Chapter 12

Touring the Temples

In This Chapter

Constructing houses of worship – and more

Embellishing temples with obelisks, carvings, and paint

Understanding the role of temples, priests, and kings

Many temples of ancient Egypt are still standing throughout the desert – a beautiful testament to a long-dead religion and a tradition of architecture and design.

The temples dominated the ancient Egyptian landscape. They were awe-inspiring, colourful structures. However, they were closed to the public; only the priests and the royal family had free access. Although the temples were inaccessible to the ordinary people, the activities and function of the temples affected the lives of everyone.

This chapter covers the planning and construction of these buildings, the roles of the priests and royalty, and the opportunities for worship available to both royals and everyday Egyptians.

Building a Temple

The ancient Egyptians built two types of temples:

Cult temples, known as houses of the god, were for the worship of a god. These structures were normally situated on the east bank of the Nile. Although the temples were often dedicated to one god in particular (Amun, for example), these gods were often part of a triad that included a consort and child. (In the case of Amun, his consort was Mut and his child was Khonsu.) The triad was therefore worshipped at the site too. In a large temple like Karnak, many other gods are also worshipped within the complex – although the main god was Amun.

Mortuary temples, known as temples of millions of years, were for the cult of the dead king. These buildings enabled worshippers to keep the king’s spirit nourished for the afterlife and were normally situated on the west bank of the Nile. Although they were built in association with the kings’ tombs, the temples were often some distance away in order to keep the tombs’ locations secret.

The type of worship practised in each temple type was the same, although the statue within each type was different: Cult temples included statues of gods such as Amun or Ra, and mortuary temples housed statues of kings.

The ancient Egyptians believed that architectural design – just like art, religion, and literature – was dictated in the remote past by the gods. For this reason, they believed that they should not change the design of the temples, because improving on perfection was impossible. However, the Egyptian kings still needed to feed their desire to build and therefore constructed larger and larger versions of the same designs.

Going way back: The earliest temples

Very limited evidence of religion and temples prior to 3500 BC has been discovered. The early temples that have been identified bear no resemblance to the New Kingdom monuments still standing in Egypt today. The New Kingdom temples that dominate the modern landscape of Egypt all follow a similar pattern, which took centuries to develop.

Hierakonpolis

The earliest temple in Egypt is at Hierakonpolis just north of Luxor, dating from approximately 3200 BC. Excavations show that the temple consisted of a covered court on a raised mound of sand (probably symbolic of the mound of creation), which looked onto a walled courtyard. Just outside the courtyard, a number of small rectangular buildings probably housed workshops or stores associated with the cult.

The falcon-headed god, Horus (see Chapter 9), was probably worshipped at Hierakonpolis, although no inscriptions or statues have been found at the site. Horus is closely associated with kingship and is the earliest recorded deity.

Medamud

Another early cult temple just north of Thebes at Medamud does not follow New Kingdom conventions. Unfortunately the deities worshipped at this temple are unknown, although in later periods this site was the cult centre for Montu, the god of war.

An enclosure wall surrounded this temple, and an undecorated pylon gateway marked the entrance. This entrance led to a hexagon-shaped courtyard dominated by two mounds, perhaps indicative of the primordial mound of creation. Two corridors led to the top of these mounds.

A mud-brick chamber in the centre was filled with trees. Why these were included is unknown, but the explanation probably has something to do with creation and life sprouting from the mounds of creation. Either that or it’s the earliest eco-house.

Evolving design during the Middle Kingdom

By the Middle Kingdom (2040 BC), temples were very symmetrical, although sadly examples from this period are rare, because they were mostly destroyed by the construction of later monuments.

Most of the Middle Kingdom temples were replaced by the New Kingdom (1550 BC) structures, but the Middle Kingdom legacy remains in the design. For example, the Karnak temple features Middle and New Kingdom influences, which makes sense because the structure took 2,000 years to complete and is the largest religious centre in the world.

The Middle Kingdom temples were very simple in design, with an entrance pylon leading to an open courtyard. At the rear of the courtyard, doorways led to three shrines. The central shrine was dedicated to the main god of the temple, and the two others were dedicated to the god’s consort and the couple’s child (see Chapter 9).

The Middle Kingdom design led to the traditional temple. The huge elaborate New Kingdom temples were merely expansions on this design, with each king adding a little to an already complete Middle Kingdom structure.

