Incongruous elements -2

These hot, chaotic lands were peopled by hostile outsiders and home to menacing animals, lions, leopards, snakes, scorpions and so on, but even more frightening, they were the haunt of spirits and monsters. While the latter were obviously never actually seen, the stories and idle chatter of brave desert travellers, among others, who swore that they had caught fleeting glimpses of them out in the wilderness at dusk or had come across their puzzling tracks, was likely to have made monsters fertile ground for exciting talk (the stuff of myths) among the average Egyptian. Also, they might even have known their respective names and supernatural powers. They consequently became real enough in the Egyptian mind, and yet another good reason to dread entering the blazing deserts. In some ways, they may not have been unlike their contemporary descendants, many of whom maintain a steadfast aversion to the immense desert expanses of their country, for these near waste lands have, for thousands of years, been traditionally linked with the unfamiliar and death.