Religious Beliefs and Practices
The Nile Festivals
The great Nile festivals of antiquity continued to be celebrated until construction of dams along the river in the twentieth century CE terminated the annual effect of the inundation. Modern celebrations occurred during the summer months, and preserved many of the ancient customs. The ‘Night of the Drop’ (.Leilat en-Nalqta) was celebrated on 18 June, when it was believed that a drop from heaven (or, in antiquity, a tear shed by the goddess Isis) fell into the Nile and miraculously caused it to rise. On this occasion, many people spent the night on the riverbanks.
Between 6 and 16 August, the river rose to about twenty feet in one area of Cairo, and then the Wefa en-Nil (‘Completion or Abundance of the Nile’) was proclaimed. When this happened, the government was able to confirm that the water level had reached the sixteenth cubit marked on the Nilometer, and this allowed them to exact land-tax. Then, in the middle of August, the ‘Cutting of the Dam’ took place. This dam, constructed before or soon after the Nile waters began to increase, was built of earth; it measured about three yards in width and rose about twenty-two feet above the lowest level of the Nile.
About sixty feet away, a round, earthen pillar (called ‘the bride’) was built in the form of a truncated cone; it had a flat top on which a small amount of maize or millet was grown. The rising Nile waters washed away this pillar about two weeks before the dam was cut, and before the river had reached its full height. According to Arab historians, the first of these pillars was constructed immediately after the Arab conquest of Egypt (670 CE). A legend claims that until then, the Egyptians had followed an annual pharaonic custom when the Nile began to rise: this involved throwing a young virgin into the river in order to celebrate the inundation and to request the god to bestow an adequate flood and grant prosperity to the land and its people. Amr Ibn el-’As, the Arab general who conquered Egypt, abolished this custom. However, when the Nile did not increase for three months after the start of its rise, the population became anxious, and it was decided that a substitute ‘bride’ should be constructed every year in the form of the earthen pillar; this would then be swallowed by the river as an ‘offering’.
The ‘Cutting of the Dam’ was celebrated in the same way that major events associated with the Nile were the focus of great festivities in antiquity. This scene is described by Edward Lane in his book An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (1871). On the day before the cutting of the dam, many people hired boats to sail to the area where the ceremony would take place. These included a large, gaudily painted boat, generally believed to represent the fine vessel which, in antiquity, had carried to her fate the virgin destined to become the ‘Bride of the Nile’. In Lane’s time, it was used to carry passengers to the place of celebration. The occupants of the boats entertained themselves with music and singing, and as night fell they enjoyed an exhibition of fireworks.
Before sunrise, a large gang of workmen began to cut the dam and remove the earth in baskets, completing this work about an hour before dawn. The Governor of Cairo and other dignitaries had already arrived and taken their places inside a tent erected specially for the occasion. Various activities followed: the Governor threw a purse of gold coins to the workmen; then, a boat was driven against the final, narrow ridge of earth and broke through the dam. The remains of the dam were quickly washed away, clearing a way for the boats carrying the Governor and others to pass along the canal. By the early twentieth century CE, the actual cutting of the dam was no longer undertaken, but festivities, including the firework display, still took place in the presence of the Governor.
Festivals always played an important part in Egyptian religion, and thousands of years before the modern Nile celebrations, Khary’s son, the priest Nakht, witnessed the annual cycle of events that were celebrated at Thebes on behalf of the temple gods.
By the New Kingdom, most of the larger temples had full-time, permanent priesthoods, although in smaller establishments many priests acted in a part-time capacity.1 Indeed, earlier in the Old and Middle Kingdoms, almost all prominent men had acted as part-time priests in their local temple, and at all periods, doctors, lawyers and scribes customarily held priesthoods associated with gods who played a significant role in those professions. These men had a dual function in society, acting as priests and also working for the king and State in a secular capacity; this system ensured that religion and State were totally integrated, and that the temples, although wealthy and powerful in their own right, never achieved total independence.
Nakht worked as a lawyer, and also served in the temple for a period of three months each year. In later times (and this was also probably the case in the New Kingdom), each temple had a rota of four groups of priests who performed the rituals for the god. Each group served three terms of duty every year, with each term lasting for one month. Like other part-time priests, Nakht lived in the temple precinct during his periods of duty, but spent the rest of his time with his wife and family in a house in Thebes.
In many cases, the priesthood was hereditary, and although the king held the right to confirm all such appointments, he was usually only involved in selecting candidates for the most important posts in the major cities of Thebes, Memphis and Heliopolis. At other times, he exercised his right to appoint a particularly deserving candidate to the priesthood, or promote someone who had shown outstanding ability. In some cases, the selection and appointment of priests was carried out by a collegium of priests, or sometimes people could purchase a priestly position. Nakht had inherited his position from his maternal grandfather (if a man had no sons, particular posts could pass to the sons of his daughters), but as a formality this had been approved by the collegium of priests.
