192 THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS. CHAP. XIV. 



observed*, this was not given to Amun, as the 

 Greeks and Romans imagined) ; and the inhabit- 

 ants of that district deemed it unlawful to eat its 

 flesh t, or to sacrifice it on their altars. Accord- 

 ing to Herodotus, they sacrificed a ram once a 

 year at Thebes, on the festival of Jupiter t, — the 

 only occasion on which it was permitted to kill 

 this sacred animal ; and after having clad the statue 

 of the God in the skin, the people made a solemn 

 lamentation, striking themselves as they walked 

 around the temple. They afterwards buried the 

 body in a sacred coffin. 



The sacred boats or arks of Neph were orna- 

 mented with the head of a ram ; and bronze 

 figures of this animal were made by the Thebans, 

 to be worn as amulets, or kept as guardians of the 

 house, to which they probably paid their adorations 

 in private, invoking them as intercessors for the 

 aid of the Deity they represented. Their heads 

 were often surmounted by the globe and Uraeus, 

 like the statues of the Deity himself. Strabo§, 

 Clemens II, and many other writers, notice the sacred 

 character of the sheep ; and the two former state 

 that it was looked upon with the same veneration 

 in the Saite nome, as in the neighbourhood of 

 Thebes. The four-horned sheep mentioned by 

 ^lian^, which, he says, were kept in the temple 

 of Jupiter, are still common in Egypt. 



* Vide supra, Vol. I. (2d Series) p. 237. 241. 2W. 

 -)- Plutarch seems to think all the priests abstained from it, as from 

 swine's flesh, s. 5. H. 



% Ilerodot. ii. 42. § Strabo, xvii. p. 552. 559. 



II Clem. Orat. Adhort. p. 17. if JEWan, Nat. Hist. xi. 40. 



