She saw all this but she did not dare to look at his face. "I will look when I am dancing before him," she thought, as she ran upstairs to the roof of Aton's temple.
"Down! Down! The king comes! the god comes!" the runners shouted, and people bowed to the ground.
The procession entered the gates of Aton's temple.
The temple of the Sun, the House of Joy, consisted of seven pillared courts, with tower-like pylon gates, side-chapels and three hundred and sixty-five altars. Seven courts were the seven temples of the seven peoples, for as it says in the hymn to Aton:
Thou hast carried them all away captive,
Thou bindest them by Thy love.
There was a time when by 'people'—romet—the Egyptians meant themselves only; all other nations were excluded; but now all were brothers, children of one Heavenly Father, Aton. The Temple of the Sun was the temple for all mankind.
Seven courts, seven temples: the first was dedicated to Tammuz of Babylon, the second to Attis of the Hittites, the third to Adon of Canaan, the fourth to Adun of Crete, the fifth to Mithra of Mitanni, the sixth to Ashmun of Phoenicia, the seventh to Zagreus-Bacchus of Thrace. All these god-men who had suffered, died and risen from the dead, were but shadows of the one sun that was to rise—the Son.
The seven open temples led into the eighth, the secret one, which no one but the king and the high priest dared enter. There in perpetual twilight stood sixteen giant Osirises made of alabaster, pale as phantoms, tightly bound with winding sheets, wearing gods' tiaras and holding a staff—symbol of god-head—in one hand and a scourge in the other; the faces of all were in the likeness of King Akhnaton.
Passing through the seven open temples the procession approached the eighth, the secret one. The king went into it alone, and, while he was praying there, all waited outside. When he came out, they mounted by an outside staircase on to the flat roof of the upper temple, which was built on the roof of the lower.
The great altar of the Sun stood here; it was made of huge blocks of cream-coloured sandstone, pale as a girl's body and shaped like a pyramid with its top cut off; two gradual approaches, without steps, led up to it. On a high platform at the top of the pyramid a sanctuary fire was perpetually burning, and, above it on a column of alabaster, the sun disc of Aton, made of pale cham—a mixture of gold and silver—glistened with a dull brilliance. It was the highest point of the huge edifice and the first and last ray of the sun was always reflected upon it.