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Another fragment, of green basalt, may be passed , which is from a comparatively modern statue that of a chamberlain in the reign of Apries, of the 26th dynasty; and then the visitor should pause before a white stone statue of the Ptolemaic period , which represents a priest of the god Chons, or Hercules, holding an altar upon which is a figure of the god; and hereabouts, also, he may remark another specimen of white stone sculpture, being the colossal bust of a queen of the 18th or 19th dynasty . Passing another fragment of a statue of the great Rameses, the visitor should next direct his attention to a dark granite statue, mutilated, of a high military officer, supposed to have flourished about the 12th dynasty.
In the local worship of Egypt the deities were arranged in local triads; thus at Memphis, Ptah, his wife Merienptah, and their son Nefer Atum, formed a triad, to which was sometimes added the goddess Bast or Bubastis. At Abydos the local triad was Osiris, Isis, and Horus, with Nephthys; at Thebes, Amen Ra or Ammon, Mut and Chons, with Neith; at Elephantine, Kneph, Anuka, Sati, and Hak.
The third division includes a group, in vitrified earth, representing Amenra seated on a feathered throne; a triad, in blue porcelain, of Amoun Mout, the mother, and Chons, or Hercules; a figure in lapis-lazuli of the Egyptian Minerva, Nepth; Num, ram-headed, walking; Ptah-Socharis standing upon two crocodiles, and supporting two hawks on his shoulders; and Pasht, the Egyptian Diana, lion-headed.
In the second division, or case, amid the strange figures, the visitor should remark the Egyptian Juno, Mout, or mother, represented in the act of suckling, and wearing the pschent, or cap, worn only by deities and Pharaohs; the Egyptian Minerva, Nepth, on a throne, with the teshr, or inferior cap on her head; a human form with a goat's head, wearing a conical cap ornamented with two ostrich feathers, and disk on goat's horns, representing Num, or water, called Jupiter Chnumis by the Greeks; Khem, the Egyptian Pan, standing on nine bows; a youthful figure with one lock of hair, and supporting the lunar disk, representing Chons, or the Egyptian Hercules; an Egyptian Venus, Athor, in gold, cow-headed; Ra, the sun, seated, and hawk-headed; Nefer Atum, with the lotus flower and plumes for head ornaments, from Memphis, and reverenced as the guardian of the sun's nostril; and the Egyptian Diana, Pasht, or Bubastis, a bronze female figure with the head of a cat.
After the ancient worship of the Virgin and Child had become somewhat changed or modified so as to better accommodate itself to the growing importance of the male, the most exalted conception of the Deity in Egypt seems to have been that of a trinity composed of Mout the Mother, Ammon the Father, and Chons the Infant Life derived from the other two.
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