Ancient sacred monumental architecture survives extraordinarily well at a handful of sites in the Egyptian Nile Valley and Saharan oases. From the period 1500-1100 bc, large temple structures entirely in stone still stand floor to ceiling at Waset/Thebes East (Karnak, Luxor) and West (Madinat Habu, Ramesseum, Qurna) or have been reconstructed (Deir al-Bahari) or rebuilt up to roof level (Abdju kingship temples). From earlier periods, smaller temples are to be found in Fayoum at Qasr Qarun (2500 or 1800 bc) and Madinat Madi (1800 bc), and dismantled sanctuaries of the Middle Kingdom have been reconstructed at Waset (Karnak, 1950 bc). Besides the pyramids at their core, complexes for kingship cult (2600-1800 bc) include well-preserved or reconstructed temple structures at Saqqara, Giza, Medum; museum collections now house the more substantial sections of relief-decorated temple walls from these complexes, from Saqqara and Abusir, and, in part anciently recycled, Lisht. The sum of this remarkable conservation story is curiously limited in range, almost as if we could write a history of religious architecture on just two types, the royal pyramid complex (26001800 bc) and the axial procession temple fronted by massive gateways (1500-1100 bc). The archaeological record for less well-preserved structures can reveal a more diverse and intriguing history. The construction of separate sacred space on larger scale falls along a spectrum of informal to formal, where the built environment interweaves with spaces cut from the rock and with sands and floodwaters.
Range of different architectural types/engagements with ground
From the late fourth millennium BC, large ceremonial buildings were set up in organic materials, as shown by alignments of substantial postholes at Nekhen, an early kingship center (Kemp 2006). The architectural history of ancient Egypt relies, though, on evidence of stone structures, and new excavations may alter the
Exploring Religion in Ancient Egypt, First Edition. Stephen Quirke. © 2015 Stephen Quirke. Published 2015 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Picture substantially where more mud-brick and organic structures are also recorded. The following examples are not exhaustive, but demonstrate at least the remarkable variety found even for the stone structures:
Type 1 Mounds as platforms: The largest example of this type is arguably the site at the epicenter of ancient Egyptian religious practice, the High Mound for the cult of the sun-god at Iunu (Heliopolis) (Figure 1.5). Early twentieth-century AD excavations found evidence for a rounded stone revetment wall, for a mound supporting the now lost temple or temples of the sun cult. The date of the mound is disputed: the revetment wall includes elements from late third millennium BC, so the structure as found cannot be earlier. Later monuments found within it have been used to date it to the mid-first millennium BC, but the circumstances of their deposition are not clear; they may be from later ditches dug into the mound, perhaps for structures built on top of the mound long after its construction. A fifteenth-century BC manuscript records the decision of King Senusret I (reigned about 1950 bc) to create a new precinct for the sun-god (Lichtheim 1973, 115-118); the first colossal obelisk on the site, the main monument still there, is inscribed for him, supporting the date implied by the manuscript for the temple. A first-millennium BC plaque is inscribed with a plan of the temple, indicating a complex of structures around open courts, their entranceways flanked by massive double towers (Egyptologists use the term pylons), as in other temple types of the second and first millennia BC (Ricke 1935). At other sites, the open court is a recurrent feature of sun worship: examples are found at late second-millennium BC temples for kings in Egypt (e. g., Deir al-Bahari) and Egyptian-occupied Nubia (e. g., Abu Simbel). Inscriptions in these sun courts indicate that worship here centered on a sequence of hymns, sung by the king to keep the sun moving through the sky and so the world in orderly motion. For about a century, 2500-2400 bc, pyramid complexes for kings were paired with separate structures, called Sun Temples in Egyptology, but intended to support the cult of the king. In one of these, the Sun Temple for King Niuserra, chambers of approach were decorated in relief with scenes celebrating the full panoply of the creation (Verner 2002, 78-82). At Akhetaten, the city of King Akhenaten, sun worship focussed on the visible solar sphere, in Egyptian Aten; the Great Aten Temple contains a series of vast open courts, filled with offering tables for food and drink offerings. In the courts, stepped platforms with balustrade screening walls would raise the king up for the singing of the Aten Hymn (Shaw 1994). The same feature occurs at the other second-millennium open sun courts in temples for kings (Figure 3.1).
