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

II.] The Sacred River. 61

nomes or districts, twenty nomes in the Lower,
and twenty-two nomes of the Upper country.
To each nome was assigned a great temple as
capital, with a specific function and priesthood.
And as the temple formed the vast enclosure
of the shrine, so also did the district become
the vast enclosure of the temple. Nor were
the temples alone dedicated to sacred things,
but the structures of daily life shared the
divine significance. And for every division of
the country, as De Rouge has shown, the
palace and the canal, no less than the temple
and the district, bore a name of mystery and
reflected the region of the holy dead.

All along the valley of the river, as it
descends Northwards; at Thebes, at Abydos,
at Tentera, were the great shrines sanctified by
manifestations of the Deity. At the Northern
extremity, where the ocean formed the boundary
of the country, was the mouth of Rosette, or
Rusta. imaging, as we learn from the Papyrus
of Khufu, the mouth of the tomb, and Looking