Adhering to design conventions in the New Kingdom

After the start of the New Kingdom (1550 BC), temple builders began to follow certain rules, and a more stylised and standardised temple design emerged.

Twinkle, twinkle, little star

Rather than being oriented towards the sun or the Nile, a few surviving temples in Egypt are positioned based on a star or stellar constellation.

For example, the temple at Elephantine is oriented towards the star Sothis (the star known today as Sirius). This star’s rising announced the start of the annual inundation and was also associated with Osiris, the god of the underworld.

Another stellar temple – the Middle Kingdom temple on Thoth Hill near Luxor – is particularly interesting. This temple is also dedicated to the star Sirius, but archaeological evidence shows two sets of foundations. The temple was clearly re-aligned, because over the centuries the original orientation of the temple no longer aligned with the star’s position, which had shifted over time.

Aligning with the elements

One design rule that began in the New Kingdom was the orientation of both cult and mortuary temples. While orientation varies between temples, these buildings were ideally sited on an east–west axis, at a 90-degree angle to the Nile. Of course, sometimes the natural terrain made this orientation impossible, and some temples, like the Luxor and Edfu temples, completely ignore this rule and are positioned north–south to run in line with neighbouring temples.

However, east–west is by far the most common orientation. This position highlights the solar aspect of the majority of temples. The sun rises in the east, so temple entrances often face that way to greet the rising sun.

Minding the rising tides

In addition to choosing a site for a temple according to the location of the Nile, some temples were built in such a way that during the annual inundation, the temple flooded. This flooding reinforced the temple as being like the universe, and a divine place, because the floods represented the primordial waters from which the temple emerged as if created from the waters.

This annual flooding entered all parts of the temple – except the sanctuary (see the section ‘Proceeding to the Holy of Holies’, later in this chapter, for more information), which was the highest point of the temple. This fact may help to explain why temple decoration rarely extends all the way down to the floor, but stops a metre or so above ground level. Having to repaint the temple once a year would be a major pain in the butt and best avoided at all costs.

Strolling down the processional avenue

Processional avenues or approaches to temples – which were sometimes added years after the main temple was completed, as improvements by later kings – are more commonly known as sphinx avenues, because these approaches were lined with multiple sphinx statues.

The most famous of these processional avenues is between Luxor and Karnak temples. A great deal of this avenue is still visible, especially around the two temples. Although Egyptian governmental figures and historians have discussed reconstructing the avenue to allow tourists to walk the full processional way, this plan has not been realised yet.

In addition to Luxor and Karnak, many temples originally had such avenues, including Abu Simbel in Nubia and the Ramesseum on the West Bank at Luxor.

Four types of sphinxes lined the processional avenues, including

Ram-headed lions, which were identified with Amun, who is sometimes shown with a ram’s head. Often a small figure of the king was placed under the chin of the sphinx.

Falcon-headed lions, which represented the king in the form of Horus. These are rare and are found primarily in Nubian temples.

Sphinxes with the head of a crocodile, jackal, or snake, which represent the gods Sobek, Duamutef (Anubis) or the cobra goddess Wadjet. These are very rare: Examples have been found only at the mortuary temple of Amenhotep III at Luxor.

Human-headed lions, which bear the face of the ruler who constructed them. These sphinxes normally wear the blue and gold nemes headdress or the crown of Upper and Lower Egypt.

Processional avenues were used during religious festivals (see Chapter 9) when the sacred bark (small ceremonial boat) was carried to another temple on the shoulders of the priests. The procession was shielded from the public’s prying eyes by a wall behind the two rows of sphinxes with the pathway running through the centre.

Entering the temple

The area by the temple entrance was always wide and open and was the lowest point of the temple. Priests and temple workers progressed through the temple via a system of short staircases or ramps, to reach the sanctuary at the rear (see Figure 12-1).

Take a break

Along the processional route, and therefore not part of the temple proper, a number of way stations offered an opportunity for the priests carrying the statues to stop and rest the sacred bark (boat). The sacred bark often had carrying poles that rested on the priests’ shoulders.

The way stations were normally only large enough to accommodate the sacred bark for a short period and did not contain anything other than an altar on which the statue was refreshed with food and drink before continuing its journey.

Because the temples were closed to the public, getting into them was a tricky business. The outside of the temple was not designed to be inviting, and in fact all temples were surrounded by large enclosure walls. These walls were generally built of mud-brick laid over a frame of wooden beams and reed matting. These walls were not for scaling and were sometimes more than 10 metres thick. Not only were these barriers efficient at keeping people out, but they also offered protection for the royal family, priests and anyone else lucky enough to be admitted during times of war or conflict.

