houlders of the priests in his divine boat far
beyond the precincts of his temple; sometimes, indeed, even to another
town, where he paid a visit to the god of the place. These occasions
were public holidays, and passed amid great rejoicings. The climax was
reached when at a given moment the curtains of the shrine placed on the
boat were withdrawn, and the god was revealed to the eyes of the
awe-struck multitude. Music and dancing formed part of the festival
rites.

Temples.

As with the rites and ceremonies, so also the temples were early
modelled upon a common type. Lofty enclosure walls, adorned with scenes
from the victorious campaigns of the Pharaoh, shut off the sacred
buildings from the surrounding streets. A small gateway between two
massive towers or pylons gave admittance to a spacious forecourt open to
the sky, into which the people were allowed to enter at least on feast
days. Farther on, separated from the forecourt by smaller though still
massive pylons, lay a hypostyle hall, so called from its covered
colonnades; this hall was used for all kinds of processions. Behind the
hypostyle hall, to which a second similar one might or might not be
added, came the holy of holies, a dark narrow chamber where the god
dwelt; none but the priests were admitted to it. All around lay the
storehouses that contained the treasures of the god and the
appurtenances of the divine ritual. The temples of the earliest times
were of course far more primitive than this: from the pictures that are
all that is now left to indicate their nature, they seem to have been
little more than huts or sheds in which the image of the god was kept.
One temple of a type different from that above described has survived at
Abusir, where it has been excavated by German explorers. It was a
splendid edifice dedicated to the sun-god Re by a king of the Vth
Dynasty, and was probably a close copy of the famous temple of
Heliopolis. The most conspicuous feature was a huge obelisk on a broad
superstructure [HRG]: the obelisk always remained closely connected with
the solar worship, and probably took the place of the innermost shrine
and statue of other temples. The greater part of the sanctuary was left
uncovered, as best befitted a dwelling-place of the sun. Outside its
walls there was a huge brick model of the solar bark in which the god
daily traversed the heavens.

Power of the priests.

As the power of the Pharaohs increased, the maintena