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

II.] The Apex of the Earth. 5 3

Egyptian spirits of the Light, with Hapi in
their midst, protecting the Southern fountains
of the Nile. These four bright spirits, the
guardians of the heavenly dome, were imaged
to the Egyptians under the form of the cyno-
eephalous ape, the creature which bears the
closest resemblance to humanity; and from
them, as the four living creatures before the
throne of Ra, assistance was invoked by the
.Justified in the Ritual at the moment when
the full splendour of the Orbit was bursting
upon his illumined sight. Thus the whole
system of Egyptian astronomy, in its scien-
tific delineation no less than its mystical
significance, would seem to have been devised
originally, not with any reference to the later
settlement of the race upon the lower streams
of the Nile, but to their original dwelling-
place among the sunny fountains of the South ;
while the Grand Meridian appears to have been
defined, not by its local relation to Memphis,
but from its passing through the apex of the