In the whole problem, then, of orientation as I have had to present it, and as it now stands, we seem for the moment to be face to face with two very remarkable and strange things; so strange that the argument may appear far-fetched and worthless, since we are landed in a region apparently very far removed from our modern habits of thought. But is this really so? I assume the personification or the deification of the sun: I shall subsequently have to include the stars; I indicate special orientations of buildings devoted to the worship of the sun at one time of the year or another. But really both these things, though they seem improbable, have been carried down to our own day, quite independently of any question relating to Egypt. There is nothing new about them at all, and there is nothing really strange. When we go into an observatory we think nothing of turning our telescope towards Venus, or Jupiter, or Mars. Here we have the deification of the planets. It is perfectly true that this religious treatment of the planets is not of our own day: we have inherited it from the Greeks through the Latins; but we do not think it at all extraordinary that a planet should be called Venus or Jupiter. Thus we of to-day are completely in touch with the old Egyptians, except that the Egyptians were wiser in their generation, and looked after the sun at fixed points in the year and the constant stars instead of the variable planets. Then, again, take the question of orientation. This is, after all, one which survives among ourselves. All our churches are more or less oriented, which is a remnant of old sun-worship.[25] Any church that is properly built to-day will have its axis pointing to the rising of the sun on the Saint's Day, _i.e._, a church dedicated to St. John ought not to be parallel to a church dedicated to St. Peter. It is true that there are sometimes local conditions which prevent this; but if the architect knows his business properly he is unhappy unless he can carry out this old-world tradition. But it may be suggested that in our churches the door is always to the west and the altar is always to the east. That is perfectly true, but it is a modern practice. Certainly in the early centuries the churches were all oriented to the sun, so that the light fell on the altar through the eastern doors at sunrise. The late Gilbert Scott, in his "Essay on Church Architecture," gives a very detailed account of these early churches, which in this respect exactly resembled the Egyptian temples. [Illustration: PLAN OF ST. PETER'S AT ROME, SHOWING THE DOOR FACING THE SUNRISE.]