Nakht had been initiated into the religious rites of the god’s cult during his first term of duty in the temple. Although details of the installation remained secret, he probably received a ritual baptism and purification which allowed him access to certain areas of the temple and the god’s possessions. He would also have acquired secret knowledge of the god’s cult, and taken vows relating to his own integrity and ritual purity, promising to observe the ethical principles on which Egyptian society was founded and keep the regulations associated with the cult of his god.
Nakht was a minor priest at the great Temple of Amun at Karnak, on the east bank of the river at Thebes. This vast organization employed many thousands of people (perhaps as many as 80,000 in the New Kingdom), and owned over 2,000 square kilometres of land.
At the start of Dynasty 18, Amun, a local god of the air worshipped at Thebes since Dynasty 12 (c. 1900 BCE), was elevated by the new dynasty whose family originated at Thebes. They decided to unite Amun with Re, the great sun-god whose cult was pre-eminent at Heliopolis, in order to ensure that Re posed no serious threat to Amun. Now known as Amen-Re, the god adopted the mythology and major characteristics of Re, and acquired additional powers associated with the sun-god.
Stone columns in the Temple of Amun, Karnak. The capitals are represented as closed lotus buds, and the column surfaces are covered with ritual scenes and texts. New Kingdom.
As Egypt gradually established an empire in Asia and Nubia, Amen-Re came to be regarded as a universal creator and ruler of both the Egyptians and those whom they governed. His priesthood at Thebes promoted the belief that the Temple of Karnak, the god’s residence, was the original ‘Island of Creation’ where, according to mythology, the creation of the universe had taken place. Amun was worshipped at Thebes, alongside his wife, Mut (who resided in the nearby Temple of Luxor) and his son, Khonsu, who had his own temple within the Karnak complex.
The Temple of Karnak had been considerably enlarged and enhanced since its foundation in Dynasty 12.2 During the New Kingdom, the temple was at the centre of Egypt’s greatest religious capital, Thebes, a city which, in Dynasty 18, was also the country’s political capital, and accommodated the main royal residence and the royal burial sites.
Priests of Amun at Karnak possessed unequalled and unprecedented powers, which they mainly acquired as the result of Egypt’s successful military campaigns in Syria/Palestine. Grateful to the god who had helped them establish their dynasty, overthrow their enemies, and create the world’s first empire, the kings made lavish donations to Karnak. Large estates were created to support the temple, and booty and prisoners-of-war from Asiatic campaigns were presented to the god to retain his goodwill.
However, the true effects of this policy were revealed as the dynasty wore on. The generosity shown to the god by these kings eventually created an imbalance of power and wealth. As a result, Amen-Re’s priesthood began to rival the king’s status: in particular, whenever the succession was controversial (if there was more than one claimant), the most senior priests could now influence the selection of the next king by granting or withholding the god’s acceptance of a particular candidate. They could exercise this authority because, at this time, each king was considered to be the son of Amun. By the end of Dynasty 18, one pharaoh, Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV), attempted to curtail the powers of the Amun priesthood, and briefly introduced a monotheistic cult dedicated to the Aten, which rivalled and eventually disposed of all the traditional deities.3
Nakht worked at the centre of an extensive organization. In addition to its religious functions, the Temple of Amun (and, indeed, even temples of lesser standing) played important economic, educational and social roles in the country. Although they were not entirely independent of the State, temples retained considerable autonomy, and Karnak was so important that it functioned as a department of the royal administration, directly responsible to the king. However, even temples were subject to State scrutiny, and senior government officials paid regular visits to inspect Karnak and its staff.
The temples had two main types of religious personnel. A third category of employees (which included architects, artisans, cleaners, confectioners, bakers, brewers and cooks) were engaged in secular duties. They maintained and repaired the temple building, and prepared the daily offerings for the god. In addition, the temple estates supported livestock, crops, vineyards and gardens; here, the workers produced food for the god, and in addition to their own requirements, for the priests, other temple workers, and the necropolis personnel. They also cultivated vast quantities of flowers to supply the floral bouquets offered daily to the god. The cult-statue (the god’s image, where his spirit resided whilst in the temple) had to be clothed and adorned with jewellery: textile workers on the temple estates produced these garments, while in the workshops, craftsmen used raw materials from the temple mines to fashion the god’s statues, insignia, jewellery and ritual vessels.
In addition to the booty received from the king, the temples were supported by revenue collected in kind from the districts throughout the country. They received, recorded and stored these items in their storehouses, and then redistributed them either as payment to employees, or as taxes that they paid to the State (although royal decrees afforded them certain exemptions and privileges). Temples also received donations of land or services from private individuals; in return, they received a commitment from the priests that mortuary rites would be performed on their behalf after death. Some temple lands were situated close to the sacred precinct, while others were further away; to retain communication with these places, and to collect taxes, some of the larger temples had their own fleets of river vessels.
