Motherhood was much respected both by sons and daughters,--more than is true of the children of modern Egypt,--and the wise men and poets of the land wrote and spoke most tenderly and sympathetically of the maternal love. As one of them said: "Thou shalt never forget what thy mother hath done for thee. She has borne and nourished thee. If thou forgettest her, she might blame thee, she might lift up her arms to God, and he would surely hear her complaint." An utterance of an Egyptian sage, which bears the spirit of the words of the Hebrew wise man, who said: "Forsake not the law of thy mother. Bind it continually upon thy heart, and tie it about thy neck. When thou goest it shall lead thee, and when thou sleepest it shall keep thee. When thou awakest it shall talk with thee;" and again: "Despise not thy mother when she is old." Affection between mothers and their sons was very strong. Many of the inscriptions upon tombs, with the accompanying pictures, reveal the dead son and his mother, and not the son and his father. This is in accordance with the very common fact in Eastern lands, especially in this part, that brothers and sisters by the same mother were much closer to one another than brothers and sisters by the same father. It is quite evident that in early days in Egypt descent was always traced through the mother, and not through the father. When, in a remote period, marriage ties were loose or polyandry was practised, it was manifestly easier to trace the family lineage through the mother. In ancient Egypt, it is interesting to note that inheritance of property passed not from a father to his son, but to the son of his sister, or sometimes to the son of his eldest daughter. When children were named they did not receive a family or surname. All names were individual, the gods coming in for their share of honor in the selection, as was very common among ancient people, among whom religion pervaded everything. The girls were frequently named, for poetic or imaginative reasons, after trees, animals, qualities of moral excellence, and the like. Such appellations as "Daughter-of-the-crocodile, Kitten," etc., were not infrequent; and even here we find a religious motive, for both the crocodile and the cat were worshipped in Egypt. Mummied sacred cats have been exhumed in great numbers in recent years, only to be ruthlessly turned into fertilizers by the unappreciative and practical Westerner. "Beautiful Sycamore" is also an example of a woman's name. "Darling" and "Beloved" were also favorite names, and "My Queen" is also found. From the number of instances discovered, it would seem--and not unnaturally--that women liked to be called after Hathor, the goddess of love.