349 
the whole of Egyptian Mythology,* * * § unless, indeed, we identify 
it with Sutekh, as the shepherd kings, the last but one of whom 
was named Apophis (fig. 60), appear to have done; and in that 
case the innovation led to a sanguinary revolution, which termi- 
nated the sway of the seventeenth dynasty, according to some 
chronologers 2214 B.C.f The probability, therefore, is that 
the adoration intended on this last tablet was offered to one of 
the household serpentine divinities analogous to that which 
obtained, in after-time, among the Romans, who, in all likeli- 
hood, derived it through the Etruscans, from the Egyptians 
themselves. J With respect to the kind of food offered in all 
these cases to serpent deities. Sir Gardner Wilkinson, in his 
Fig. 61. The domestic snake of the Romans, with the altar containing a cluster of 
fruit. (From Gell and Gandy’s Pompeii.) 
great but imperfect, because passe, work, has a most interest- 
ing paragraph, which it will be only proper here to introduce. 
“iElian§ relates many strange stories of the asp f| and the respect paid to 
it by the Egyptians ; but we may suppose that in his sixteen species of aspsll 
other snakes were included.** * * §§ He also speaks of a dragon, which was sacred 
in the Egyptian Melite, and another kind of snake called Paries or Paruas, 
dedicated to ^Esculapius.f f The serpent of Melite had priests and ministers, 
a table and a bowl. J £ It was kept in a tower (fig. 61) and fed by the priests with 
cakes §§ made of flour and honey, which they placed there in the bowl. 
Having done this, they retired. The next day, on returning to the apart- 
* Le Page Renouf, ex. gr., in a letter to the author, 
t Lenormant, Ancient History, vol. i. p. 197. 
t See Gell and Gandy’s Pompeiana, plate 76, for illustrations of mural 
paintings representing the Roman household serpents (Fig. 61.) 
§ ^Elian, x. 31, xi. 32, iv. 54. || Pliny, viii. 23. 
IT .dElian, x. 31. ** _ZElian, xi. c. 17. 
ft It is evident from Pausanias, that the dragon of the Greeks was only a 
large kind of snake, with, as he says, “ scales like a pine cone.” 
£+ iElian, viii. c. 19. 
§§ Cakes seem to have been usually given to the snakes of antiquity, as 
to the dragon of the Hesperides. — JEneid, iv. 483. 