There were two levels of priests at Karnak. The hierarchy was headed by a permanent, full-time group of men, who wielded considerable religious and political power. All temple personnel were governed by the High-priest of Amun, who held the title ‘First Prophet of Amun’ and owned a splendid house and great estates. Below him in rank were the ‘Fathers of the gods’ (the Second, Third and Fourth Prophets of Amun); then came the senior priests (hmw-ntr. ‘Servants of the god’) who participated in the daily divine cult and had access to the god’s ritual possessions.
The title ‘servant’ aptly described the main role of these priests; they were primarily temple functionaries who served the god’s cultic needs by performing regular and unceasing rituals. Although a priest was expected to understand the liturgy and sometimes to teach his specialization within the temple, he was not regarded as a pastor or preacher and was not expected to give counsel or guidance within the community. A priest was never required to have a vocation, nor was he considered to be a member of an exclusive religious sect. Many were doubtless dedicated men with high ethical standards, but they did not need to express special personal spirituality. The priesthood offered a powerful and prestigious position in society, which also guaranteed a regular source of wealth and income, and for these reasons it attracted competent and ambitious men who usually came from well-established families.
As well as their ritual function, some temples were also places of higher learning. Priests were regarded as the repository of knowledge and wisdom in ancient Egypt, and some of these specialist ‘servants’ spent part of their time in the House of Life, an institution attached to some major temples. Here, priests and secular scholars preserved the cult’s wisdom by composing and copying religious texts. These men, whose knowledge encompassed medicine, geography, the history of Egypt’s kings, astronomy, astrology, and the use of plants, probably taught their disciplines to students.
Below the ‘Servants of the god’ came the category known as ‘waab-priests’. They did not enter the god’s sanctuary, but because they handled the ritual and cultic objects which came into contact with the god’s statue, they had to reach the same standards of ritual purity that the ‘Servants of the god’ were expected to maintain. In fact, the term ‘waab-priest’ meant ‘the purified one’. Nakht belonged to this group: he assisted with the temple rituals, carried the god’s barque during the festival processions, and also supervised the men who decorated and renovated the temple.
In order to achieve ritual purity during periods of priestly duty, Nakht had to observe a set of strict requirements before he could enter the temple. He bathed twice daily and twice at night in the Sacred Lake at Karnak (an impressive stretch of water which today retains many of its original features). He also completely shaved his head and body every day, and chewed balls of natron in order to cleanse his mouth. Natron, found in a couple of the dry desert valleys, is a naturally occurring compound of sodium carbonate and bicarbonate, with some deposits of sodium chloride and sulphate.
Then Nakht dressed himself in the linen garments which signified his rank, and slipped on sandals made of woven palm or vegetable fibres. During his temple service, he could not wear woollen or leather garments or leather shoes because they were the products of living animals and would have contaminated the god’s sacred resting place. Nakht’s simple linen garments had changed little from those worn by priests thousands of years earlier, and his clothes differed only in detail from those of other priestly ranks.
Nakht was not allowed to eat fish and beans during each duty-month, and he also probably abstained from consuming pork, lamb, pigeon or garlic. In other parts of Egypt, additional local restrictions applied regarding the foods the priests could eat; this ensured that they did not consume any meat derived from their cult-animal, or any part of a sacred plant associated with their god.
Like many priests, Nakht had been circumcised when he entered the priesthood. This operation, although not universal, seems to have been widely practised in ancient Egypt. The demands of ritual purity also extended to matters of sexual behaviour; when undertaking priestly duties, Nakht was expected to live within the temple precinct, and to abstain from sexual relations for several days prior to and during his term of duty.
Nakht’s role and duties as a priest had their origin in the village worship of predynastic Egypt. The earliest ‘priests’ were the leaders of neolithic villages who regularly offered food to the statues of local gods to ensure the well-being of their people. This form of worship, based on barter (reciprocal exchange), continued to be the foundation of subsequent temple worship, when the simple reed shrines which housed the earliest divine statues eventually evolved into great stone temples like Karnak. In due course, when the most powerful and politically successful village chieftains became the earliest kings, they continued to act as High-priest for the nation’s gods. Despite the fiction that the king was the sole priest of the gods and performed the rituals in every temple throughout Egypt, in practice the rulers eventually delegated these duties and responsibilities to the High-priest of each temple and his assistants, although they may have personally performed some of the temple rituals for the chief god of the dynasty.
Temple Service
The Egyptians started to build stone cultus-temples (buildings designed for the worship of a particular god) during the Middle Kingdom, but most of our knowledge about temple architecture and ritual is derived from the well-preserved buildings of the New Kingdom and Graeco-Roman Period.
The Forecourt at the Temple of Horus at Edfu (the best preserved in Egypt). Unlike the main building (right), this area was unroofed, and lay people were probably allowed to come here to pray and watch festival processions. Graeco-Roman Period.
