the young boy, was the most prominent subject on the temples, and the commonest figure in the homes of the people. The other main group of human gods was Amon, Mut, and Khonsu of Thebes. _Amon_ was the local god of Karnak, and owed his importance in Egypt to the political rise of his district. The Theban kingdom of the twelfth dynasty spread his fame, the great kings of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasty ascribed their victories to Amon, his high priest became a political power which absorbed the state after the twentieth dynasty, and the importance of the god only ceased with the fall of his city. The original attributes and the origin of the name of Amon are unknown; but he became combined with Ra, the sun-god, and as Amon-Ra he was 'king of the gods,' and 'lord of the thrones of the world.' The supremacy of Amon was for some centuries an article of political faith, and many other gods were merged in him, and only survived as aspects {48} of the great god of all. The queens were the high priestesses of the god, and he was the divine father of their children; the kings being only incarnations of Amon in their relation to the queens. +Mut+, the great mother, was the goddess of Thebes, and hence the consort of Amon. She is often shown as leading and protecting the kings, and the queens appear in the character of this goddess. Little is known about her otherwise, and she disappears in the later theology. +Khonsu+ is a youthful god combined in the Theban system as the son of Amon and Mut. He is closely parallel to Thōth as being a god of time, as a moon god, and of science, 'the executor of plans.' A large temple was dedicated to him at Karnak, but otherwise he was not of religious importance. +Neit+ was a goddess of the Libyan people; but her worship was firmly implanted by them in Egypt. She was a goddess of hunting and of weaving, the two arts of a nomadic people. Her emblem was a distaff with two crossed arrows, and her name was written with a figure of a weaver's shuttle. She was adored in the first dynasty, when the name Merneit, 'loved by Neit,' occurs; and her priesthood was one of the most {49} usual in the pyramid period. She was almost lost to sight during some thousands of years, but she became the state goddess of the twenty-sixth dynasty, when the Libyans set up their capital in her city of Sais. In later times she again disappears from customary religion. {50} CHAPTER VII THE COSMIC GODS