24 THE REPTILES OF EGYPT. • 
great river had their tribal fetishes and deified totems '. The problem yet to be 
solved is how the superstition of these primitive men became modified, and evolved 
into the complex system of animal-worship distinctive of historical Egypt. Immense 
materials having a distinct bearing on this subject are accumulated in the museums 
of nearly every European nation, but as yet we are as far off from its solution as 
ever. 
The fact that the crocodile was both reverenced and detested by different 
communities along the banks of the Nile seems to favour the supposition that 
its worship was a survival either of fetishism or totemism. It was carefully nurtured 
and fed by the priests in certain localities, while in others it was ruthlessly slain 2 
and even eaten. 
Various trivial explanations, however, have been offered as to the origin of its 
worship. Diodorus Siculus says it may be asked, how is it that an animal that devours 
man should receive the reverence paid to a deity ? and as an answer he adduces as a 
reason that which had already been advanced by Cicero before him, viz. that not only 
the Nile, but the crocodiles inhabiting it were a protection to the country, as were it 
not for the prevalence of the crocodile the homesteads of the people would have been 
pillaged either by robbers from the east (Arabia) or from the west (Libya), who were 
deterred from swimming across the Nile by the fear of being devoured by the saurian. 
This explanation is interesting because it shows how numerous crocodiles were in 
the first century of the Christian era, largely brought about doubtless by their having 
been carefully preserved for ages at certain towns, such as Kom Ombos, Thebes, 
Koptos, and Crocodilopolis-Arsinoe in the Fayum, or lakeland ; but as an explanation 
of the origin of the cult it is worthless. Also in keeping with the state of knowledge 
in the time of Diodorus is the supposition he quotes, viz. that the worship of the 
crocodile arose because Mena, the first king of Egypt, had been saved from his dogs, 
that had pursued him to lake Mceris, by a crocodile which carried him in safety on its 
back to the opposite bank. De Pauw 3 advanced the theory that as " the crocodile was 
widely distributed in the flooded Nile, its appearance in places remote from the main 
stream signified water fit for drinking and suited for the irrigation of the land, and 
that consequently the Government encouraged its worship, believing that the super- 
stition, as long as it lasted, would be the means of keeping the canals open, especially 
in such cities as Koptos 4 and Arsinoe, which lay at some distance from the river." 
1 Tylor, ' Primitive Culture,' ii. p. 238, 2nd ed. 
' Strabo, op. cit. p. 418. 
3 Eeeh. Phil, sur les Egyptiens et sur les Chinois, ii. (1773, Berlin), p. 122. 
1 This may have been the case in Ptolemaic and in Eoman times, but Professor Petrie, " from the 
configuration of the base soil " about Koptos, says that " it seems not improbable that the river ran close to 
the western side of the town in the earliest times" (Koptos, 1896, p. 1). 
