The evil eye. An account of this ancient and wide spread superstition

CHAPTER VI
CRESCENTS, HORNS, HORSESHOES
Everybody is familiar with the lunar appearance
popularly known as "the old moon in the arms of
the new," in which a dark disc is seen within the
crescent. Precisely this phase was adopted as one
of the most frequent crests to be seen upon the head
of more than one of the Egyptian gods and goddesses.
Thoth or Tehuti,"** the scribe who weighed
the souls when brought to judgment (" in one aspect
he is the god of the moon "), and Chonsu, the hawkheaded,
are both represented with the crescent and
disc. Isis, and Hathor who was closely connected
and sometimes actually confounded with her,"^^ bear
the disc with the horns of the crescent much pro-
longed, so as to assume the appearance of the horns
of a cow. Hathor is often represented with the
head of a cow on a human body, and also frequently
as a cow, having the disc and horns on its head.
At Philae, Denderah, and elsewhere, she is repre-
sented as beautiful, while at the same time she has
a sort of half-human, half-bovine face. Hathor became
in late Greek and Roman times completely
identified with Isis. " Isis is the female and re-
ceptive principle of generation." ^^"^
^8* Budge, p. 93 sq. ^85 Wilkinson, iii. p. iio. Herodotus, ii. 4.
286 Plutarch, De hide et Osir. 53.