The New Kingdom examples, particularly Karnak, developed into splendid, elaborate constructions which retained the main features present in the predynastic reed shrines; although none of these early buildings have survived, depictions have been found on contemporary ivory objects.4
Whenever Nakht entered the temple, he felt a sense of awe. The vast building dominated the local landscape, dwarfing all other buildings, even the royal palaces and his father’s estate house, which were of inferior and temporary construction. All cultus-temples were built on the same basic plan because they were designed for specific ritual purposes, and had to fulfil universal requirements relating to particular religious beliefs. Another type of building, sometimes referred to as a mortuary temple, also came into existence. Here, rituals were performed for the resident deity and also for the dead, deified king who had built the temple, together with all the legitimate, previous rulers who were known collectively as the ‘Royal Ancestors’.
The terms ‘cultus-temple’ and ‘mortuary temple’ were invented by Egyptologists in the nineteenth century CE. Current scholarship does not entirely support this categorization, but it is generally agreed that the so-called mortuary temple was built primarily for the cult of a divine king (usually deceased), sometimes accompanied by the worship of a god, whereas each cultus-temple was dedicated specifically to the worship of a god, sometimes accompanied by that of a (usually) living king. These two types of temples shared certain architectural features and spatial provision for rituals, but mortuary temples incorporated additional areas where rites connected with the Royal Ancestors were performed. The cultus-temples on the East Bank at Thebes (including Karnak) were built for the gods’ worship, while the mortuary temples situated on the West Bank, near the royal necropolises, were associated with the rulers’ tombs and their mortuary cults.
Despite some differences, mortuary and cultus-temples were both based on the same mythology. Egyptologists are aware that temple architecture reflected many of the features of the country’s prehistoric landscape; however, Egyptians explained these buildings in purely mythological terms. Each temple was built to reflect an underlying mythology which is explained in a set of inscriptions (the ‘Building Texts’) found on the walls of the Temple of Horus at Edfu. They relate that every temple was regarded as the mythical ‘Island of Creation’ which emerged from the waters of Nun (the state of non-existence before creation took place). The first deity, a falcon, flew out of the surrounding darkness, and landed on the highest point of the island. Later, reed walls were constructed around this site, and it became the god’s sanctuary and place of shelter.
According to mythology, this island was where the ‘First Occasion’ happened – a time when the gods and mankind came into existence and all the elements of society, such as law, ethics, religion and kingship, were handed down to mankind. As the site of creation, the island was considered to be a place of great magical and religious potency. The Egyptians of later times believed that to harness this spiritual force, they only had to recreate the physical environment of the island in order to gain access to the potent forces which had existed at the original site. Since perfection had been achieved on that ‘First Occasion’, there was no need to find fresh solutions for their problems: any issues could be resolved by approaching the gods in a building that recreated the sacred environment of the original ‘Island’. To achieve this end, the architecture and layout of each temple was designed to reflect the ‘Island’s’ main features. The buildings did not differ markedly from each other, and throughout the millennia there were no major innovations in temple design, since it was unnecessary and undesirable to change the main elements of this ‘Island’.
From its basic concept as the ‘Island of Creation’, the temple also came to represent the god’s house – a place of shelter and protection where the deity in the form of his/her cult-statue could receive food and worship. The Egyptian term for the temple was ‘Mansion of the God’ (hwt-ntr), and the temple acted as the deity’s residence in the same way that the tomb was regarded as a ‘house’ for the spirit of its deceased owner. Both tomb and temple recreated the accommodation found in domestic architecture, although the plan of the temple was modified and elongated, to provide a central processional route to accommodate the rituals. The tomb burial chamber and the temple sanctuary fulfilled the same function as the bedroom, while the tomb offering-chapel and the hypostyle hall of a temple mirrored the reception area of a house; all these buildings included rooms for storing the owner’s possessions. The Egyptians believed that the living, the dead and the gods all needed food, washing, dressing, rest and recreation: these were provided for the dead through rituals performed in the tombs, while in the temples, they were supplied by the regular divine rituals which the priests carried out.
In later times, the Egyptians also developed various cosmological explanations of the temple, describing it either as a microcosm of the universe, a reflection of the heavens, or a great sarcophagus in which the sun-god was reborn daily. It was believed that the performance of temple rituals – the highest level of State magic – would have a potent effect upon external events and actions throughout the whole universe.
The temple building itself was sacred, and entry was restricted to some members of the royal family and selected groups of temple personnel. One of the priests’ most important privileges was to be allowed access to the interior of the building, and to control entry to the temple. The temple precinct incorporated a rectangular stone temple, and a courtyard where the priests’ houses, shrines, storage areas and slaughter yards were situated; these were all enclosed within a mudbrick wall. Every temple also had a Sacred Lake; the water was believed to have special purifying properties, and the priests undertook their daily ablutions here before entering the temple, and also washed the utensils and vessels used in the temple rituals. The outer areas of the precinct were accessible to lay personnel who gained entry through a great gateway (pylon) pierced in the enclosure wall.