Type 2 Rounded mounds enclosing chambers: The nonformal type identified by Barry Kemp at several fourth - to third-millennium BC sites, where, in each case, a later rectilinear structure replaced the mound (Kemp 2006, 113-135). At Madu (Medamud), an angular enclosure wall surrounded two central mounds, each with sanded corridor to its center. The main recipient of cult may have been a local deity, or perhaps sometimes the reigning king, as at the Early Dynastic kingship center Nekhen (McNamara 2006) (Figure 3.2).
Figure 3.1 Great stela inscribed with hymn to be sung to the Aten, on a raised platform with stepped approach and balustrade, in the court of the Great Aten Temple at Akhetaten, as depicted in the tomb of Meryra, high priest of the Aten at Akhetaten, about 1350 bc. Drawing © Wolfram Grajetzki, after Shaw 1994.
Figure 3.2 Rounded mounds in enclosure at Madu (Medamud), about 2000 bc, under the later temple of Mont. Drawing © Wolfram Grajetzki.
Figure 3.3 Plan of offering chambers within trapezoidal mass cased in limestone blocks, over burial place of a palace official, south cemeteries of Inebhedj, near modern Dahshur, about 2400 bc. J. De Morgan, Fouilles a Dahchour 1894-1895, Adolphe Holzhausen, Vienna, 1903, fig. 14.
Type 3 Squared mounds enclosing chambers: The squared mound is a feature over burial places of richer individuals from the third millennium BC onward, and from mid-third millennium, there are offering spaces first at the edge, then leading into the mound (Egyptologists use the Arabic term mastaba, “block-bench”); the most elaborate examples have extensive series of chambers, decorated with scenes of offering, and of producing materials for offering, as well as of leisured life. The pyramid with temple at front, burial chambers within, is in a sense a regal transformation of the trend that also generates this type of nonroyal offering place (Figure 3.3).
Type 4 Free-standing rectangular or square structures with principal chamber at rear, fagade not always markedly higher, central structure closed to outside:
Single axis to single principal chamber Multiple axis: dual, triple, unparalleled 7-chamber
The most developed form of architecture with focus on axis from entrance to sanctuary is the festival procession temple (Assmann 2001, 27-35). The dominant feature from the outside is the massive double tower at the front of courtyards: the earliest surviving example fronts the pyramid complex for Amenemhat II at Dahshur (about 1900 bc). As noted under type 1 above, this feature may also be found with other temple types, as for structures atop the High Mound at Iunu, and occurs as much in temples for kings and blessed dead (Saqqara temple-tombs post-Amarna, Waset temple-tombs D25-26) as in those for deities. In the developed axial temple, the double tower provided a dramatic point of appearance for the boat-shrine bearing the sacred image as it left the temple on procession at festivals. The spatial logic of the temple as a whole evoked the unfurling of creation: as you move into the temple toward the sanctuary, it becomes darker, the ceiling lower, and the ground higher, transforming the sanctuary ground itself into the primeval mound on which the creator-god emerged out of the expanse of the inert. Outer courts are more open, inner are filled with columns, and the innermost is a solitary dark chamber containing the shrine with the image inhabitable by the divine force. Columns in inner halls have closed buds and those in outer halls open; in the kingship temples in front of the Amun temple at Karnak, the images of the king in inner chambers are wrapped chrysalis-like, and those in outer courts are in ceremonial garments of rule. The long axis creates a channel to radiate a divine force out toward the massive double tower at the entry, while the walls and darkness also help to enclose a force, protecting it from hostile outside worlds but also protecting the outside world from a sacredness that might overwhelm the living (Figure 3.4).
