It would have been easier to ask a worshiper. Or to find their holy writings and read them directly.

[If the shrine was branding them with tenets, surely it meant that they were written somewhere else, in a less harmful manner. In a book, on tablets, carved onto rock... it seemed unlikely to Imhotep that it would be passed along solely by mouth, though it wasn't entirely impossible.]

Someone must have left the offerings there recently, yes? Or was it as aged as our surroundings?