The enclosure wall was sometimes designed to represent primeval waters. By alternating the brickwork into convex or concave sections to look like waves, this building element further associated the temple with a representation of a microcosm of the universe.

In the centre of the enclosure wall stood an entrance pylon. These structures, generally built of stone, were often hollow and sometimes contained staircases or rooms, or were filled with rubble – anything to create a more stable structure. The shape of the pylon represents the hieroglyph for horizon, with a depression in the centre over the door. Because the pylon was ideally in the east, the sun rose between the sides of the depression over the sacred landscape of the temple. Many pylons exist at Egyptian temples today, including ten at Karnak, three at Medinet Habu and two at the Ramesseum.

A number of flag poles were erected on the wings of the pylon, on either side of the door. The flag poles (sometimes 60 metres tall and possibly made of gold or electrum, a mixture of gold and silver) bore flags with the sign of the god. Figure 12-2 shows the entrance at Luxor temple. The photo clearly shows the grooves for the four flag poles, as well as a standing obelisk, which was part of a pair. See the section ‘Pointing to the sun: Obelisks’, later in this chapter, for more.

Figure 12-2: The entrance pylon from the Sphinx Avenue at Luxor temple.

Entering via the back door

During processions, the gods (actually their statues carried by the priests) didn’t always use the main pylon entrance. Instead, most temples included a river entrance just outside the temple walls that was approached by a landing quay from the Nile or a local canal. In times of procession, the sacred statue began and ended its journey here. The general public may have gathered here for these processions to greet or bid farewell to the god.

Getting a foot in the door: The first courtyard and hypostyle hall

Once through the pylon gateway, the first courtyard loomed ahead. This area was open to the sky and surrounded by a pillared colonnade. The courtyard may have been accessible on special occasions to carefully chosen nobles to receive gifts from the king, to address the oracle of the god, or to receive divine advice (see Chapter 9). This courtyard housed many statues of nobles, priests, and royalty, and was a means for these individuals to be forever present in the temple and in the company of the gods.

At the rear of the first pillared court was the columned hypostyle hall. The pillars were believed to hold up the sky and the ceiling was often painted blue with hundreds of stars to represent the night sky. The pillars represented the vegetation that grew in the primordial marshes that surrounded the mound of creation. Entering the hypostyle hall was a symbolic walk in the marshes of creation. The most impressive existing hypostyle hall is at Karnak temple; it was planned by Horemheb, started by Sety I, and completed by Ramses II.

Proceeding to the Holy of Holies

The central axis that ran through both the first pillared courtyard and the hypostyle hall led to the most important part of the temple – the sanctuary. Only the king and the high priest were allowed to enter this part of the temple.

This small chamber was known by many names:

The inner sanctuary

The inner sanctum

The Holy of Holies

The floors ascended as people progressed through the temple towards the sanctuary (see the section ‘Entering the temple’, earlier in this chapter), and the ceiling descended. Therefore, the sanctuary was the highest point of the temple, but with the lowest roof. This dark raised room represented the mound of creation, from which all life began.

Within the sanctuary, there was an altar with a small shrine. Behind golden or bronze doors, the cult statue stood. The Egyptians believed that this statue was not merely a representation of the god, but in fact housed the spirit of the god. For this reason, access to the statue was extremely limited.

The bark shrine was often within the sanctuary or very nearby. This shrine provided a spot to house the portable bark of the deity when it wasn’t needed for processions.

Going for a dip: The sacred lakes

Because the temple represented the universe, and the sanctuary the mound of creation, the complex also needed to include the primordial waters. And indeed every temple had a sacred lake.

Sacred lakes were stone lined with steps that led down into the water. They were filled by the natural water table. Since the Aswan Dam was built in 1960 and the inundation was stopped, most of these lakes have dried up.

The water in these lakes was used in ritual offerings and for the purification of both the temple and the priests. Before the priests entered the temple, they were required to plunge into the lake to be purified by the holy waters.

The sacred lake of Karnak, built by Thutmosis III, had another very creative use. A special tunnel from the lake led to geese pens some distance away. The geese were systematically pushed from the pens through the tunnel, from which they popped up into the water, as if from nowhere. These geese symbolised Amun at creation and proved that the primeval water was still creating new life from nothing.