Type 5 Rectilinear, as 4, but without the extended axis, and all or front part surrounded by columns (peripteral): This type survives most often on a smaller scale, in structures of second and first millennia BC. As relatively small sets of hewn blocks, these have often been recycled in both ancient and more modern times. Examples recycled as building material for other temple blocks have been reconstructed more recently, providing an opportunity to appreciate an otherwise lost feature of the landscape. Other examples, such as the Badari temple (Figure 2.11), can be reconstructed at least in plan and then by analogy with the reconstructions or earlier records of other sites (Figure 3.5).
Type 6 With principal chamber cut from rock: Rock-cut chambers have rarely been excavated carefully enough to reveal less substantial features over the approach to them, and so it is not often possible to be certain how they would have appeared anciently; most of the recorded examples are those with depictions carved or painted over interior walls, which received most attention. The best-known examples are primary sources for ancient Egyptian painting, rock-cut tombs of governors, and local ruling class of several periods: 2400-2100 BC at modern Dishasha, Tihna, and Sheikh Said (Middle Egypt); 2000-1875 BC at modern Beni Hasan, Deir al-Bersha, and Meir (Middle Egypt) and at Tjebu/Qau, Waset/Thebes, and Abu (Upper Egypt); 1475-1200 BC at Akhetaten (Middle Egypt) and Waset/Thebes (Upper Egypt); and 700-600 BC again at Waset. The ground in front of the rock-cut feature often included stone structures, such as terraces (as 7) or extensions in structure (as 4), and these have been more fully recorded. Surviving inscribed examples where the rock-cut part dominates tend to be smaller, as at Speos Artemidos near Beni Hasan in Middle Egypt, and at the Gebel el-Silsila sandstone quarries in southern Upper Egypt; the outstanding examples are at Abu Simbel in Nubia, two rock-cut temples for the cult of Ramses II and his wife Nefertari (about 1275 Bc) (Figure 3.6).
XX II DYN CHAPEL
Figure 3.4 Rectilinear temple on linear axis, temple for the cult of King Ramses II, Waset, about 1275 bc. J. Quibell, R. paget, A. pirie, The Ramesseum and The Tomb of Ptah-hetep, Quaritch, London, 1898, pl. 1.
Figure 3.5 Peripteral temple with columns around the front, temple of Amenhotep III, Abu. From W. Petrie, Egyptian Architecture, London 1938, pl. 28.
Figure 3.6 Rectilinear rock-cut offering place on linear axis: right, chapel over burial place of Governor Wahka, near Tjebu (Qau), about 1850 bc; left, temple to the cult of Ramses II formerly in Wadi es-Seboua, Lower Nubia, about 1275 bc. From W. petrie, Egyptian Architecture, London 1938, pl. 34.
Figure 3.7 Terraced cliff-front temples to the cult of sovereigns at Waset (covered after AD 300 by a monastery, Deir al-Bahari, now removed): to the left (south) is the temple at the burial place of King Nebhepetra Mentuhotep, in the foreground the temple for Hatshepsut as sovereign. photograph after unearthing of the sites, E. Naville, Deir al-Bahri. Part 3, Egypt Exploration Fund, London 1898.
Type 7 Terraced: Temples built up against an escarpment include one or more platforms connected by central ramps. The best-known example is the reconstructed temple for the cult of Hatshepsut as king, at Deir al-Bahri on the West Bank at Thebes (about 1475 Bc); the inspiration for this multiple terrace with pillared tiers seems to have been the adjacent monuments for King Nebhepetra Mentuhotep, reunifier of Egypt (2000 bc), and for his highest officials and predecessors (rock-cut tombs with pillared facades). Large Late period temples for animal cults at Saqqara stood on terraces that might have required similar but steeper approaches (Jeffreys and Smith 1988, precise form and foundation date uncertain) (Figure 3.7).
Type 8 Within crescent lake: The crescent lake is a natural feature of the Nile floodplain, with high ground within a moatlike outer crescent of water, named isheru in Egyptian. The best-known example is at the temple of the goddess Mut at Luxor (Waraksa 2009), and there may be a particular association with the sailing of goddesses. However, the main god at Hutnennesut is called Heryshef “He who is over his lake,” and this might refer to a similar feature (Figure 3.8).