During his term of temple duty, Nakht lived in a mudbrick house located within the temple precinct. With his priestly knowledge of temple mythology, he was aware that the bricks of the wall that encircled the precinct were set in alternate concave and convex sections to represent the waves of the primeval ocean from which the mythical ‘Island of Creation’ had first appeared. Although the temple and its adjacent buildings were part of the town, they were nevertheless distinct – a religious oasis in the centre of the community; the thick enclosure wall separated and protected the precinct from the continuous bustle of the surrounding neighbourhood.
The temple stood before Nakht as he walked from his house before dawn – a massive stone-built structure which was designed to last for eternity. The temple façade was pierced by a monumental doorway (situated on the main axis of the building), which gave access to an unroofed court where the walls were covered with registers of scenes that showed the king – the gods’ son and heir – as a great warrior in battle. This unroofed area had developed from the open enclosure which stood in front of the earliest reed shrines. Nakht and his fellow-priests did not have exclusive use of this court. Because it was less sacred than the innermost areas of the temple, the king allowed wealthy people to set up statues here, so that they could derive some personal benefit from the offerings made to the gods. Even the humblest people could spend time in this court, pouring out libations of water, praying to the gods or, during the great festivals, gathering around in the hope of catching sight of the god’s procession.
Nakht moved forward into the sacred, roofed area of the temple that stood behind the court. He and his fellow-priests usually entered this space through a side door, although when they participated in the great processions, they used the central entrance situated on the main axis of the temple. When its huge bronze doors were opened, they could glimpse the dark interior space beyond. Once inside, Nakht blinked to allow his eyes to adjust to the gloom, which contrasted strongly with the vivid blue sky and sunlight in the outer court. He had entered the hypostyle hall, a large area dominated by rows of heavy stone columns that supported elaborate plant-form capitals. Standing here, Nakht was acutely aware that this was the very place where creation had occurred.
The capitals (for which Egyptologists use the terms ‘palmiform’, Totiform’, or ‘papyriform’) symbolized the abundant vegetation of the ‘Island of Creation’. Although their primary function was to support the roof, there were more columns than required for this purpose. The columns represented the abundant plant-life on the ‘Island of Creation’, and were included in the temples in such large numbers so that, through ritual magic, they could be ‘brought to life’ to recreate this fertile environment. For the same reason, plants were carved on the bases of the walls to represent lush vegetation, and the ceiling was decorated to depict the sky which had existed above the original island.
Stone columns and royal statues in the Temple of Luxor, Thebes. Temples always included more columns than required to support the roof; their other function was to symbolize the abundant plant-life on the ‘Island of Creation’. New Kingdom.
The method of illuminating the hall heightened the atmosphere of mystery: roofed and dark, the only light came from flares carried by the priests and the sunlight which filtered through the stone grids inserted between the top of the walls and the ceiling. With great effect, this recreated the illusion of sunlight falling in shafts through densely massed trees, briefly lighting up the painted scenes and inscriptions which covered the columns and the walls.
As a lower-ranking priest, Nakht was not permitted to enter the sanctuary which stood at the rear of the temple. Only the High-priest (acting as the king’s delegate) and his attendants could enter this Holy of Holies, to perform the daily ritual for the god. In some temples, the floor level gradually increased as one approached the sanctuary from the temple entrance, and then decreased in the space behind the sanctuary. Again, mythology underpinned this architectural device: the sanctuary was positioned at the highest point to represent the summit of the primeval island where the falcon-god had first alighted. Matching this increase in floor level, the height of the ceiling was gradually lowered from the temple entrance to the sanctuary, so that a focused sense of awe was created as the priest moved towards the god’s presence.
Those priests who did have access to the sanctuary entered this chamber by passing through a pair of massive doors. Inside, the small dark room preserved the shape and dimensions of the predynastic reed shrine. Towards the back of the room, there was a small box-shrine which housed the god’s statue – the divine image which provided the focus for the temple’s energy and power. Throughout the temple, the walls were decorated with scenes, arranged in two or three horizontal registers. It was intended that lay petitioners visiting the temple would see these scenes in the outer courts; the aim here was to impress these people with the king’s power and achievements, and the scenes depicted him as the divine heir, a great warrior, or the father of many children. However, in the most sacred areas of the temple, the wall-scenes either commemorated specific religio-historical events or represented the rituals which were once performed in particular halls and chambers.5
Nakht had attended the events that marked the foundation and consecration of the temple. At the Foundation Ceremony, the king formally marked out the temple boundary and consecrated the land before building works commenced. Later on, at the Consecration Ceremony, the completed building was handed over to the resident god, and the priests performed a series of rituals which culminated with the rite known as ‘Opening the Mouth’. With an adze (a carpenter’s tool), the priest touched the hands, feet and mouths of all the painted and sculpted figures in the temple; this activated the vital energy of the building, renewing the potency of the spiritual forces present on the original ‘Island’. The ritual also ‘brought to life’ all the inanimate representations in the temple so that they would become perpetually effective. This ceremony ensured that the temple could henceforth operate on a cultic level: even if at any time the priests should neglect their ritual duties, activation of the content of the wall-scenes (which depicted the daily rituals) would ensure that State magic would continue to be performed within the building for perpetuity. This would protect the king, the land and its people against all evil.
