referred to by the simple title "nebty" ("the two ladies") without any confusion as to their identity. Out of the five names that made up the Ancient Egyptian royal titulary, one of them, the "nebty name" was dedicated to the Two Ladies. This great honour of patronage over one of the king's names was shared only with such major gods as Ra and Horus. Egyptologists have theorised that the association of Nekhbet with the vulture may have originated from observations of a mother vulture's behaviour as it protects its chicks by "mantling" them with its wings, leading to its association with a protective and maternal goddess. In fact, the Egyptian word "mut" ("mother") is spelt in hieroglyphs with a picture of a vulture. Due to the vulture's maternal connotations and its early use in the iconography of Nekhbet, in later periods a vulture headdress came to be worn by a large number of Egyptian goddesses, as well as by human queens. The goddess Mut, worshipped at Thebes, Egypt alongside Amun and Khonsu, was written in hieroglyphs with a picture of a vulture, and would be indistinguishable from the common noun "mother" except for the fact that in the goddess's name the vulture bears a royal flail. Goddesses who wore the vulture headdress in later periods included Mut, Hathor, Isis, and Wadjet, although only Nekhbet appeared as a vulture in its entirety. Other non-mammals Serpents The worship of the serpent is found in many parts of the Old World, and in the Americas (Thomas 1911, p. 52). In India snake worship refers to the high status of snakes in Hindu mythology. Over a large part of India, there are carved representations of cobras (nagas) or stones as substitutes. To these people, food and flowers are offered and lights are burned before the shrines. Among the Dravidians a cobra that is accidentally killed is burned like a human being; no one would kill one intentionally. The serpent god's image is carried in an annual procession by a celibate priestess (Thomas 1911, p. 52). At one time there were many prevalent different renditions of the serpent cult located in India. In Northern India, a masculine version of the serpent named Nagaraja, known as the "king of the serpents" was worshipped. Instead of the "king of the serpents," actual live snakes were worshipped in South India (Bhattacharyya 1965, p. 1). The Manasa cult in