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"Do what dead Pharaoh bade you in your dream, Prince. At the hour of dawn go to the Temple of Sekhet, where you will find the Queen become obedient to your wishes, for did not the dream declare that she will not say you nay? Then lead her to your palace, and marry her in the face of all men, and rule by right of her Majesty and of your own conquering arm."

Then in life mayst thou be wretched, and after death may Osiris refuse thee, and the judges of Amenti give judgment against thee, and Set and Sekhet torment thee, till such time as thy sin is purged, and the Gods of Egypt, called by strange names, are once more worshipped in the Temples of Egypt, and the staff of the Oppressor is broken, and the footsteps of the Foreigner are swept clean, and the thing is accomplished as thou in thy weakness shalt cause it to be done."

He was naked, save only for a waistcloth, and at his head and feet burned polished braziers that gave light to the vault, and shone upon the instruments of torment. Beyond the further braziers grinned the gate of Sekhet, that is shaped like a woman, and the chains wherein the victim is set for the last torment by fire, were hanging from the roof.

Now the dance was done, and the last echoes of the music died away against the ancient walls whence the images of Sekhet the cat-headed watched them with her cruel smile of vengeance. The dance was done, and the beautiful dancer stood before them unflushed, unheated, but laughing gently.

"We close at about this time, sir," the man interrupted me, speaking in the emotionless, monotonous voice which I had noted before. I replaced upon the glass counter a little Sekhet boat, carved in wood and highly coloured, and glanced up with a start. Truly my methods were amateurish; I had learnt nothing; I was unlikely to learn anything.

The head-rests, which served for pillows, were decorated with bas-reliefs of subjects derived from the myths of Bes and Sekhet, the grimacing features of the former deity being carved on the ends or on the base. But it is in the carving of perfume-spoons and kohl-bottles that the inventive skill of the craftsman is most brilliantly displayed.

"Osiris is in the water, but Horus is with him, and the Great Beetle overshadows him," and every evil spirit which dwells in the water is adjured to allow Horus to proceed to Osiris. Ra, Sekhet, Thoth, and Heka, this last- named being the spell personified, are the four great gods who protect Osiris, and who will blind and choke his enemies, and cut out their tongues.

But as yet we are not in a position to put a name to each even of the figures that recur most frequently. In the case of Egypt there is no such difficulty: when we encounter the image of one of her gods upon the walls of a temple or in the cases of a museum, we can say without hesitation, "This is Osiris or Ptah," as the case may be, "Amen or Horus, Isis, Sekhet, or Hathor."

Now I have a message for you from the gods, who write down these things in their eternal books against the day of judgment, when we all shall meet and plead our cause before them, Osiris the Redeemer standing on the right hand, and the Eater-up of Souls standing on the left. "'This is the message, O Abi Go to the Temple of Sekhet at the dawn.

These four baboons were often portrayed as adoring the sun; this idea is due to their habit of chattering at sunrise. The lioness appears in the compound figures of the goddesses Sekhet, Bast, Mahes, and Tefnut. In the form of Sekhet the lioness is the destructive power of Ra, the sun: it is Sekhet who, in the legend, destroys mankind from Herakleopolis to Heliopolis at the bidding of Ra.