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

II.] The " Celestial Nile." 59

company in the south." And in that same
archaic papyrus we read of the celestial land
of Khcnt, or Khent-Amenti, the habitation
of the Hidden God, imaged on earth by the
"Holy Land of Khent" at the Apatu or
Southern apex of the earth. Hence also the
most sacred portion of the temple was placed
towards the same quarter; and the Grand
Pyramid, from the entrance to the innermost
chamber, was oriented North and South.

In truth, to the mind of the Egyptian, the
whole bed of the immense river was but the
sacred image of the unseen land watered by
the "celestial Nile" of which the Ritual
speaks; " The Nuter Khart," or Holy Land
of the Dead, with its triple division into
Rusta, the territory of Initiation; Aahlu, the
district of Illumination ; and Amenti, the
secret home of the hidden God.

Far towards the South, beyond the alternate
reaches of stream and desert, lay the patriarchal
land of Poont, like Amenti, the distant home