Poole, Reginald S.: The cities of Egypt (London, 1882)

82 CITIES OF EGYPT.

in Egypt as physical evil, the embodiment of the desert,
and the sea, darkness, and the storm, the opponent of
Osiris, the good being, the Nile, and light. He was also
specially the patron of foreigners, the power who swept
the children of the desert like a sandstorm over the
fertile land. Sutech thus succeeded Ptah, and held this
place throughout the Empire. With the Empire, how-
ever, the worship of the sun-gods was introduced ; and
when at length Sutech or Set was expelled from the
Pantheon, through a confusion of moral with physical
evil, the chief divinity became Horus, the sun of the day.
There are thus three periods of the religion of Zoan,
corresponding to the three foundations of the city, those
of the Memphite, the Shepherd, and the mixed Theban
worship, and a fourth period due to an innovation. It
must not be thought, however, that ever, save for a time
under the Shepherds, there was one system to the exclu-
sion of the rest. At all other ages the general belief of
the whole country admitted the joint reverence of several
divinities. Thus while Ramses II. maintained the foreign
religion, he also preserved the still earlier worship, and
added to it the popular reverence for the sun-gods, whom
as the child of the sun, for so we understand his name,
he specially reverenced.