11 inches in length, and one end of it is pointed. The figures cut on it are in outline, and appear on one side only; on the pointed end is a fly, and on the rounded end a flower. In addition to the fabulous hawk-headed, winged, and human-headed lion and the hippopotamus, we have the Bull-god, with a head at each end of his body, a frog with a knife, seated on a bowl (?), and the head of a vulture, with two feathers on it, within a rectangle.1 On a third example (B.M. 24425) the figures are in low relief, and both ends are rounded. Here we have a hippopotamus, a lion, a serpent,

a cat,, a ram-headed man, a beetle, a rope-work design, >∞∞∞∞∞,

a panther (or, leopard), the Ape of Thoth bringing back the Utchat, a god, full-faced (the original of Bes ?), a ram-headed god with a sceptre, a frog on a stand, , a god carrying, a pair of serpents with legs, and a hippopotamus.

When the first of these objects arrived in the Museum, it was suggested by one archaeologist that it was a boomerang, and by another that it was a kind of collar which, by virtue of the figures cut upon it, possessed magical properties, and gave its wearer protection against the powers of evil. That it was supposed to protect its wearer is proved by the words setep sa, which occur on it just

before Senbet, its owner's name.

988880

But the fact that the inscription

gives the name of Senbet, a married woman, disposes of the theory that it was a boomerang, and its size and shape make the theory that it was a collar impossible. The fact that the raised figures in the middle of B.M. 24425 are almost rubbed away, and that both B.M. 18175 and 24426 were broken in the middle in ancient days, suggests to me that these objects were frequently held in the hand and much used by their owners during their lifetime. As one of the three belonged to a woman it is probable that each of the others belonged to a woman, and we may assume that women carried and in some way used these objects at great religious festivals, and during times of great public rejoicings, e.g., when hunters returned after a successful hunt, and soldiers after a victorious campaign came home laden with spoil. It is possible that B.M. 20778 is a portion of an object of this class, though it must date from the time of the Old Kingdom (VIth dynasty, or earlier). This object is of ivory and is 6 inches long, and the end that is left is rounded. On the convex side are cut in relief a lion's head, and the figures of a bull-headed god and another god, each holding in the right hand and a sceptre in the left, and standing on a serpent. Each of these figures has a bronze eye inlaid. The general appearance of these figures recalls that of the figures in the hunting scenes sculptured on the so-called "green slate palettes" of the Archaic Period, and the objects described above may be copies or imitations of objects which women carried under the early dynasties. Under the New Kingdom the wands which women waved in times of rejoicing were made in pairs, as we see from B.M. 20779, and they were in the form of human arms and hands. Each of these has the head of Hathor, i.e., a woman's face with a cow's ears, wearing a heavy wig, the lappets of which curl outwards. Another pair of arms, cut from a small tusk, are only 7 inches in length, and they are decorated with circles with dots inside them, and six lines across each wrist to represent a bracelet. They were acquired by the British Museum with the Anastasi Collection in 1839, and have been described as castanets.1

THE CIPPUS OF HORUS

DURING the rule of the last two or three native kings of Egypt, i.e., in the IVth century B.C., the Egyptians endeavoured to protect their houses and courtyards and fields from the attacks of fiends and devils and their malign influences by setting up in their rooms and gardens little stone monuments, which Birch and the

1 Descriptions and illustrations of a number of these objects were published by the late F. Legge in the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, Vol. XXVII, 1905, pp. 130-52, 297–303.

older Egyptologists called "Cippi of Horus." These pillars, or boundary-stones, or landmarks of Horus, are made of hard stone, frequently black in colour, and they usually have the form of a stele with a rounded top and a convex pedestal projecting in front. On this are sculptured in high relief a figure of Ḥerpakhrat (Harpokrates) standing with each foot resting on a crocodile, and the head of Bes, also in high relief, above his head. They vary in height from 2 or 3 to 20 inches; the small ones were carried or worn on the person as amulets, and the large ones were placed in the halls of houses, and probably at certain spots on roads and at the entrances to fields and vineyards. The largest known is the so-called "Metternich Stele," which was found in 1828 during the building of a cistern in a Franciscan Monastery at Alexandria and was presented by Muḥammad 'Alî Pâshâ to Prince Metternich. As it bears on it the cartouches of Nektanebus I, who reigned from B.C. 378 to 360, it is clear that this extraordinary and wonderful object was made in the first half of the IVth century B.C. The reliefs and figures of the gods were believed to possess the power of driving away every devil, and noxious beast, and reptile from the persons and possessions of all those who were under their protection, and the inscriptions contained spells, or words of power, which Thoth himself had composed. The Cippus of Horus symbolized the triumph of light over darkness, of good over evil, of virtue over vice, and of order over chaos. Armed with the power of the "Aged God who renews his youth in his season, the Ancient of Days who makes himself a child again," and acting under his protection, the followers of the light were able to trample under foot serpents, snakes, vipers, and scorpions, and to destroy the crocodile, hippopotamus, lion, and the horned beast of the desert, the bodies of which were the abidingplaces of monstrous devils. The arrows of light which Horus shot forth into the darkness scattered all the powers of night and evil. The figures of more than one hundred gods are cut on the Metternich Stele, and each had its specific work to do in protecting the man who through his uprightness of life was able to place himself under its charge.

The Cippus of Horus (B.M. 36250) in hard black basalt is a good typical example, and may be thus briefly described: The centre of the front of the cippus, which is 71⁄2 inches in height, and is made of black basalt, is occupied by a figure of Herpakhrat, i.e., "Horus the Child," who wears on the right side of his head the lock of hair, 2, symbolic of youth. His arms hang by his sides and he grasps in his right hand two serpents, a scorpion by its tail, and a species of gazelle by its horns, and in his left he grasps another pair of serpents, a scorpion by its tail and a lion by its tail. Each foot of the god is planted on the head of a crocodile. Above his head is a head of Bes, and on the flat surface above it, within a disk,

1 It was published by Golénischeff at Leipzig in 1877.