Page:The Mythology of All Races Vol 12 (Egyptian and Indo-Chinese).djvu/51

Rh cial recognition until later, in the Second and Third Dynasties, nevertheless he seems to be the older personification of the sun since his name furnishes the popular designation of the solar disk.

Less popular is the description of the sun as Khepri (Kheprer in the earlier orthography), or "the Scarab-Like," i.e. as a scarab rolling his egg (the sun) across the sky, or as a man who wears a scarab on his head or instead of a head. Later theologians endeavoured to harmonize this idea with the other representations of the sun-god by explaining Khepri as the weaker sun, i.e. as it appears in the morning when the solar egg is formed, or, sometimes, in the evening, or even as the sun in embryonic condition beneath the horizon at night,2 when it traverses the regions of the dead and shines on the lower world. When the scarab draws a second egg behind it, or carries two eggs as it flies athwart the sky, it symbolizes the morning and the evening sun.3

At the very earliest period, however, the sun was also described as a man whose face, eye, or head-ornament was the solar body. In the latter in stance this was regularly compared to the uraeus, the fiery asp, wound about Pharaoh's brow as a sign of his absolute power over life and death. When, as we shall see, the sun-god is bitten by a serpent as he walks across the sky, on the celestial road, this is merely a later reversion of the myth and blends the interpretations of the sun as an eye (which may be lost) and as an asp. The most popular idea, however, is that in a ship (which has perhaps replaced an earlier double raft)4 the sun sails over the sky, conceived as a blue river or lake which is a continuation of the sea and of the Nile. At the prow of this solar ship we frequently find a curious detail, sometimes represented as a carpet or mat5 on which the god is seated, often thus duplicating a second figure of himself in