Page:The Religion of Ancient Egypt.djvu/113

 Nutrit against harm." Nutrit, the name of a town (in this place equivalent to Dendera), has exactly the same meaning as Samaria, Ashdod, Gaza, Valentia, and many other names significant of strength. Religious purifications were supposed to give strength, and the verb nutra is therefore often found in parallelism with āb and tur, both of which have the sense of religious purification.

I will add one more illustration, which by itself might not be of much weight, but is really important when taken in conjunction with other evidence. The goddess Isis is distinguished among other divinities by the frequent epithet nutrit. When the inscriptions in her honour are written in Greek, she is most frequently called or.

There is yet another Egyptian word cognate to those we have been studying. Nutrit signifies "eye-ball." The notion here is of something fortified, protected, guarded. "Custodi me ut pupillam oculi:" "Keep me as the apple of the eye." The Arabic word hadaqat, which means the same thing, has an exactly similar etymology. And several other parallel instances might be cited.

The Egyptian nutar, I argue therefore, means Power, which is also the meaning of the Hebrew El. The