Scenes of the king’s coronation, as well as the foundation and consecration of the temple, were placed on the walls of the hypostyle halls. However, in other areas, the scenes depicted rituals that were once actually performed in those areas. These rites, carried out on a regular basis, dramatized the everyday events of the god’s life, and were performed in all traditional temples throughout Egypt.
The most important of these ceremonies was the ‘Daily Temple Ritual’. Before sunrise, the king (or his delegate, the High-priest) would wash and dress himself before consecrating the divine offerings. Then, at dawn, he led the procession of priests to the sanctuary, to present the offerings to the god’s statue. These formed a link between the gods and mankind: they restored the god’s life-force and he in turn granted immortality to the king and prosperity for Egypt. This ritual lay at the heart of the State magic performed in the temples, which essentially ensured that the cosmos did not return to the state of chaos that had prevailed before creation. Because the king was the divine son and heir, only he could present the offerings to the god and so, although his duties were frequently delegated to the High-priest, the wall-scenes always depicted the king making these presentations.
The officiant moved forward to perform the ritual: he drew back the bolts of the great doors and entered the sanctuary, then opened the wooden double doors of the box-shrine, lifted out the statue, and placed it on an altar in front of the box-shrine. The Egyptians believed that the god’s divine spirit entered into the statue so that the deity could receive the ritual, but they did not think that the god was confined to this image; he could also be present in other forms and dimensions. The priest removed the clothing (a series of differently coloured cloths) and cosmetics which the god had worn the previous day. He then fumigated the statue with incense, and presented it with natron, a substance which had multiple uses, such as purifying the mouth, laundering clothes and dehydrating the body during mummification procedures.
Next, the priest draped the statue in clean cloths, applied fresh cosmetics to the face, presented the god with jewellery and insignia, and finally offered the morning meal. There were special rooms within the temple where the god’s apparel and the sacred utensils used in the rituals were stored; butchering and other activities associated with preparation of the god’s food were carried out either in an external courtyard or, more rarely, in a special area of the temple.
Once the meal had been presented, the priest withdrew backwards from the sanctuary, carrying the offerings with him. The same ritual was repeated at midday and in the evening, when the statue was returned to the box-shrine. After the completion of each ritual sequence, the food offerings were either divided up amongst the priests as payment, or sometimes they were presented to the statues of private individuals who had ‘bought’ this service by making a donation to the temple.
As a priest, Nakht knew that the ‘Daily Temple Ritual’ was a perpetual reaffirmation of the god’s daily rebirth. He was also aware that a secondary daily ceremony, known as the ‘Ritual of the Royal Ancestors’ and performed at the conclusion of the ‘Daily Temple Ritual’, was essential to ensure that his king’s reign and rulership were universally accepted. There was provision for this ritual in the temples which Egyptologists refer to today either as ‘mortuary temples’ or ‘royal cult complexes’.
This ceremony honoured all the dead, deified kings regarded as legitimate rulers of the country since c.3100 BCE, and sought the gods’ approval and acceptance of the living king – essential for the success of his reign. When a king died, it was expected that he would join his ancestors, and so this ritual was designed to confer benefits (in the form of an eternal food supply) both on the ancestors and on the king in his future, anticipated form. During this ceremony, food offerings were removed from the god’s altar at the conclusion of the ‘Daily Temple Ritual’, and then taken to another area of the temple where they were presented to the Royal Ancestors, whose names were usually inscribed in a ‘King List’ on one of the walls. When these rites were concluded, the food was taken outside the temple and apportioned amongst the priests.
In addition to his daily routine, which involved the performance of minor liturgical tasks relating to the god’s ritual, Nakht participated in the divine festivals. These were the other great events of a deity’s life but, unlike the daily rituals, the festivals differed from one another: they celebrated major events in each god’s mythology, and occurred at different times throughout the year. Some were always held monthly or annually, but the dates for others were irregular, determined by local astronomical sightings or calendars.
Columns in the Hypostyle Hall in the Temple of Hathor, Denderah. The capitals represent Hathor as a human-faced, cow-eared deity; the scenes and inscriptions on the ceiling refer to astronomical subjects. Graeco-Roman Period.
