The form of a snake, dyn ibuted to many local goddesses, especially in later times of I Meresger of the Theban necropolis), was borrowed from trib very ancient deity Outo (Buto); the semblance of a snake the ame so characteristic of female divinities that even the prir d goddess was written with the hieroglyph of a snake.
Both alike are merely old Babylonian divinities in a new Biblical garb.
The class of artisans was under their special protection; and the joint festival of the two divinities - the Chalceia - commemorated the invention of bronze-working by Hephaestus.
Thus, in the later Avesta, we find not only Mithra but also purely popular divinities such as the angel of victory, Verethraghna, Anahita (Anaitis), the goddess of the water, Tishrya (Sirius), and other heavenly bodies, invoked with special preference.
The sacred barks of the divinities preserved in the sanctuary of Karnak were then conveyed in procession by water to Luxor and back again; a representation of the festal scenes is given on the walls of the great colonnade.
The rock bas-reliefs and other monuments showing native divinities are rare, and give only very summary representations.
The first part of the Instructiones is addressed to the heathens and Jews, and ridicules the divinities of classical mythology; the second contains reflections on Antichrist, the end of the world, the Resurrection, and advice to Christians, penitents and the clergy.
But if we assume that he was the aboriginal Hellenic High God, we must be quite ready to admit that the separate communities were always liable to cherish other divinities with a more ardent and closer devotion, whether divinities that they brought with them or divinities that they found powerfully established in the conquered lands, Athena or Hera, for instance, in Attica or Argolis, or Poseidon in the Minyan settlements.
Although images of the divinities were certainly known, the principal objects of cult in the Minoan age were of the aniconic class; in many cases these were natural objects, such as rocks and mountain peaks, with their cave sanctuaries, like those of Ida or of Dicte.
This magnificent edifice had, however, been evidently overthrown by the earthquake of 63, and is in its present condition a mere ruin, the rebuilding of which had not been begun at the time of the eruption,) so that the cult of the three Capitoline divinities was then carried on in the socalled temple of Zeus Milichius.