76 THE N E W-Y ORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY covered by a skull-cap (Fig. 2) or close-fitting crown (Figs. 1 and 7). Child-gods appear with a sidelock such as was customary with small children.8 In fashioning the figures of the divinities, there seem to have been rather more frequent concessions to the styles of wigs in actual vogue at the time among men than to the styles'of garments being worn. Figures of both gods and goddesses were fitted out with articles of personal adornment such as mortals wore. The broad collar inlaid in gold on the statuette of Amon-Re (Fig. 1) is typical; other figures display anklets, armlets or bracelets. The prevailing absence of earrings is due to the fact that the majority of the types were fixed at an early date before earrings came into fashion in Egypt, but the late cat-headed Bast frequently has rings in her ears. Amulets suspended about the neck are common in figures of young gods.9 "Two objects, usually called "scepters," are often seen in the hands of the divinities. The one illustrated in Fig. 2 is common to male and female, divinities, that carried by Sekhmet in Fig. 8 is given only to goddesses. As late as the time of these statuettes they may have been regarded merely as attributes and their significance may no longer have been understood. But in early times when in the hands of the gods they were symbols of gifts to be bestowed on the king. Both objects occur in hieroglyphic writing, that of Fig. 2, a staff with forked bottom and animal's- head top, meaning something like "good fortune" or "happiness," the other (Fig. 8), a stalk of papyrus, meaning "greenness," "fresh- Early seal impressions and reliefs show processions of ness. divinities moving, as is clear at least in the temple reliefs, in the direction of the king, bearing these symbols which would convey to him good fortune and that fresh exuberance of well-being suggested by growing plants. It was the special prerogative of the goddesses to bestow the latter gift. Still another gift, the greatest of all, i.e. the gift of life, the gods brought, symbolized in the object which in writing had the meaning "life." To judge by analogies the object lost from the right hand of Amon-Re in Fig. 1, and from the hands of some others among our statuettes, is almost certainly the symbol of life; it is preserved in the lowered hand of one of the Horus-figures in the floor-case of gods of the Osirian cycle. These precious gifts 8 Quarterly Bulletin Vol. Ill, p. 6, Fig. 4. 9 See notes 7 and 8.