There were also Gom, Moui, and Kons, who are spoken of always as the _sons_ of the sun-god, those who reveal him or carry his messages to mankind, and in them the _rays_, as distinguished from the _disk_ of the sun, are apparently personified. The rays of the sun had also a feminine personification in Sekhet or Sekhet-Pasht, the goddess with the lioness’s head. To her several different and almost opposite qualities were attributed: as, indeed, an observer of the burning and enlightening rays of an Eastern sun might be doubtful whether to speak oftenest of the baleful fever-heat with which they infect the blood, or of their vivifying effects upon the germs of animal and vegetable life. Thus the lioness-goddess was at once feared and loved; dreaded at one moment as the instigator of fierce passions and unruly desires, invoked at another as the giver of joy, the source of all tender and elevating emotions. Her name, Pasht, means ‘the lioness,’ and was perhaps suggested by the fierceness of the sun’s rays, answering to the lion’s fierce strength or the angry light of his eyes. She was also called the ‘Lady of the Cave,’ suggesting something of mystery and concealment. Her chief worship was at Bubastis; but, judging from the frequency of her representations, must have been common throughout Egypt. [Sidenote: Thoth.] We will now take the second great light of the heavens, the moon, and consider the forms under which it was personified by the Egyptians. Rising and setting like the sun, and disappearing for regular periods, the moon was represented by a god, who, like the god of the setting sun, occupied a conspicuous position among the powers of the under-world, and was closely connected with thoughts of the existence of the soul after death, and the judgment pronounced on deeds done in the body. Thoth, ‘the Word,’ the ‘Lord of Divine Words,’ was the title given to this deity; but though always making one in the great assemblage in the judgment-hall, his office towards the dead does not approach that of Osiris in dignity. He is not the judge, he is the recorder who stands before the balance with the dread account in his hand, while the trembling soul awaits the final sentence. His character is that of a just recorder, a speaker of true words; he wears the ostrich feather, the token of exact rigid evenness and impartiality, and yet he is represented as having _uneven_ arms, as if to hint that the cold white light of justice, untempered by the warmth of love, cannot thoroughly apprehend what it seems to take exact account of, leaving, after all, one side unembraced, unenlightened, as the moonlight casts dense shadows around the spots where its beams fall. The silent, watching, peering moon! Who has not at times felt an inkling of the parable which the ancient Egyptians told of her cold eye and her unwarming rays which enlighten chilly, and point out while they distort?