A festival was usually celebrated at a single temple, but some involved two or more temples. For example, Nakht took part every year in the Festival of Opet at Thebes, which celebrated the divine marriage of Amun and Mut, and the unification of Amun with his son, the king. An important part of this festival was the priestly procession, which transported Amun’s statue from his temple at Karnak to the neighbouring Temple of Luxor where his consort, Mut, resided. Nakht also witnessed other festivals, including the New Year celebration, held during the first month of the inundation season, which renewed the consecration of the temple; and also the Festival of Sokar, which took place on the West Bank at Thebes. He had made several pilgrimages to the sacred city of Abydos, to participate in the annual Festival of Khoiakh, which re-enacted sacred events in the life, death and rebirth of the god Osiris.
Festivals were times of religious fervour, great pleasure and merriment, and people travelled from many regions to be present at such events. In the capital city, these celebrations were usually led by the king, but elsewhere, the High-priest acted as his delegate. Every festival involved secret, important rites enacted inside the temple, but usually there was also a procession in which the god’s statue (a portable version of the cult-statue placed in the temple sanctuary) was carried around outside.
The god’s procession included priests, dancers and musicians who danced, burnt incense, and chanted sacred songs as they passed through the town. There was usually little opportunity for ordinary people to have any direct contact with State deities or local gods and their temples, but the processions provided a rare opportunity for them to see the deity from a distance, or even to approach the statue, hidden inside its portable shrine, and ask for divine advice. As a member of the minor clergy at Thebes, Nakht often helped to carry the heavy barque containing the god’s shrine and statue; he and his fellow-priests were glad to rest at various stations inside and outside the temple, where they performed special rites.
Personal Religion
There is not a great deal of evidence relating to personal, everyday religious worship before the New Kingdom; however, it is clear that some methods of approaching the gods existed alongside the temples and the cult of the dead.6
Whereas official cults (dedicated to State and local gods) were mostly concerned with maintaining the stability of the universe and the status of the gods and king, people engaged in personal religious practices to help themselves deal with feelings of loss, suffering and personal doubts. These practices sometimes overlapped with the ‘official’ religion or were embedded in the legal and medical systems; they were employed by rich and poor alike, and included oracles and magic, sending letters to the dead, using dreams for divination, and worshipping ancestors and special deities. More evidence of personal religious belief and practice has survived from the New Kingdom than any other period, possibly because increased literacy in the population allowed people to record their thoughts and customs.
An unusual stone offering-stand, probably used to support a dish holding bread and other food presented to the gods in a regular household ritual The design incorporates two primitive figures of men standing back to back From a house at Kahun. Dynasty 12. Manchester Museum.
Members of Khary’s family experienced the usual milestones of existence: childbirth, the onset of puberty, the celebration of marriage, and the sorrow of death. Most of these important stages were marked and celebrated with rituals. Childbirth, regarded as a particularly dangerous time, was the focus of many superstitions and rites; for example, a woman’s safe delivery was celebrated with a ceremony fourteen days after birth. The onset of puberty was signified in several ways: youngsters began to wear clothes in public; many boys underwent circumcision (although this was not universal); and the head was now completely shaved, replacing the childhood hairstyle distinguished by a shaven head and a single plait of hair known as the ‘Sidelock of Youth’. There is no evidence that marriage, regarded as a secular, legal contract, was ever celebrated with a religious ceremony. However, there is extensive documentation of the many rituals associated with death and burial, considered to be most important rites of passage.
Men and women, who constantly faced dangers associated with illness, sudden or premature death, and natural disasters, needed personal faith to sustain themselves in these times of hardship and tragedy. On such occasions, Khary and his family turned to familiar deities and prayed to special gods who could provide personal comfort. These included Bes, an ugly dwarf-god who protected the young and weak; as a god of love and marriage, he was present at birth and the circumcision ceremony. He employed music, singing and dancing to drive away evil forces, and statuettes often show him holding a drum or other musical instrument.
His consort, Tauert, took the form of an upstanding, pregnant hippopotamus; she was worshipped as a goddess of childbirth and fecundity, and assisted all women to deliver their children. These universally popular deities received worship at Kahun and Deir el-Medina.7 In houses at these sites, archaeologists also found stone offering-stands that were used to present food to the gods, as well as ancestral busts which probably represented deceased family members. Regarded as the blessed dead, the ancestors were feared and worshipped because they could influence the well-being of the living, and in order to request favours and gain their protection against evil, family members would pray and place offerings for them on small domestic altars.
Amulet of the god Bes with his characteristic feather head-dress, shown playing a drum. He was believed to use music, singing and dancing to drive away evil forces. Unprovenanced. Late Period. Manchester Museum.
Khary and his family used oracles for a variety of reasons, sometimes approaching them as a form of divination or seeking a decision on a legal matter. Occasionally, the family would visit the outer court of the temple to consult an oracle, but they also had access to them elsewhere; for example, the oracle was frequently consulted during festivals. It was customary for the petitioner to stand in front of the god’s statue, but he/she could not directly approach the deity. Sometimes, the questions (which could be presented either verbally or in writing) were addressed to the priests who held the god’s statue. By moving the deity from side to side or up and down, they could provide an ‘answer’ to the question posed by the petitioner. Sometimes an intermediary could act for the petitioner, interrupting the god’s procession and presenting the deity with two petitions and two responses. The god was then requested to indicate, through the intermediary, which answer he had selected. This provided one way of seeking divine intervention in human lives, and obtaining answers about the future, but the oracle had its limitations, and other methods of divination were also employed.
