BUTO, the Greek name of the Egyptian goddess Uto (hierogl. WW''zy•t), confused with the name of her city Buto (see BUsIRIs). She was a cobra-goddess of the marshes, worshipped especially in the city of Buto in the north-west of the Delta, and at another Buto (Hdt. ii. 75) in the north-east of the Delta, now Tell Nebesheh. This western Buto was the capital of the kingdom of Northern Egypt in prehistoric times before the two kingdoms were united; hence the goddess Buto was goddess of Lower Egypt and the North. To correspond to the vulture goddess (Nekhbi) of the south she sometimes is given the form of a vulture ; she is also figured in human form. As a serpent she is commonly twined round a papyrus stem, which latter spells her name ; and generally she wears the crown of Lower Egypt. The Greeks identified her with Leto; partly by the resemblance of name, partly by the myth of her having brought up Horus in a floating island, resembling the story of Leto and Apollo on Delos. Herodotus describes the temple and other sacred places of (the western) Buto, and refers to its festival, and to its oracle. It eventually became, at a very late date, the capital of a nome, in this case called Phtheneto, "the land of (the goddess) Buto." The second Buto (hierogl. 'Im.t) was capital from early times of the 19th nome of Lower Egypt.