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

V.] The Sacred Circles of the Ritual. 167

Uroeus, or symbol of the snake—connected in
some not very definite manner with solar
phenomena—has always been intimately asso-
ciated with the royalty of Egypt, But it
appears to have escaped attention that in the
Ritual are to be found several serpentine forms
of various lengths, and—what is most striking
in itself but easily explained by the results
already attained, ■— that when those several
lengths are expressed in inches, they prove to
be proportional to the measures of the various
serpentine curves traced by the motions of the
earth and moon. For instance, in chapter cxxx.,
we read of "a snake seventy cubits in his
coil." But taking the well-known cubit of
20-6 inches and repeating it seventy times, we
obtain one thousand four hundred and forty-
two inches; which is proportional (within the
seven hundredth part) to the number of minutes
of time (24x60) in the average daily rotation
of the Equator or coil of the snake ; so that it
expresses our own division of the heavens into