, apart from, and often hostile to, their neighbours. Families were assigned to them later.[*]