BUTO, an Egyptian goddess, called in the language Uat or Uatiu, the eponymous goddess of the town Buto in Northern Egypt, supposed to be modern Kum el Aman and Kum el gir, on the western banks of the Damietta branch of the Nile. The goddess herself personified Lower Egypt, and as such wore the tesër or red crown, whether in her human form, or typified as a vulture, or uraeus, in which respect she resembled Nat or Neith. She presided over fire, and resided in it or the solar eye, and was identified with the goddesses Bast and Sexet or Merienptah, of which she may have been another type. Buto was also considered to represent the Greek Latona, and the uraeus Mahur, and this again connected her with Lower Egypt or the Delta. She was considered to be the regent and mistress of the lands Pe and Tep, districts of her nome, of the land of Hanebu or the Greeks, and of Taneter, the divine land or Arabia, also of Anhu the capital of Xrut, another of the nomes of Lower Egypt. The ideas of the Greeks that she personified darkness, and that the mygale or shrew-mouse was sacred to her, are incorrect; for, as already stated, Uat presided over the element of fire, and the shrew-mouse appears from the inscriptions on the base of figures of this little animal to have been dedicated to Horus, like the Apollo Smintheus of the Greeks. The name was also given to the capital of a nome ruled over by the deities Har or Horus and Uat or Buto. The Greeks supposed that Buto was the capital of Chemmites or Phthenotes close to the Boutike Lake, the present Burullos, near the old Sebennytic branch of the Nile. It contained several temples, and in that of Buto oracles were delivered, and the temple was 10 orgyiai or fathoms high. The most remarkable object, however, in it was the monolith shrine 40 ...