The creator who was worshipped at Memphis, at the other end of the Nile valley, was a potter also.(104) This was Ptaḥ, whose name is derived from a root which means to “open.” According to Porphyry, he had sprung from an egg which had come from the mouth of Kneph. But the reference in the name is probably to the ceremony of “opening the mouth” of a mummy, or the statue of the dead man with a chisel, a finger, or some red pebbles, in order to confer upon it the capability of receiving the breath of life, and of harbouring the double or the soul.(105) Ptaḥ was represented as a mummy; he was, in fact, one of the gods of the underworld, who, like Osiris or the mummified Horus of Nekhen, had their tombs as well as their temples. He must have been the creative potter, however, before he became a mummy. Perhaps his transformation dates from the period of his fusion with Sokaris, who seems to have been the god of the cemetery of Memphis.(106) At any rate, Ptaḥ and Khnum are alike forms of the same primitive deity, and the names they bear are epithets merely. At Philæ, Ptaḥ is pictured as about to model man out of a lump of clay, and the Khnumu, or “creators” who helped him to fashion the world, were his children.(107) The Khnumu are the Patæki of Herodotos (iii. 37), whose figures, the Greek writer tells us, were carved by the Phœnicians on the prows of their vessels, probably to ward off the evil eye. They were dwarfs, like the Danga dwarf of Herkhuf or the god Bes, with thick heads, bowed legs, long arms, and bushy beards; and their terra-cotta figures have often been met with in the tombs. From the name Patæki we might infer that they had been borrowed by the Phœnicians from Egypt. But it is also possible that both Egypt and Phœnicia derived them from the same source. Dr. Scheil has pointed out that a similar figure occurs on early Babylonian seal-cylinders, where its Sumerian name is given as “the god Nugidda” or “the Dwarf,” and it is sometimes represented as dancing before the goddess Istar.(108) Thus far, however, no text has been discovered which associates the god Nugidda with the creator of the world.