381 
whose name is millions of years — millions of days encompass 
him.” 
39. An undescribed wooden mummy-case lately sold at the 
Palais Royal,* Regent Street, bore a similar uncommon deli- 
neation. In theBritishMuseum are three terra-cotta groups, very 
roughly executed, of a mother and child (fig. 107) lying upon a 
Fig. 107. Funereal tablet, mother and child, protected by the deity Chnuphis. 
(British Museum.) 
couch with a snake, in this instance not the Coluber, but the 
Asp, encircling them ; probably a flattering statuette, imply- 
ing that the mother and child of the owner should, like Isis 
and Horus, enjoy the eternal years of divinity. 
40. Thus allusion to Horus recalls a circumstance which 
must not lightly be passed over.f All serpents, even though 
divine, were not harmless upon this terrene sphere, and as 
Horus was the great incarnate son of Osiris, whose mission 
was to overcome evil and to destroy the Apophis, so that 
divinity became naturally associated with the office of “ stopper 
of all snakes.” Hence arose the custom of inscribing votive 
cippi to that deity, representing him as a youthful and beau- 
tiful being, standing upon the heads of two crocodiles, and 
holding snakes and scorpions in his hands. Above him is always 
the horrible head of Baal, or Set-Typhon, and the various attri- 
butes of life, dominion, power, goodness, &c., with mystic vale- 
dictory inscriptions grouped around him. Avery fine specimen 
in wood, and others smaller in stone, are in the British 
* By Messrs. Thurgood and Giles, July, 1871. The sarcophagus was of 
sycamore-wood, and probably dated from the nineteenth dynasty, 
t See Navielle, Texte de la Mythe d'Horus , for fuller details. 
