THE EXCAVATIONS AT ABU9IR, EftYPT. 673 



valley of tlio Nile, but those of our sanctuarv are marked l)y greater 

 unity of arrangement and completeness of grouping. Only a few of 

 the ordinary customs of life appear in the decoration of temples of 

 later times. It is evident that in ancient times dail}' life was held to 

 be more worth}' of preservation, while in later periods onl}" the sublime 

 objects, rather than the doings of every day, were deemed worthy of 

 representation on reliefs in the house of God, 



From what has been said it can readily be inferred that the struc- 

 ture described was not a pyramid tomb, but rather a sanctuar}- in 

 whose inclosure sacrifices were offered upon an altar erected in the 

 open court. Such altars in the open air l)elonged to the sun god. 

 This deity was first of all embodied in his planet in the sky, whence he 

 could look down upon the gifts and where he could receive the smoke 

 of the burnt oft'erings. But a god afar off did not satisfy the ancient 

 Egyptians in their worship. The god must be near the altar, where 

 he could have the full benefit of the sacrifices, and usually this object 

 was attained by having close at hand the sacred animal or the statue 

 or emblem serving as the embodiment of the god, and which actually 

 became to them the very god himself. This was the case in Abusir. 

 The pyramid obelisk, before which the altar stands, is the sun god in 

 the form in which he dwelt in the holy of holies of the temple of his 

 most holy city of the valley of the Nile, named for him Heliopolis, 

 "the city of the sun." Behind sealed doors, opening onh^ to the elect, 

 there stood a conical stone as divinit3\ Such a form of deity is often 

 met with among the Semitic tribes, but whether their influences intro- 

 duced it into Heliopolis or whether the natives of the valley of the 

 Nile had similar conceptions of the sacredness of stones is still unde- 

 termined. All that is known is that from most ancient times the deity 

 was here represented in this manner, but that in the course of centu- 

 ries there arose an uncertainty as to the exact form of the conical 

 stone, it being once conceived as a pyramid, then as an obelisk, and 

 later, as at Abusir, as a combination of both. Near the god there 

 stood in the temple two sacred barks used by the sun god for his jour- 

 ney across the heavenly ocean. One in the forenoon bore the newlj' 

 resurrected sun, while the other in the afternoon carried the dying- 

 planet as it descended from the zenith. Similar to this was tiie group- 

 ing of the sacred objects at Abusir. The remnants of one of the barks 

 was discovered during the recent excavations, ])ut the other is still 

 covered by the desert sands. 



In the district of Memphis, however, the sun god was a stranger. 

 Originally there reigned here Ptah, the god of Memphis, and Sokaris, 

 the god of the adjoining district of Letopolis, the sparrow-hawk- 

 headed prince of the realm of the dead, who gave his name to Sak- 

 karah. When the fifth dynasty, whose members claimed descent from 

 the sun god, ascended the throne, the kings endeavored to introduce 



