[Illustration:  Fig. 110.—­Table of offerings, Karnak.]

[Illustration:  Fig. 111.—­Limestone altar.]

[Illustration:  Fig.112.—­Naos of wood in the Museum at Turin.]

The sanctuary and the surrounding chambers contained the objects used in the ceremonial of worship.  The bases of altars varied in shape, some being square and massive, others polygonal or cylindrical.  Some of these last are in form not unlike a small cannon, which is the name given to them by the Arabs.  The most ancient are those of the Fifth Dynasty; the most beautiful is one dedicated by Seti I., now in the Gizeh Museum.  The only perfect specimen of an altar known to me was discovered at Menshiyeh in 1884 (fig. 111).  It is of white limestone, hard and polished like marble.  It stands upon a pedestal in the form of a long cone, having no other ornament than a torus about half an inch below the top.  Upon this pedestal, in a hollow specially prepared for its reception, stands a large hemispherical basin.  The shrines are little chapels of wood or stone (fig. 112), 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 amidship of the boat, and covered with a veil, or curtain, to conceal its contents from all spectators.  The crew were also represented, each god being at his post of duty, the pilot at the helm, the look-out at the prow, the king upon his knees before the door of the shrine.  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, and in addition to their bodies of stone, metal, or wood, they had each a soul magically derived from the soul of the divinity which they represented.  They spoke, moved, acted—­not metaphorically, but actually.  The later Ramessides ventured upon no enterprises without consulting them.  They stated their difficulties, and the god replied to each question by a movement of the head.  According to the Stela of Bakhtan,[24] a statue of Khonsu places its hands four times on the nape of the neck of another statue, so transmitting the power of expelling demons.  It was after a conversation with the statue of Amen in the dusk of the sanctuary, that Queen Hatshepsut despatched her squadron to the shores of the Land of Incense.[25] Theoretically, the divine soul of the image was understood to be the only miracle worker; practically, its speech and motion were the results of a pious fraud.  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.