gateways of the temple of Nit seemed colossal to eyes accustomed to the modest dimensions of most Greek sanctuaries; these were, moreover, the first great monuments that the strangers had seen since they landed, and the novelty of their appearance had a good deal to do with the keenness of the impression produced. The goddess showed herself in hospitable guise to the visitors; she welcomed them all, Greek or Persian, at her festivals, and initiated them into several of her minor rites, without demanding from them anything beyond tolerance on certain points of doctrine. [Illustration: 346.jpg FOUNTAIN AND SCHOOL OF THE MOTHER OF LITTLE MOHAMAD] Her dual attributes as wielder of the bow and shuttle had inspired the Greeks with the belief that she was identical with that one of their own goddesses who most nearly combined in her person this complex mingling of war and industry: in her they Fountain and School of the Mother of Little Mohammed worshipped the prototype of their own Pallas. On the evening of the 17th day of Thoth, Herodotus saw the natives, rich and poor, placing on the fronts of their dwellings large flat lamps filled with a mixture of salt and oil which they kept alight all night in honour of Osiris and of the dead.* * In my opinion it is not the festivals of Athyr that are here referred to, but those of the month of Thoth, when, as the inscriptions show, it was the practice to _light the new fire_, according to the ritual, after first extinguishing the fire of the previous year, not only in the temple of the god, but in all the houses of the city.