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

II.] The Dcmblc Kingdom. 63

land of reverence, enveloped the mysterious
building. " A sense of enchantment," we read
in another papyrus, pervaded the whole terri-
tory surrounding the Great House ; and even
the hurried traveller to-day can with difficulty
resist the spell, as he gazes on the solemn
walls. But for the initiated of old, the
supreme end of their existence, the order of
their festivals, the purity of their religion, the
stability of their monarchy were concentrated
in the awful masonry. As the territorial
constitution of the country, with its forty-two
provinces of the Lower and Upper kingdoms,
corresponded interiorly with the forty-two pro-
vinces of the Judges of the Dead, the Upper
Gods of the Orbit and the Lower Gods of the
Horizon, the political framework being the
envelope of the spiritual theosophy ; so was
ii with the exterior and interior of the Great
House. For from the point where the adept
appeal's before the forty-two judges in the
Double Hall of Truth, on surmounting the