It has been noticed that while we find inscribed upon the monuments of Egypt a vast multitude of gods, as in India, the number diminishes as we ascend. Amun Ra alone is found dedicated upon the oldest monuments, in three distinct forms, into one or other of whose characters all the other divinities may be resolved. Amun was the chief god, the sacred name, corresponding with the Aum of the Indians, also, probably, the Egyptian On. According to Mr. Wilkinson, the Egyptians held Kneph, Neph, Nef, or Chnoubus, "as the idea of the Spirit of God which moved upon the face of the waters." He was the Spirit, animating and perpetuating the world, and penetrating all its parts; the same with the Agathodaemon of the Phoenicians, and like him, was symbolized by the snake, an emblem of the Spirit which pervades the universe. He was commonly represented with a Ram's head; and though the colour of the Egyptian divinities is perhaps more commonly green than any other, he is as frequently depicted blue. He was the god of the Nile, which is indirectly confirmed by Pindar; and by Ptolemy, who says that the Egyptians gave the name of Agathodaemon to the western, or Heracleotic branch. From his mouth proceeded the Mundane egg, from which sprung Phtah, the creative power. Mr. Wilkinson proceeds:--"Having separated the Spirit from the Creator, and purposing to act apart and defy each attribute, which presented itself to their imagination, they found it necessary to form another deity from the creative power, whom they call Phtah, proceeding from the former, and thence deemed the son of Kneph. Some difference was observed between the power, which created the world, and that which caused and ruled over the generation of man, and continued to promote the continuation of the human species. This latter attribute of the divinity was deified under the appellation Khem. Thus was the supreme deity known by the three distinct names of, Kneph, Phthah, Khem: to these were joined the goddesses Sate, Neith, and Buto; and the number of the eight deities was completed by the addition of Ra, or Amun-Ra," this last, however, was not a distinct god, but a name common to each person of the triad: and, indeed, to all the three names above the name of Amun was constantly prefixed.[9] Phthah corresponds with the Indian Brahma, and the Orphic Phanes, and appears in several other forms. In one form he is represented as an infant--often as an infant Priapaean figure, and deformed.