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223 fom IS SNS a Ysa 2 Alot awe se SS ehhh Srehsahk wh—is v1 Shito2Zrtotet yaef eT a Tie o Me aod WSS aie TF MUS SPT Tr Figure 75 the Seven Hathors (after the goddess Hathor, who, as we have mentioned, was depicted as a cow) could foretell the future—forerunners of the Sibylline oracle goddesses of the Greeks. Nor is the very notion of seven lean years a biblical invention, for such cycles in the level of the waters of the Nile—the only source of water in rainless Egypt—continue to our own times. In fact, there exists an earlier Egyptian record of such a cycle of seven years of plenty followed by seven lean years. It is a hieroglyphic text (transcribed by E.A.W. Budge in Legends of the Gods—Fig. 75); it relates that the Pharaoh Zoser (Circa 2650 B.C.) received a royal dispatch from the governor of Upper Egypt, in the south, of a grave famine, because "the Nile had not come in for the space of seven years." So the king "extended his heart back to the beginnings," and asked the Chamberlain of the gods, the Ibis-headed god Thoth, "What is the birthplace of the Nile? Is there a god there, and who is that god?" And Thoth answered that there Royal Dreams, Fateful Oracles