Supporting the ceiling

Present-day visitors may have difficulty imagining what the temples originally looked like, because the remains indicate very open, bright places. This is in fact the opposite of how the temples looked during the New Kingdom. All the temple areas – aside from the sacred lake and first pillared hall – were closed in with heavy stone roofs.

In order to support these roofs, columns were a major aspect of most temples, and indeed of architecture in general. Columns appear in at least two areas of a standard temple – the first pillared hall and the hypostyle hall. In larger temples, pillared courtyards, corridors, and kiosks were also common.

Because pillars were such a dominant architectural element, the Egyptians varied their design. In fact, more than 30 different column designs were used during the pharaonic period.

All pillar types were elaborately decorated with painted and carved images and hieroglyphs. Popular motifs included

Lotus blossoms, with both open and closed buds

Papyrus bundles, with both open and closed umbrels (flowering heads)

The face of the cow-headed deity, Hathor

Considering doors and windows

The doors throughout the temples were huge affairs (some more than 20 metres high). Imagine the splendour of these monumental doorways. They were made from wood, ideally cedar wood imported from the Lebanon. These large planks of wood were then inlaid with gold, silver, lapis, and many other semi-precious stones.

As beautiful as they were, the doors served an important function: They were difficult to penetrate, which kept out the public and any invading enemies.

Temples were lit not by windows, but rather by stone grilles high up in the walls or by holes cut into the ceiling blocks, which let in small shafts of light. See Figure 12-3 for an example at Karnak temple. As a result, the temples were very dark and gloomy places, and the light shed by these lighting systems was intermittent and probably very creepy. For extra lighting, the priests and other temple personnel used oil lamps, which no doubt added to the shadow-ridden corners.

Figure 12-3: A window grill in the hypostyle hall at Karnak Temple.

False doors and ear stelae

In both cult and royal mortuary temples, the sanctuaries included false doors carved into the rear walls. These doors weren’t functional but were simply decoration carved onto the wall. (False doors are also found in tombs and tomb chapels; see Chapter 13.)

In a mortuary temple, such doors allowed the spirit of the deceased king to enter freely into the temple from his burial place. The royal burial places were often a distance away from the mortuary temples in an effort to prevent tomb robberies. The tombs were very secret, with no superstructure to act as a beacon to their whereabouts. Because the mortuary temple was the site of the food offerings, the deceased’s spirit needed to have access, which the false door provided.

In cult temples, the false doors often backed onto hearing chapels. These chapels enabled the ordinary people to speak to the gods from the exterior of the temple (they were unable to enter the temple itself). The chapel wall was decorated with ear stelae, stone inscriptions inscribed with images of numerous little ears.

Worshippers spoke into one of the ears – saying a prayer, thanking the god, or asking for something, such as curing of an illness – and their voices went straight to the god’s ears. Some of the chapels also had a small priest hole behind the stelae, within which a priest sat and answered the prayers out loud. That would certainly make you jump if you weren’t expecting it!

Building the outhouses

In addition to the main temple, a number of outbuildings, essential to the function of the temple, stood around the surrounding grounds.

The most common outbuildings were the stores, or magazines, used to house the foodstuffs that were gathered in payment of taxes and redistributed to the temple and state workers. Some of these structures may also have stored the materials and tools used within the temple.

Other buildings included kitchens, animal and fowl pens, stables, and housing for the priests who resided within the temple enclosure walls. The temple was probably a noisy, busy place – and no doubt very smelly as well. Not the quiet serenity of a modern Christian church.

Several additional outbuildings had a religious function and can therefore be considered part of the temple itself.

The mammissi

From the Ptolemaic period (332 BC), many temples had a building known as a mammissi, or birth house. It wasn’t a useable building, like a maternity ward, but rather a sacred place that commemorated the birth of the king.

The king had to show that he had a divine birth in order to prove his right to the throne. Prior to the Ptolemaic period, kings from slightly dodgy backgrounds had divine birth scenes added to their temples in order to ‘prove’ their divine origins and hence their right to rule. Because none of the kings in the Ptolemaic period were Egyptian, they needed to validate their right to rule even more than most. Check out Chapter 6 for more on this era.

In temples dedicated to a male deity rather than being a mortuary temple of the king, the mammissi was symbolic of the birthplace of the deity, and his birth was depicted on the walls. If the deity of the temple was female, the mammissi displayed images of her giving birth to her divine child. A rather splendid mammissi exists at the Ptolemaic temple of Denderah, just north of Luxor.

