According to Bunsen, “the mythological system proceeded from ‘the concealed god,’ Ammon, to the creating god. The latter appears first of all as the generative power of nature in the Phallic god Khem, who is afterward merged into Ammon-ra. Then sprung up the idea of a creative power in Kneph. He forms the limbs of Osiris (the primitive soul) in contradistinction to Ptah, who, as the strictly demiurgic principle, forms the visible world. Neith is the creative principle as nature represented under a female form. Finally her son, Ra Helios, appears as the last of the series in the character of father and nourisher of terrestrial things. It is he whom an ancient monument represents as the demiurgic principle creating the mundane egg.” At the head of this Pantheon stands Ammon, the concealed and invisible. The other figures are personifications of his attributes, and appear as separate and individual gods. In order to make the theogony intelligible to the people, these gods are represented by symbols. There is thus a regular gradation from the symbol to the divine attribute, and thence to the Unknown Greatest. It is the sublimity of paganism, presenting us with one god carrying on the infinite works of the universe by means of his various attributes. The symbols were chosen from nature, and are generally expressive, if not always dignified. Firstly, as to the symbols proper, the lotus and scarabæus may be mentioned as of most frequent occurrence. The former, the sacred flower, is often met with in connection with the figures of the divinities, and symbolizes the beneficence of nature’s revivifying powers, water and heat. The scarabæus (Fig. 31) is the symbol of creation, and when represented with out-spread wings, of immortality. It may appear singular that a loathsome insect should thus have been honored, but the explanation is simple. It is to be found in the habits of the insect itself. Placing its egg in a ball, it buried the latter in the sand, where it was hatched by the rays of the sun, and the ball opening with the breaking of the egg, the young insect appeared. It was to the Egyptian a perfect symbol of creation, and hence of the creative god Phtha. When found with outstretched wings, it is an ornament of the dead, and symbolizes the apparent circuit of the sun setting at night to rise in the morning. Thus the sun of life sets in death to reappear in immortality, as the scarabæus, under the influence of its divine warmth, breaks from its egg into insect life. The sun was the symbol of Ra, the sun-god, “the father and nourisher of terrestrial things.” In representing the gods, the figures selected were to a great extent arbitrary. The Egyptians honored themselves by discovering that in the humblest form of nature there was something worthy of honor. They accordingly took the plants and animals of their land and wove them into their religion, by adopting a system of natural symbols too intricate to be here given in detail. The following