After a time the cedar, through the treachery of Bata’s false wife, was cut down. As it fell, with the heart of Bata, the latter dropped dead. For more than three years Anpu sought his brother’s heart; then he found it. “He brought a vessel of cold water, dropped the heart into it, and sat down according to his daily wont. But when the night was come, the heart absorbed the water. Bata [whose body seems to have been preserved--like a mummy--all this time] trembled in all his limbs, and continued looking at his elder brother, but his heart was faint. Then Anpu took the vessel of cold water which his brother’s heart was in. And when the latter [Bata] had drunk it up, his heart rose in its place; and he became as he had been before. Each embraced the other, and each one of them held conversation with his companion.” The revivified Bata was transformed into a sacred bull, an Apis. That bull, by the treachery, again, of Bata’s wife, was killed. “And as they were killing him, and he was in the hands of his attendants, he shook his neck, and two drops of blood fell upon the two door-posts of His Majesty [in whose keeping was the sacred bull]; one was on the one side of the great staircase of His Majesty, the other upon the other side; and they grew up into two mighty persea trees, each of which stood alone.” Thus the blood was both life and life-giving, and the heart was as the very soul of its possessor, in the estimation of the ancient Egyptians. In primitive America also, as in ancient Egypt, the blood and the heart, were held pre-eminently sacred. Among the Dakotas, in North America, the heart of the deer and of other animals killed in hunting, was offered to the spirits.[205] In Central America and in South America, it was the blood and the heart of the human victims offered in sacrifice, which were counted the peculiar portion of the gods.[206] In description of a human sacrifice among the Nahuas of Central America,[207] a Mexican historian says: “The high priest then approached, and with a heavy knife of obsidian cut open the miserable man’s breast. Then, with a dexterity acquired by long practice, the sacrificer tore forth the yet palpitating heart, which he first offered to the sun, and then threw at the feet of the idol. Taking it up, he again offered it to the god, and afterwards burned it; preserving the ashes with great care and veneration. Sometimes the heart was placed in the mouth [of the idol] with a golden spoon. It was customary also to anoint the lips of the image, and the cornices of the door with the victim’s blood.”[208]