Sanatorium

Another building common in the Ptolemaic period is the sanatorium. Although sanatoria were present at most temples, the only surviving example is at Denderah.

The sanatorium was a dormitory where the sick came in an attempt to be healed. These were open to the general public, although no doubt if you gave the priests a financial gift, your cure was promised to be quicker or better.

After a patient arrived in the dormitory, the priest administered a sleeping draught. When the patient awoke, his or her dreams were interpreted by the priests. Egyptians believed that dreams were messages from the gods (see Chapter 9), so whatever the message of a priest-induced dream was, it would help cure ailments. Risking being called a cynic, I believe that most of these dream interpretations ultimately benefited the temple in one way or another; many of the ‘cures’ involved making offerings or building shrines at the temple.

Adding Finishing Touches: Obelisks and Decoration

After a temple was completed and the statue of the god had been placed in the shrine, the temple was considered fully functioning. But this didn’t mean that kings couldn’t keep adding to temples as a means of improving the works of their ancestors, as well as showing their devotion to the gods.

Additions took the form of carved or painted decoration, statues, and obelisks (as well as the processional avenues described in the section ‘Strolling down the processional avenue’, earlier in this chapter). The following section cover these architectural add-ons.

Pointing to the sun: Obelisks

All temples had at least two obelisks – tall, pointing structures that are synonymous with ancient Egypt. Obelisks are characterised by their tapering needle-like shape. At the top of the shaft was a pyramidion, which was gilded in gold or electrum, and takes its shape from the mound of creation. Some of the obelisks were completely covered in gold if the Egyptian economy allowed it.

Hatshepsut’s obelisk adventure

At her mortuary temple at Deir el Bahri and the Red Chapel she built at Karnak, Hatshepsut records her erection of two obelisks at Karnak temple. She even shows their transportation from the quarries at Aswan where they were initially carved.

At Aswan, the obelisks were tied to wooden ledges, which were towed on large sycamore barges, more than 60 metres long, by 27 tow boats to Thebes via the Nile. These boats were rowed by 850 oarsmen – a huge number of rowers, reflecting the weight of their cargo. Each obelisk may have weighed more than 450 tonnes and stood more than 50 metres high. The obelisks were completely covered in gold and were a beautiful sight to behold.

Luckily the currents of the Nile aided the transportation process. The entire journey was accompanied by three ships of priests who chanted incantations and prayers over the boats. I’m sure the rowers appreciated their efforts. After these boats arrived at Thebes, a bull was sacrificed in honour of the event and offered to the gods. Hatshepsut then presented her obelisks to the god Amun.

The whole process from quarry to temple took only seven months and was a phenomenal achievement. Sadly, all that remains of these obelisks are the bases, as the gold and the shafts were removed and reused in antiquity.

A few years later, Hatshepsut erected a further pair of obelisks, standing nearly 30 metres high, one of which is still standing at Karnak temple and is the tallest obelisk in Egypt. Only the tops of this pair were gilded, but still they were an impressive sight.

Obelisks were made from a single block of stone, often red granite from Aswan. The quarry at Aswan has an incomplete obelisk (more than 41 metres long) embedded in the rock, showing that the features (shaft and pyramidion) were carved in situ and removed when complete.

In a standard New Kingdom temple, the obelisks were normally placed in front of a pylon, flanking the doorways, or along the central axis.

New Kingdom obelisks were very tall. Due to their height, they were often the first and last point of the temple to catch the rays of the sun, and indeed the shape of the obelisk is believed to represent a sunbeam.

Of the hundreds of obelisks that once existed in ancient Egypt, only 30 are still in existence, and of those only seven are in Egypt. The others have been spread around the world:

Seven are still in Egypt, two at Heliopolis, one at Gezira Island, one at Cairo, and four at Karnak.

13 are in Rome.

Ten are elsewhere around the world, including Paris, London, New York, Istanbul, Florence, Urbino (a small town in Italy), Catania (in Sicily), Wimborne (United Kingdom), Arles (southern France), and Caesarea (Israel).

Journey of a lifetime

The transportation of Cleopatra’s Needle to London was not an adventure-free journey. In fact it can be described as disastrous.

