usted him with their interests before the
gods. Since it was vain to expect ritualistic perfections from a prince
constantly troubled with affairs of state, the custom was established
of associating professional priests with him, personages who devoted all
their lives to the study and practice of the thousand formalities whose
sum constituted the local religion. Each temple had its service of
priests, independent of those belonging to neighbouring temples, whose
members, bound to keep their hands always clean and their voices true,
were ranked according to the degrees of a learned hierarchy. At their
head was a sovereign pontiff to direct them in the exercise of their
functions. In some places he was called the first prophet, or rather the
first servant of the god--_hon-nutir topi_; at Thebes he was the first
prophet of Amon, at Thinis he was the first prophet of Anhuri.[*]

* This title of _first prophet_ belongs to priests of the
less important towns, and to secondary divinities. If we
find it employed in connection with the Theban worship, it
is because Amon was originally a provincial god, and only
rose into the first rank with the rise of Thebes and the
great conquests of the XVIIIth and XIXth dynasties.

But generally he bore a title appropriate to the nature of the god whose
servant he was. The chief priest of Ra at Heliopolis, and in all the
cities which adopted the Heliopolitan form of worship, was called _Oiru
mau_, the master of visions, and he alone besides the sovereign of
the nome, or of Egypt, enjoyed the privilege of penetrating into the
sanctuary, of "entering into heaven and there beholding the god" face
to face. In the same way, the high priest of Anhuri at Sebennytos was
entitled the wise and pure warrior--_ahuiti sau uibu_--because his god
went armed with a pike, and a soldier god required for his service a
pontiff who should be a soldier like himself.

These great personages did not always strictly seclude themselves
within the limits of the religious domain. The gods accepted, and even
sometimes solicited, from their worshippers, houses, fields, vineyards,
orchards, slaves, and fishponds, the produce of which assured their
livelihood and the support of their temples. There was no Egyptian who
did not cherish the ambition of leaving some such legacy to the patron
god of his city, "for a monument to himself," and as an endowment
for the priests to institute prayers an