It is remarkable that the “soul of the world,” Chnuphis, or Bait, is represented as a coluber, and that it appears to be identified with Aphôphis in one chapter of the Ritual. Mr. Cooper states that, although a large coluber which is figured as being worshipped resembles Aphôphis, it cannot be him, as there is no example of direct worship paid to Aphôphis, “unless, indeed, we identify it with Sutekh, as the Shepherd Kings, the last but one of whom was named Aphôphis, appear to have done.” The serpent Aphôphis is sometimes represented with the crown of Lower Egypt upon his head, and at one period he was identified with Set or Seth, the national deity of the Hyksos or Shepherd tribes. All traces of the worship of Set was obliterated from the Egyptian monuments, but one representation has been preserved in which Set is figured with Horus, united as one divinity, between the triple serpent of good. This shows that Set, and probably, therefore, his serpent emblem, was originally not considered evil. Lower Egypt was largely populated by Semitic peoples, whose national deity was their legendary ancestor Seth, and the detestation with which the Egyptians regarded Set and the serpent Aphôphis identified with him was probably the result of national enmity. Mr. Cooper points out that the serpent of good is always represented by the Egyptians as upright and the serpent of evil as crawling, this being generally the only distinction made. The god Chnuphis, the “soul of the world,” is usually figured as a Serpent (Coluber) walking upon two human legs, and curiously enough this is the form taken by the evil principle of Persian mythology, the great serpent walking on two feet. A similar inversion of ideas occurs in the religious mythology of the Naga peoples of the East. Near the ruined temples of Cambodia, as on the Buddhist Topes of India, are sculptured gigantic serpents with voluminous folds supported by human figures, as the gigantic Aphôphis is represented on the Egyptian monuments. There must have been some special reason why the great serpent was regarded so differently by various peoples, and this was probably the result of race antagonism.