Cleopatra’s Needle was presented to the United Kingdom in 1819 by Mohammed Ali, the Viceroy of Egypt, in commemoration of victories at the Battle of the Nile and the Battle of Alexandria in 1801. The structure remained in Alexandria until 1877 when the funding for transportation, a total of £10,000, was provided by Sir William James Erasmus Wilson. (Prior to this no one wanted to pay the transportation costs.)

The obelisk was placed in a custom-made, 28 by 4.5 metre iron cylinder, named rather unoriginally Cleopatra. This cylinder then floated behind the tow-boat Olga – a modern(ish) twist on Hatshepsut’s obelisk transportation.

When the boat reached the Bay of Biscay, Cleopatra capsized in a storm and floated into the bay. The cylinder was rescued by an English ship and taken to Spain for repairs. It eventually arrived in the United Kingdom in January 1878 and was erected on Victoria Embankment seven months later.

In September 1917, during the First World War, German bombs landed near the obelisk, causing damage to the right-flanking sphinx. This was never repaired, in commemoration of the war, and shrapnel holes are still visible. To be honest, the British are lucky to have the obelisk at all – so what are a few holes?

Temple décor

One of the easiest ways of making an impact is through decoration, and many kings decorated a wall or chamber of an existing temple and claimed credit for the building work as well. In their logic, if their name was painted or carved on the wall, then they must have built it too.

During particularly weak economic periods, or even just busy times, kings commonly usurped temples in order to reduce time and construction costs. During the New Kingdom, it became the norm for kings to nick the work of their ancestors by simply painting or carving over the cartouches of the original decorator and claiming the work for themselves. Ramses III, however, was determined that he would always be credited for the work he did – he therefore carved his cartouches so deeply into the stone that it was impossible for a later king to usurp his monument without carving half a metre into the wall.

Carvings

Two types of relief were used in temple decoration:

Raised (bas) relief, in which the background was cut away, leaving the image raised. This was very time-consuming and was kept to a minimum. It was more common on interior walls.

Sunk relief, in which the subject was cut away from the background. Quick to execute, this type of relief was more common, especially on exterior walls.

Ramses II devised a way of carving which looked like the finer raised relief, but was in fact the quick-and-easy sunk relief. This involved carving a very deep line around the edge of the images, which gives the impression of raised relief. Figure 12-4 shows an example of this carving technique.

After the carved images were completed, they were painted in elaborate colours. Paint also added small details, such as fabric patterns, wings on birds, and plant life.

Figure 12-4: The image of Hathor and Isis at the Hathor Temple in Deir el Medina is a sunk relief made to look like a raised one.

Interior embellishments

Because the temple represents the universe, the ceilings were always decorated with sky-related images, and the decoration near the floor was always of marshland. Pillars often represented plants, creating a stone universe recognisable to all.

Both cult and mortuary temples featured the same categories of artistic embellishment, including depictions of

Ritual activities, such as temple rituals, processions, and offerings.

Historical activities, such as battles, processions (either military or religious), coronation celebrations, sacred birth scenes, and diplomatic treaties.

Environmental scenes, which were applied to certain elements of the temple architecture and included depictions of the sky, marshes, flora, and fauna.

Making offerings to the gods.

Although the preceding categories are nicely labelled, many surviving images actually fall into more than one category on occasions. For instance, religious processions or offerings are both ritual activities and historical activities because they were real events.

The images were strategically placed throughout the temple, and although artists had a lot of freedom regarding the content of the images, the location was often pre-determined. For example:

The sanctuary had images of offerings being made to a shrine on a sacred bark.

Shrines had images of offerings being made to various gods by the king.

Windowsills were decorated with images of sunrays.

Ceilings were painted with stars or birds to represent the sky.

Food stores were decorated with images of fatted oxen ready for slaughter.

Routes of processions showed the procession in progress.

Pylons and external walls were decorated with violent scenes showing the king smiting enemies in battle or parading bound captives. These images were to act as a deterrent against enemies wishing to cause harm to the temple, Egypt, or the king.

In rooms that did not have a specific function, a variety of images were presented, including historical events such as expeditions, coronations, or public military processions. For example, in the temple of Edfu, the walls were used as archival documents recording the history of temple building and festival calendars.

Who’s a pretty pylon?

Luckily for modern visitors and historians, many of the kings described their temple-decoration methods and meanings on temple walls and papyri. These records provide some idea of the splendour that once existed in these vast and now barren places.

