Paul Lucas, in the early part of the eighteenth century, tells us that in his time it was called “the angel,” and that shortly before his visit to the Nile it had cured a woman of Ekhmîm of paralysis, from which she had suffered for eight years, by simply crawling up into her litter when she was brought to its dwelling-place. Paul Lucas himself was a witness of its supernatural gifts. It was brought to him by the keeper of the shrine when he was visiting a Bey on the opposite side of the river. Suddenly it disappeared, and was nowhere to be found; but a messenger, who was sent post haste to the shrine, returned with the information that “the angel was already there, and had advanced more than twenty steps to meet the dervish who takes care of it.”(172) Norden, a few years later, has a similar tale to relate. He was told that the serpent-saint “never dies,” and that it “cures and grants favours to all those who implore its aid and offer sacrifices to it.” The cures were effected by the mere presence of the snake, which came in person to those who desired its help. The Christians, he adds, admit the miraculous powers of the Shêkh equally with the Mohammedans, only they explain them as due to a demon who clothes himself in a serpent’s form.(173) Saint or demon, however, Shêkh Herîdî is really the lineal descendant of a serpent which has been worshipped in its neighbourhood since the prehistoric days of Egypt. A bronze serpent with the head of Zeus Serapis has been found in the mounds of Benâwît, on the western side of the Nile, which face the entrance to the shrine of the Shêkh; and the nome in which the shrine is situated was that of Du-Hefi, “the mountain of the snake.” The serpent of Shêkh Herîdî, with his miraculous powers of healing, must thus have been already famous in the days when the nomes of Upper Egypt first received their names. The old neolithic population of the desert must have already venerated the snake that dwelt in the cleft of the rock above which now rises the sacred “tomb” of Shêkh Herîdî.(174)