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224 Figure 76 indeed was a god mere who regulates the waters of the Nile from two caverns (Fig. 76) and that he was his father Khnum (alias Ptah, alias Enki), the god who had fashioned Mankind (see Fig. 4). How exactly Zoser managed to speak to Thoth and receive his answer is not made clear in the hieroglyphic text. The text does tell us that once Zoser had been told that the god in whose hands the fate of the Nile and Egypt's sustenance was Khnum, residing far away on the island of Elephantine in Upper Egypt, the king knew what to do: he went to sleep ... Expecting an epiphany, he had one: And as I slept, with life and satisfaction, 1 discovered the god standing over against me! In his sleep—dreaming, envisioning—Zoser says, "I propi- tiated him with praise; I prayed to him in his presence," asking for the restoration of the Nile's waters and the land's fertility. And the god DIVINE ENCOUNTERS