For example, the decoration of the third pylon at Karnak is described by Amenhotep III and shows that paint and carving were just the beginning:

The king added a monument for Amun, making for him a very great doorway before the face of Amun-Re, King of the Gods, embellished with gold throughout. [On its door] the sacred ram-headed image, inlaid with lapis lazuli, is embellished with gold and precious stones: the like will never be done again. A stela of lapis lazuli stands on either side. Its pylons reach to the sky like the four pillars of heaven: The flagpoles thereof, embellished with electrum, gleam brighter that the sky.

The riches mentioned in this description have long since been stripped and taken away – if they ever existed. The description may be pure propaganda to inflate the piety of the king. For the ancient Egyptians, once something was written in hieroglyphs, it was considered to have been created by the gods and became reality. Now if only those kinds of pens were available in the shops today . . .

Worshipping in the Temple

The temples were busy and vibrant places. Although the temples were closed to the public, the rituals inside were very important.

Attending to the god

All temple activities revolved around the sacred statue in the sanctuary at the rear of the temple. This statue was tiny – perhaps only 30 centimetres high – and was made of gold or gilded wood. Sadly, none of these statues survives, but the shrines within which they were placed survive and give an indication of how small the statues were.

The most important ritual was the first one of the day. Just before dawn, all the temple staff rose, purified themselves, and prepared food for an elaborate breakfast for the statue. Typical duties included baking bread and honey cakes, slaughtering animals, and arranging fruit and vegetables on trays. The meal was then offered to the statue.

A similar meal-preparation ritual was repeated at dusk when the statue was put to bed; for further information see Chapter 9.

Throughout the day, the hour priest offered different hourly prayers to the god. The hour priest kept time by observing the sun and using water clocks, which were essentially bowls with holes that measured the time by the amount of water that had drained away.

Enjoying the festivities

The temple was also the site of many festivals and processions, which enabled ordinary people, typically denied access to the temple, to visit the temple and participate in worship. Records indicate that up to ten processions happened each month, enabling the people to view the sacred bark and perhaps receive blessings and guidance from the priests.

During festivals and processions, temple staff often distributed extra rations so that people could have a feast and celebrate in style, in addition to enjoying the obligatory day off work.

Not only did festivals benefit the villagers, they also benefited the smaller temples. The statues of the deities from the larger temples, like Karnak or Luxor temple, travelled to the smaller ones. To ensure that the god was suitably received, the larger temples supported the smaller temples economically, greatly benefiting the priests working there.

Getting wasted

The Festival of Drunkenness was celebrated annually at Deir el Medina in honour of the cow-headed goddess, Hathor, the lady of drunkenness (see Chapter 9). The aim of the celebration was to drink as much beer and wine as possible over a five-day period. Rather like St Patrick’s Day – for the better part of a week!

Texts from Deir el Medina describe the festival in detail:

Come, Hathor, who consumes praise because the food of her desire is dancing, who shines on the festival at the time of illumination, who is content with the dancing at night. Come! The drunken celebrants drum for you during the cool of the night.

Sounds like the party went on well into the wee hours of the morning with lots of dancing – as is normally the case with drunk celebrants.

Egyptians, however, believed that the drunkenness associated with this festival was a means of achieving an altered state that enabled worshippers to see the divine or receive messages from the goddess. If you drink enough, who knows what can happen?

Appreciating the Roles of the King and the High Priests

The king was officially the high priest of all the cults in every temple in Egypt and was expected to perform all the necessary rituals in order to maintain the cosmic order, or Maat. (See Chapter 9 for a further discussion of Maat.)

If the king failed to appease the gods, the land would collapse into a state of chaos resulting in famine, floods, or invasion. If I had this kind of pressure, I would delegate it – and this strategy is exactly what the king followed with his high priests. The high priest of each temple worked in place of the king. Everything the priest did was done in the king’s name.

Whenever the king was present at a temple, the high priest was relieved of his role, albeit briefly, enabling the king to perform his duty as high priest.

Laying the foundations

The king’s role in the temple started as soon as a location was chosen (and often he chose the location himself). As the section ‘Building a Temple’ earlier in this chapter explains, most temples were built on older sacred sites, which often required the dismantling of the older temple that originally stood there.

After the site was clear, the king performed the ten foundation rituals:

1. Fixing the plan of the building by ‘stretching the cord’. This was the most important ritual and was assisted by the goddess of writing, Seshat. During this ritual, the king banged a peg into the earth at the spot where each corner was to be and then stretched cord between this peg until an outline of the temple was established.

