120 THE PAGAN-CHRISTIAN OVERLAP OF THE WISE BIRD. 



such as eagles, hawks, and vultures. The columbse were most 

 admired in the East ; and, of the passeres, the suborder conirostres 

 found most favour in Europe. 



The ancient Egyptians, in their evolution of a doctrine of 

 immortality, made grallatores the symbols of their creed. Such 

 birds are generally of migratory habit, active, running rapidly, and 

 possessing great powers of flight. They are often monogamous 

 and are careful of their young. Associated with the raptorial 

 hawk and vulture, they " were the scavengers of the Nile Valley, 

 and man's existence depended on them" (Perrot and Chipiez). 



The bennu, Ardea bulbulcus, a sort of heron, was sacred to Osiris, 

 the god of agriculture. It was the emblem of resurrection, and 

 symbolised the rising again of the sun, the return of Osiris to the 

 light. It was sacred also to the planet Venus, whose appearance, 

 sometimes in the evening and anon as a morning star, was a sign 

 of the renewal of life. 



In a hymn of the 12th Dynasty we read " I am the Great Bennu 

 who am in Annu (Heliopolis). I am the creator of all things." 

 And we are reminded of the Gigantic Crane that waded on the 

 primaeval ooze, in the cosmogonic legends of other lands. 



The Egyptians, who bestowed so much care and cost upon their 

 sepulchres, nevertheless believed that the two most important parts 

 of a man did not remain in the tomb, namely the ba and the khu ; 

 and these they always represented in the form of grallatorial birds. 

 Their conception of the ba closely corresponded, Wiedemann 

 thinks, to our " soul," for it was a being which, on the death of 

 the man in whose body it had dwelt, left it in order to fly to the 

 gods, to whom it was akin, and with whom it abode when not 

 united to the man. But it was neither immaterial nor able to 

 dispense with food and drink. Sometimes the ba bore, in funerary 

 paintings, a human head and sometimes, too, it was furnished 

 with human hands. It was often depicted as flying down from 

 heaven with the anhh, the symbol of life, in its hand, and 

 approaching the burial place to visit the mummy ; or as flying 

 down into the vault, with the offerings it had found at the door of 



