Adams, Walter M.: The house of the hidden places: a clue to the creed of early Egypt from Egyptian sources (London, 1895)

46 The House of Osiris. [Ch.

the boats of pleasure jostling with the sacred
boats of the dead, all these things make up a
picture, which set in the dazzling clearness of
the cloudless sky leaves a charm that can
neither be rivalled nor forgotten.

That picture, too, demands no painful effort
of the imagination to fill up for ourselves from
broken and disjointed details. "We are not
called upon to piece out, into such consistency
as we may, the fragmentary hints of social
life laboriously gathered from chance allusions
hidden in a score of different writers. Nor
need we content ourselves with descriptions
of events written centuries after their occur-
rence. We can go straight to the fountain-
head, and consult the original records. On
the huge propylsea of the temples, on the walls,
on the enormous sarkophagi, on the architraves,
on the pillars of the immense buildings, we
find the deeds of the princes set out in the
sacred hieroglyphs. For the battle of Lake
Regillus we must trust to the traditions