As time went on there was less of zoölatry, and the Sun-Gods and their associates figured more largely among the cult of the people. The sun's course was not represented as that of a chariot, as among the Persians and Greeks, but rather as the voyage of a Nile boat, upon which the God Re navigated the heavens; from which it will appear that the priestly religion was making slow progress to monotheism by means of oligotheism. The secret teaching of the priests was now more and more to the effect that the Gods stood not so much for themselves as for something else. During the fourth dynasty the lower Egyptian city Anu was known as the City of the Sun, hence the Greek name for the place, Heliopolis. Still more characteristic was the giving of the name of Osiris, who figured as God of Abdu, which the Greeks called Abydos, in upper Egypt, to the God of the Sunset, who was king of the lower domains and of death, brother and at the same time husband of Isis, brother also of Set, who slew him, and father of Horus, i. e. God of the new sun, who figures after each sunset. Horus fought with Set, but being unable to completely destroy him left him the desert as his kingdom, while himself holding to the Nile valley. This story of the Gods was publicly represented in various scenes on certain holidays, but only the priests, i. e., the initiated, knew the real meaning of the representations. Even the name of Osiris and his abode were kept secret, and outsiders heard only of the "great God" dwelling somewhere in "the West." These were the most famous of all the old Egyptian mysteries, though to them were added many others, including that of Apis, the sacred bull of Memphis, who served also as the symbol of the Sun and of the fructifying Nile; beneath his tongue was to be seen the sacred beetle, and the behavior of the great animal was supposed to be prophetic and his actions to mean oracular sayings. The Sphinx again was a sun-God, his image being repeated throughout the Nile region, and was always thought of as a male; the head was represented as that of some king, while the whole figure stood for the Sun-God Harmachis; although the sphinx later introduced into Greece was always female. While the Egyptians did not attribute to their numerous Gods divine perfection, they nevertheless regarded religious practices as a means of currying favor with their divinities, a custom apparently still in favor. The priests believed in a Sun-God as the only true deity, but not so the people; thus the priests in the various cities praised their local and tutelary God as supreme and made him identical with Re, whose name they appended to the original, as for instance _Amon-Re_. The king, no matter where he was, prayed always to the local deity as lord of heaven and earth, yet in words always the same.