Benson, Margaret; Gourlay, Janet: The temple of Mut in Asher: an account of the excavation of the temple and of the religious representations and objects found therein, as illustrating the history of Egypt and the main religious ideas of the Egyptians (London, 1899)

96

THE TEMPLE OF MUT.

[part iii.

of the most ancient gods ; who again rose into a late
popularity. Bes, like Ta-urt or Apet, had a con-
nection with birth ; he held the child, fed and
amused it, danced before it, and hence became
a god of laughter. With Ta-urt also he shared
the function of being a serpent-destroyer, protecting
from serpents the young sun god. It is curious to
find this double connection of divinities of birth with
serpent foes, and one wonders if any stray influence
of such old wide-spread mythologies is seen in the
stories of dogs protecting from serpents an infant
king.

The Cynocephali, again, must be traced to the
same origin. It is believed that the chattering of
these dog-faced apes at sunrise led to their
specialisation as semi-divinities who adore the
rising sun. Representations of the four Cyno-
cephali in this attitude of worship are very common,
notably in the ' Book of the Dead.' The two which
we found defaced in the outer court may have been
members of another group of four.

It will be thus seen that there is no exclusiveness
in the dedication of a temple ; that a temple dedi-
cated to Mut does not contain representations of
her alone, even as the prayers on the Ka statues
it contains are not exclusively offered to her ; the
temple in fact would present much the same aspect
as a Romanist church to one who did not under-
stand Christianity—dedicated to one deity, it would
contain, as the church would appear to contain,