We may conclude that there was some purpose of utility to be served, and the solar temples could have been used undoubtedly, among other things, for determining the exact length of the solar year.
I now come to my next point, which is that here we have the true origin of our present means of measuring time; that our year as we know it was first determined in these Egyptian temples and by the Egyptians. The magnificent burst of the light at sunset into the sanctuary would show that a new true solar year was beginning. It so happens that the summer solstice was the time when the Nile began, and still begins, to rise; so that in Egypt the priests were enabled to determine, year after year, not only the length of the year, but the exact time of its commencement. This, however, they apparently kept to themselves, for the year in use, called the vague year, began at different times of the true year through a long cycle, as I shall show in subsequent chapters.
If the Egyptians wished to use the temple for ceremonial purposes, the magnificent beam of light thrown into the temple at the sunset hour would give them opportunities and even suggestions for so doing; for instance, they might place an image of the god in the sanctuary and allow the light to Hash upon it. We should have a "manifestation of Rā" with a vengeance during the brief time the white flood of sunlight fell on it; be it remembered that in the dry and clear air of Egypt the sun casts a shadow five seconds after the first little point of it has been seen above the horizon. So that at sunrise and sunset in Egypt the light is very strong, and not tempered as with us. They did this: we not only find the exact allocation of words "the manifestation of Rā," but what happened is described. One of the inscriptions relating to the manifestation of Rā has been translated by De Rougé as follows:—
"Il vint en passant vers le temple de Rā; il entra dans le temple en adorant (deux fois). Le χer-heb [celebrant] invoqua (celui qui) repousse les plaies du roi; il remplit les rites de la porte; il prit le seteb, il se purifia par l'encens; il fit une libation; il apporta les fleurs de Habenben [30]
In the quotation the apparatus of doors is referred to, and it is not difficult to understand that by a particular arrangement of them it would be easily possible to allow the hash which lighted up the image of the god to be of very brief duration. Remember that the sanctuary was dark, that the king stood with his back to the pylon (and therefore to the sun). Under these circumstances, to an excited imagination it would be the god himself and not his image which appeared. Maspero[31] adduces much evidence to show that the priests were not above pious frauds even in the worship connected with the Holy of Holies:—
"The shrines [in the sanctuary] are little chapels of wood or stone, in which the spirit of the deity was supposed at all times to dwell, and which on ceremonial occasions contained his image. The sacred barks were built after the model of the Bari, or boat in which the sun performed his daily course. The shrine was placed amidships of the boat and covered with a veil or curtain, to conceal its contents from all spectators.... We have not as yet discovered any of the statues employed in the ceremonial, but we know what they were like, what part they played, and of what materials they were made. They were animated.... They spoke, moved, acted—not metaphorically, but actually.... Interminable avenues of sphinxes, gigantic obelisks, massive pylons, halls of a hundred columns, mysterious chambers of perpetual night—in a word, the whole Egyptian Temple and its dependencies were built by way of a hiding-place for a performing puppet, of which the wires were worked by a priest."
In an inscription which covers, according to Brugsch, an entire wall near the Holy of Holies in the temple of Amen-Rā it is stated that a beautiful harp, inlaid with silver and gold and precious stones, on which to sing the praises of the god, statues of the god himself, and numerous gates (Selkhet) with locks of copper and dark bronze, to protect the Holy of Holies from intrusion, were among the gifts to the priests.[32]
Thothmes III., in his account of his embellishments at Karnak, says of the statues of the gods and of their secret place (possibly the Adytum) that they were "more glorious than what is created in heaven, more secret than the place of the abyss, and more [invisible] than what is in the ocean."[33]
CHAPTER XI.
THE AGE OF THE TEMPLE OF AMEN-RĀ AT KARNAK.
If it be accepted that the arguments already put forward justify us in regarding the temple of Amen-Rā as a solstitial solar temple, we are brought face to face with the fact that if it be of any great antiquity its orientation should be such that it will no longer receive the light of the setting sun at the summer solstice along its axis.