GREECE AND ROME

the time, midnight. The place, upon the seashore. Wax is consumed in the fire. The Aberdeen witches in 1596 assembled "at twelve hours at evening or thereabouts." In the pamphlet Newes from Scotland (1591), the Berwick coven are represented as gathering upon the Lothian beach at North Berwick. The use of waxen images in witchcraft is of the highest antiquity, and there is no property, perhaps, more frequently met with in the records and inquiries of all ages and all countries. We know that such figures, both to do good and to do evil, were employed in the pre-dynastic days of Egypt, when the Egyptians were slowly emerging from a state of semi-barbarism into civilization. In the Western Papyrus there is a story of the reign of Nebka (or Neb-hau-Ra), a king of the Third Dynasty (about 3830 B.C.), in which such a model plays an important part. The wife of a certain high official, Aba-aner, becomes enamoured of a soldier of the royal guard. Aba-aner, discovering this, fashions a crocodile of wax—of which material he has a supply in an ebony box—seven spans long, and having recited certain spells, says: "When the man comes down to bathe in my waters, seize him." The crocodile is cast into the river whilst the lover is swimming there. It instantly turns into a living monster, seven cubits (about twelve feet) in length, and drags its prey down under the water. Seven days later the King and Aba-aner are walking by the stream, when the latter calls to the crocodile, which appears bringing the soldier in its mouth. Aba-aner has but to touch the reptile and lo! there is only a small model of wax. He relates to Nebka what has happened, and when the king cries to the beast, "Take that which is thine and be gone!" the huge jaws in a moment close upon its victim and the crocodile disappears forever into the depths of the Nile. The guilty wife was, by royal command, punished with death. It should be noticed that the narrative represents Aba-aner as having a box of wax by him which he specially keeps for performing feats of magic, and that the king does not appear to attach any evil or reproach to such acts and practices.

When the famous conspiracy was formed against Rameses III, about 1200 B.C., the official account of the trials mentions that a certain high official, Hui, resorted to magic to obtain his ends. He procured from the royal library a book of