[Illustration: 115.jpg NÛÎT THE STARRY ONE. 1]
1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a painted coffin of the XXIth dynasty in Leyden.
Most people invested them with human form, and represented the earth-god Sibû as extended beneath Nûît the Starry One; the goddess stretched out her arms, stretched out her slender legs, stretched out her body above the clouds, and her dishevelled head drooped westward. But there were also many who believed that Sibû was concealed under the form of a colossal gander, whose mate once laid the Sun Egg, and perhaps still laid it daily. From the piercing cries wherewith he congratulated her, and announced the good news to all who cared to hear it--after the manner of his kind--he had received the flattering epithet of _Ngagu oîrû_, the Great Cack-ler. Other versions repudiated the goose in favour of a vigorous bull, the father of gods and men, whose companion was a cow, a large-eyed Hâthor, of beautiful countenance. The head of the good beast rises into the heavens, the mysterious waters which cover the world flow along her spine; the star-covered underside of her body, which we call the firmament, is visible to the inhabitants of earth, and her four legs are the four pillars standing at the four cardinal points of the world.
[Illustration: 116.jpg THE GOOSE-GOD FACING THE CAT-GODDESS, THE LADY OF HEAVEN. 1]
1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a stella in the museum of Gîzeh. This is not the goose of Sibû, but the goose of Amon, which was nurtured in the temple of Karnak, and was called Smonû. Pacing it is the cat of Maût, the wife of Amon. Amon, originally an earth-god, was, as we see, confounded with Sibû, and thus naturally appropriated that deity's form of a goose.
The planets, and especially the sun, varied in form and nature according to the prevailing conception of the heavens. The fiery disk _Atonû_, by which the sun revealed himself to men, was a living god, called Râ, as was also the planet itself.[*] Where the sky was regarded as Horus, Râ formed the right eye of the divine face: when Horus opened his eyelids in the morning, he made the dawn and day; when he closed them in the evening, the dusk and night were at hand.
* The name of Râ has been variously explained. The commonest etymology is that deriving the name from a verb râ, _to give, to make to be_ a person or a thing, so that Râ would thus be the great organizer, the author of all things. Lauth goes so far as to say that "notwithstanding its brevity, Râ is a composite word (r-a, _maker--to be_)" As a matter of fact, the word is simply the name of the planet applied to the god. It means the _sun_, and nothing more.