ARCANUM 22 - and THE CROCODILE
The Illustrated Egyptian Book of the Dead, a New Translation with Commentary, Dr. Ramses Seleem, Sterling Publishing Co., New York, 2001, p.37
The Medu-Netru is sacred. It uses symbols, not letters. A symbol exists in nature and has a geometrical value, volume, sound, energy, and effect, while a letter is merely an intellectual line drawing. This language, therefore, connects the individual with reality and the laws governing it in a direct way. When you write the word "crocodile' in Egyptian, you actually draw the crocodile itself. This puts you in direct contact with the crocodile as a living creature — more so, because the crocodile's biological functions reflect the natural laws governing this creature. The female crocodile, for example, has bird-like qualities since it lays eggs, and its heart and kidneys are similar to those of birds, but its lungs are those of a mammal. The crocodile, therefore, reflects duality in nature, and so the ancient Egyptian temples dedicated to the crocodile principle had two sanctuaries, as in the temple of Kom Ombo,
The crocodile is also like a fish. In that it spends the night in water, but like a mammal since it spends the day on land. This implies that the crocodile is a solar animal and is connected with the sun, emerging from the water when the sun rises on the horizon and disappearing into the water when the sun sets.
The female crocodile carries its eggs for sixty days and broods on them for sixty days. It has sixty vertebrae and sixty teeth, and lives for sixty years. Number sixty is the basic unit in astronomy and the measurement of time, since the minute is sixty seconds and the hour is sixty minutes. The crocodile, therefore, reflects the principle of time, and in the Egyptian word Sebek, meaning crocodile, the syllable, Seb, means time.