70 
always represent the deity Horus the child as a naked boy 
standing upon the backs of two crocodiles, which turn back 
their heads, and holding in his hands a scorpion, a lion, two 
serpents, and a gazelle. To the right and left of him are 
generally two standards, dedicated to the two forms of the sun, 
and over the deity is the monstrous head of the god Bes, with 
his tongue protruding. The field of the stele is generally 
filled with a magical formula, almost always badly written. 
The god Horus is called upon them “The Old Man who 
becomes Young ” ; and from hence it is supposed that the idea 
arose of the eternal youth of the victorious divinity at the time of 
death, or another form of expressing the resurrection under the 
type of the rising sun. The crocodile could not turn his head; 
it was to the belief of the Egyptians a symbol of an impossibility; 
therefore, as the god was to grow young again, he trod that 
emblem under his feet, for he had triumphed over death, and 
had made the crocodiles of darkness (so used in the Ritual of 
the Dead) to turn back their heads. The monstrous head of 
the god Bes is believed to have been intended to signify the 
destructive powers of nature, so that the ever-youug Horus 
might be supposed to complete the cycle of eternity in himself. 
There are a great number of these stelae in existence, and they 
were at one time thought to have had an astronomical 
significance ; then, by later scholars, to have been intended 
as amulets to protect the wearer or possessor from the attacks 
of dangerous animals; but the explanation which I have now 
given on the authority of M. Chabas is generally accepted as 
being the most satisfactory.* 
* One of these cippi is engraved in the author’s Serpent Myths of Ancient 
Egypt, fig. 108, p. 64. 