2. Purifying the area by scattering gypsum.

3. Digging the first foundation trench. The trench was dug until the natural water table was reached.

4. Pouring sand into the first foundation trench. This represents the mound of creation protruding from the primeval waters at the bottom of the trench.

5. Moulding the first bricks.

6. Leaving foundation deposits at the corners of the structure. These deposits are varied and consist of pottery, model food, model tools, and occasionally jewellery.

7. Initiating the building work.

8. Purifying the finished temple. This no doubt involved prayers and incantations.

9. Presenting the temple to its deities. The king placed the statue of the god in the shrine at the rear of the temple. The statue was the focus of the whole temple. Although a temple could enable worship of numerous deities, each temple had a primary deity. (For example, although Amun, Mut, Khonsu, Montu, Ptah, Opet, and Amum are all worshipped at Karnak, the main deity is Amun. Amun’s statue is therefore the most important on the site.)

10. Making sacrificial offerings to the gods who now resided in the temple. These sacrifices were probably in the form of geese or oxen.

Because these rituals are only recorded in list form, knowing exactly what each ritual consisted of is difficult, if not impossible.

Feeding the populace: Other temple duties

In addition to being the ‘house of the god’ where the priests worshipped and revered the statue of the god, the temples were the economic centres of the cities.

Most temples were supported by their own estates, which the king or wealthy members of the community gave the temples in exchange for the blessings of the god. This agricultural land was rented to farmers, who paid the temple a third of their yields as rent. Much of this income was redistributed in the form of rations (wages) for the army, to the officials (essentially anyone who held a position in government or the priesthood), and for royal construction of temples and tombs. (See Chapter 2 for more details.)

Monitoring the river’s rise and fall

In order to calculate taxes correctly, temple personnel devised methods for predicting flood levels that helped them determine the type of harvest that was likely to result. If the flood was too high or too low, the harvest failed and resulted in famine. So through prediction, the priest prepared for agricultural abundance or shortfalls.

Each temple had a nilometer, which was a deep well that reached the water table. When the Nile started to flood, the priest measured the speed of the rise at the bottom of the nilometer. These measurements were recorded and compared to those made at the same date in previous years. With this information the priests fairly accurately predicted annual flood levels. Clever, eh?

Meeting the priests – civil (not divine) servants

Prior to the New Kingdom, a permanent priesthood did not exist. Priests worked in the temples on a part-time basis and then returned to their jobs in ordinary society. During the New Kingdom, many priests were primarily administrative officials in control of taxes and food distribution – with only a small hint of religion (for the full role of the priest, skip to Chapter 2). Even in the New Kingdom, a large majority of the priests served one month out of four.

A small core of permanent priests lived within the temple precincts, with the high priest in the most senior position. Obviously the number of personnel in a temple varied according to the size of the temple. Karnak, for example, had more than 2,000 employees, whereas most other temples had between 10 and 80 personnel.

Acting as an ancient records office

Because the temples were so involved in the Egyptian economy and the associated administration, they kept extensive records of the local regions, rather like a town hall records office. These records were stored in the House of Life (for further details go to Chapter 2) and included details of

Locations of holy places

Pilgrimages, which anyone could participate in

Cult centres (centres of worship of particular deities) and names of personnel

Local crops

Local standards and deities

Dates of principal festivals

Taboos regarding activities or food

Portion of the Nile present in the region

Cultivated fields and marshy lands

Outgoings, such as support for campaigns to foreign areas, building works, and rations

Foreign countries and their resources

Recording the days

The priests were also responsible for devising the calendar systems. Three were in use, all for different purposes:

Agricultural calendar: For day-to-day use by the majority of the population. The year was divided into three seasons of four months each – inundation (flood), time of growing, and harvest.

Astronomical calendar: For ritual use and based on the movement of the stars.

Moon calendar: For ritual use for lunar cults (cults devoted to gods associated with the moon). Careful records of the lunar phases were kept and these were tied in with religious days and rituals.

All the calendars had certain aspects in common. Each month consisted of 30 days, totalling 360 days in a year. Five religious festival days were then added to the end of the year for the birthdays of Osiris, Horus, Seth, Isis, and Nephthys (see Chapter 9). Of course, this 365-day calendar slowly veered away from the true year. Every four years, the agricultural calendar advanced one day, which meant that eventually the seasons no longer coincided with the calendar. To deal with this discrepancy, the rising of the star Sirius always coincided with the beginning of the inundation, which was seen as the New Year.