Bonner, SMA – PDF, 162.

of the Solar Power.” That may well be right, for the enthroned position common in representations of Sarapis, and the orb is held by other solar deities. It may be that other serpent-headed deities are to be regarded as fusions of Agathodaimon with Horus, Isis, Thoth, and others. Representations of serpents with the heads of Sarapis and Isis are common on coins, gems, and minor works of art; King's jasper seems to show that the other combination, human body with serpent head and neck, is to be explained in the same way, namely, as a divinity conceived as Agathodaimon.

Here belongs also a curious haematite in the Museum of the University of Michigan (D. 264). The obverse shows a male figure wearing the apron, standing to left, though the torso is shown in front view. The right hand holds the was scepter, the left the ankh. In place of a human head the figure has rising from its right shoulder a bearded serpent apparently crowned with the skhent, from its left the head and neck of an ibis with the atef crown. In the exergue is a globe above the back of a crocodile (head to left). The design is encircled with the inscription αρπονχνουφι βρ[ντα]τηνωφι ερμιθουθ.

Some years ago Perdrizet showed that βριντατηνωφρι was applied to the god Chnum (Greek Chnoumis or Chnoubis), especially when conceived as a solar deity.³⁷ In later times the older ram-headed form of this god was replaced by the serpentine Chnoubis, who usually shown with a lion's head, though sometimes with a human one. Remembering that Agathodaimon is sometimes equivalent to Chnoubis, and that a human god with a snake's head may perhaps take the place of the more common Agathodaimon serpent with human head, we may recognize in the figure on the Michigan stone a type of Chnoubis fused with Thoth. According to Perdrizet, αρπονχνουφι contains in its first syllable the Egyptian name Har (Horus) and in its last two the name Chnoubis.³⁸

The reverse side of this stone is completely covered with an inscription consisting of three parts: (1) the long Iaeo palindrome, often associated with solar types, with one mistake in the order of letters in the second part; (2) seven letters of the palindrome repeated (including those in which the first and second parts differ); (3) the words πεσε πεσε (read πέσσε), the sign  usually inscribed on Chnoubis amulets, and last of all the name Χνουβις. Thus the reverse inscription shows that the stone was used as a digestive amulet.

Another example of an Agathodaimon-Chnoubis with: snake's head on a human body is a circular haematite, of which Raspe gives an illustration.³⁹ On the obverse Harpocrates, seated on the lotus, is adored by a cynocephalus crowned with the disk, and an ibis-headed deity, apparently Thoth, wearing

³⁷ Perdrizet, Mélanges Maspero, II, 1, 137–144. (Mém. Inst. franç. du Caire, 67).

³⁸ The other part of the name on the gem, Ermithouth, looks like a combination of the names Hermes and Thoth. It is probably a coincidence that it is also an anagram of Thermouthi, voc. of Thermouthis, the snake-goddess, later identified Isis.

³⁹ Raspe, Nos. 353–354, Pl.8.

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