It stands in the museum at Cairo, but for ever it will be
connected in the minds of men with the tiger-colored precipices and
the Colonnades of Thebes. Behind the ruins of the temple of Mentu-
Hotep III., in a chapel of painted rock, the Vache-Hathor was found.
It is not easy to convey by any description the impression this
marvellous statue makes. Many of us love our dogs, our horses, some of
us adore our cats; but which of us can think, without a smile, of
worshipping a cow? Yet the cow was the Egyptian Aphrodite's sacred
animal. Under the form of a cow she was often represented. And in the
statue she is presented to us as a limestone cow. And positively this
cow is to be worshipped.
She is shown in the act apparently of stepping gravely forward out of
a small arched shrine, the walls of which are decorated with brilliant
paintings. Her color is red and yellowish red, and is covered with
dark blotches of a very dark green, which look almost black. Only one
or two are of a bluish color. Her height is moderate. I stand about
five foot nine, and I found that on her pedestal the line of her back
was about level with my chest.
