As befitted its theological character, Heliopolis was rich in sacred animals. The bull Mnêvis, in which the Sun-god was incarnated, was a rival of the bull Apis of Memphis, the incarnation of Ptah. The two bulls point to a community of worship between the two localities in that primeval age when neither Ra of Heliopolis nor Ptah of Memphis was known, and when the primitive Egyptian population—whoever they may have been—were plunged in the grossest superstitions of African fetichism. Herodotos did not hear of the bull Mnêvis. But he was acquainted with the story of another sacred animal of Heliopolis, the _bennu_ or Phœnix, the sacred bird of Ra. Indeed, the fame of the phœnix had long before penetrated to Greece. Hesiod alludes to it, and the account of the marvellous bird given by Herodotos was “stolen,” we are told by Porphyry, from his predecessor Hekatæos. Hekatæos says that it was like an eagle, whereas the monuments show that it was a heron, and Herodotos follows him in the blunder. We may argue from this, as Professor Wiedemann does, that Herodotos himself never saw its picture. But otherwise his account is correct. Its wings were red and gold, and it represented the solar cycle of five hundred years. When Strabo visited Heliopolis in the age of Augustus he found it already half deserted. Its schools and library had been superseded by those of Alexandria, and although the houses in which the priestly philosophers had once lived were still standing, they were now empty. Among them was the house in which Plato and Eudoxos had studied not long after the time when Herodotos was there. In spite, therefore, of the Persian wars Herodotos must have found the ancient university still famous and flourishing. Just as in the Cairo of to-day the whole circle of Mohammedan science is taught in the University of El-Azhar on the basis of the Qorân, so in the Heliopolis which Herodotos visited all the circle of Egyptian knowledge was still taught and learned on the basis of the doctrines of the Heliopolitan school. The feelings with which the Greek traveller viewed the professors and their pupils—if, indeed, he was allowed to do so—must have been similar to those with which an English tourist now passes through the Azhar mosque. From Heliopolis Herodotos continued his voyage down the Pelusiac arm of the Nile to Bubastis, thus following nearly the same line of travel as the modern tourist who goes by train from Cairo to Zagazig. The rubbish heaps of Tel Basta, just beyond the station of Zagazig, mark the site of Bubastis, called Pi-beseth in the Old Testament (Ezek. xxx. 17), Pi-Bast, “the Temple of Bast,” by the Egyptians. The cat-headed goddess Bast presided over the fortunes of the nome and city, where she was identified with Sekhet, the lion-headed goddess of Memphis. But the cat and the lion never lay down in peace together. As a hieroglyphic text at Philæ puts it, Sekhet was cruel and Bast was kindly.