With regard to this change of cult, we moderns should have no difficulty. We go to Constantinople and see Mahommedans worshipping in St. Sophia; we go to Greece or Sicily and find Christian worship in many of the old temples. Thus the change of cult in Egypt, which I claim to have demonstrated on astronomical grounds at Denderah, is a thing with which we are perfectly familiar nowadays. The great point, however, is that in Egypt the change of cult might depend upon astronomical change--upon the precession of the equinoxes, as well as upon different schools of religious or astronomical thought. We gather from this an idea of the wonderfully continuous observations which were made by the Egyptians of the risings and settings of stars, because, if the work had not been absolutely continuous, they would certainly never have got the very sharp idea of the facts of precession which they undoubtedly possessed; and it is also, I think, pretty clear that future astronomical study will enable us to write the history of those changes which are now hidden by that tremendous mythological difficulty, which has not yet been faced. That, of course, is not the only difficulty, because the question is clouded by the absence of authentic dates and the perpetual reference to the past which is met with in all the monuments. The Egyptians were much more anxious to bring back to knowledge what happened 1000 years before than to give an idea of the current history of the country. We have, then, at length arrived at a possible explanation of the difficulties acknowledged in regard to the temples of Denderah in Chapters XIX. and XX. It is, briefly, that at some epoch observations of the star Sirius replaced, or were added to, those made of γ Draconis. Mythologically, a new Isis would be born. This point will be referred to later; one of the longest-lasting astro-theological strifes in Egypt was the fight for supremacy between the priests of Amen and the priests of Set. At Denderah the former were ultimately victorious, and hence the change of cult. This suggestion is based on the following considerations:-- (1) While the Denderah Hathor was represented by the disk and horns on a hippopotamus, at Thebes (the city of the "Bull" Amen) Hathor is represented by a cow with a like head-dress. (2) Isis, represented originally as a goddess with the two feathers of Amen, standing in a boat, is now changed to a cow with the disk and horns. (3) Hathor was the "cow of the western hills" of Thebes. It is in these hills that the temple Dêr el-Bahari lies; and this temple, if oriented originally to Sirius, would have been founded about 8000 B.C., when Sirius at rising would have an amplitude of 20° S. of E. (4) A temple was built or restored later at Denderah, and Sirius with the cow's horns and disk became the great goddess there; and when her supremacy all over Egypt became undoubted, her birthplace was declared--at Denderah--to have been Denderah.[84]