Seers or ‘wise women’ were consulted about the future. Also, help and advice was sometimes sought from the gods or the dead through the medium of dreams. Some dreams were believed to be prophetic, providing advance warning of good or evil events, and in these instances special books would be consulted to interpret key signs in the dream. On other occasions, a person could choose to spend the night in a special building attached to a temple renowned as a centre of dream incubation. Here, a dream state was induced (probably by means of hypnosis), so that the petitioner could try to communicate with the gods or deceased relatives in the hope of gaining insight into the future.
Living people could also contact the dead by writing a letter to a deceased person. Sometimes, people who had suffered injustice would do this, asking the dead person to intercede on their behalf. Although relatively few letters have survived, many people may have spoken directly to the dead to ask for their help. The letters were placed near the offering-table in the tomb-chapel so that the deceased’s spirit would find them when it came to receive the regular food offerings. The letters varied greatly in their subject matter: some asked for help and support against living or dead enemies, particularly in relation to family disputes; others requested legal assistance to face the divine tribunal on the Day of Judgement; and some pleas were made for special benefits and blessings.
Magic and magicians were an important aspect of State and popular religion, even featuring significantly in the legal and medical systems. Whereas Nakht participated in the State magic performed in the temples, members of his family had regular access to funerary and everyday magic. The Egyptians believed that magic had made creation possible; it allowed the universe to be maintained, and its continued use ultimately ensured that the struggle waged by the gods and the king against evil was always successful.8
There was an established belief that the divine creative word and magical energy could turn concepts into reality, and that magic was available to ordinary people as a means of self-defence. Archaeological or literary evidence about practitioners of magic is scanty, but two discoveries dating from the Middle Kingdom give some idea of how magic worked on this level. In the precinct of the Temple of Ramesses II (the Ramesseum) at Thebes, the archaeologist W.M.F. Petrie discovered a tomb which belonged to a lector-priest; these clerics were the principal magical practitioners of ancient Egypt. The burial contained not only the priest’s papyri, inscribed with magical and medical texts, but also his collection of magical objects, including fertility figurines, a snake-wand, ivory castanets inscribed with fearsome animals, and a wooden statuette of a female magician wearing a lion-mask and holding a bronze serpent in each hand. The magician probably used these items during the course of his rites to invoke various protective spirits.
Wooden figurine of a woman wearing a lion-mask and holding a bronze serpent in each hand; it probably represents a female magician impersonating the goddess Beset during the performance of magical rites. Found with a collection of magical and medical texts and magical objects in the tomb of a lector-priest in the Ramesseum precinct, Thebes. Dynasty 12. Manchester Museum.
Petrie discovered another group of magical implements in a house at Kahun. These included a pair of ivory clappers, a canvas face-mask which represented the goddess Beset (Bes’ consort), and a figurine of a magician or dancer (probably imitating Beset), wearing a mask and false tail. These items may have belonged to a female magician who perhaps wore the mask to impersonate Beset when she performed rites on behalf of petitioners who consulted her.
Nakht’s wife, Merenmut, frequently visited this kind of local practitioner, to seek protection in childbirth and guard her family against a wide range of diseases and ailments. Like everyone else, they wore amulets to protect themselves against a variety of dangers. Examples of this type of sacred jewellery date back to the fourth millennium BCE, and were worn by both the living and the dead. It was believed that they conferred benefits on the wearer: some amulets, such as the ankh-sign, djed-column, or ‘Sacred Eye of Horus’, were regarded as universally beneficial, while others were potent and significant only for the individual owner.
A magician s canvas mask found with a pair of ivory clappers and a wooden figurine. It probably represents Beset, consort of the god Bes, and may have been worn by a female magician to perform magical rites. Holes are made at the eyes and nostrils to allow the wearer to see and breathe, and some of the surface stucco was knocked off during use: the mask has been painted black to cover up this damage. From a house at Kahun. Dynasty 12. Manchester Museum.
A wide range of amulets was available: some were designed to protect the wearer against a variety of dangers – mysterious hostile forces, terrifying animals, disease, famine, floods and accidents – while others were directed towards a particular weakness in the body, with the aim of bringing about a cure. These amulets often took the shape of a diseased limb: they could heal the condition either by directing magical power towards the limb, or by ensuring that the disease was ‘transferred’ into the amulet-double, thus enabling the limb to be saved. Amulets often took the shape of, or incorporated in their design, popular magical symbols which were believed to bring health and good luck to the wearer; particular gem-stones also featured in this jewellery because they were thought to possess hidden magical powers.