Figure 3.8 Plan of the crescent-shaped lake around temple of the goddess Mut, Luxor. From K. Baedeker, Egypt and the Sudan. Handbook for travellers, Karl Baedeker, Leipzig, 1914.
Recipients of offerings
The pictorial and inscriptional evidence identifies the primary function for all these types as offering places. Frayer and assembly are secondary in the explicit self-image of the ancient Egyptian temple, although they may have been primary in lived experience for many people anciently in their grounds. The evidence also identifies possible recipients of offerings as three categories, each usually with their own separate offering spaces, though they might also receive offerings jointly in one space:
King (Egyptian nesut), structures built for the reigning king, rarely for a predecessor.
Gods/goddesses (Egyptian netjeru/netjeryt).
Blessed dead (Egyptian akhu), structures built for an individual during their lifetime; outside kingship complexes, the inscribed examples are nearly always his, but rare exceptions for a woman include the Akhmim tombs of about 2200 Bc, the Theban tomb of Senet mother of vizier Intefiqer about 1950 BC (Gardiner and de Garis Davies 1920), and the Saqqara tomb of Maya, nurse of Tutankhamun about 1350 BC (Zivie 2009).
In temples for the first two, the only person who is depicted offering or performing other rituals is the reigning king. In the offering spaces for the blessed dead, the person receives offerings most often from immediate family but may also after 1500 bc appear offering to, or in worship of, a deity or king.
Where the recipient of offering was the embalmed body of king or wealthy nonroyal individual, the focus of offering was in many periods an offering slab in front of a solid stone doorway, known in Egyptology as door stela or false door (Janosi 1999). The stone doorway regularly marks the main ground for laying offerings in wealthy nonroyal offering places over the tomb (2500-1800 Bc), less commonly in later periods, and in temples built for the cult of the reigning king (2400-2200 Bc). Another principal focus, at this and other periods, is the stone image, most often in three dimensions. Although any image might offer a focus for offerings, few surviving images of a deity are likely to have ever served as the principal focus of offerings in a temple. The large stone sculptures that attract attention in museum galleries and art history books tend to be from exceptional ritual settings. Several hundred granodiorite lioness-headed statues of Sekhmet and hundreds more, perhaps the majority of surviving, larger hard-stone images of other deities come from the singular program to ensure the passage of Amenhotep III through his sed festivals to enhanced divine status (Bryan 1997). Large stone images of kings also served not as focus of cult at the innermost sanctuary, but, quite the opposite, as guardian forces along the approach to that sanctuary (Figures 3.9). Some of these images are known to have had names and received offerings; these practices demonstrate the divine force felt in the sculpture but seem secondary to their role as active divine guardians of sacred space. The main image in a temple may well have been much smaller, perhaps with precious metal, lapis lazuli, and elephant ivory rather than all in the soft and hard stones of large-scale sculpture: written sources refer to the flesh and bones of deities as being of gold, silver, and lapis lazuli. Any of the rare surviving small-scale images in such precious metals might have been the original images housed in the main sanctuary of a temple, but none is certainly a principal cult image (Figure 3.10). On the written evidence, images were not themselves the object of worship, but provided a material core which could be inhabited by the divine force, to receive offerings, including the word offerings that are hymns, within daily, seasonal, or other rituals (Assmann 2001, 40-47). Similarly, and perhaps the model for the image of king or deity in temples, a nonroyal individual might continue to receive offerings through a statue at any place of offering, either the chapel over the burial place or, from at least 1950 BC onward, at the temple of a king or deity.
Unlike the images of the deities, statues for the eternal offering cult of the individual were more often of soft or hard stone. The main evidence for the consecration of divine images is the composition with the ancient title Opening of the Mouth and Byes. This ritual is primarily for the stone statues of nonroyal individuals, as found from the mid-third millennium BC in chapels over burial places, and perhaps also for stone statues of kings. In the main group of sources, captioned depictions in tomb chapels at Waset (1450-1200 Bc), the object of the ritual may be the mummified body, the wrapped and wearing human-form mask, or the
Figure 3.9 Protective statue depicting King Ramses II between two goddesses, from the temple to Min and Isis at Gebtyu (Qift), now Egyptian Museum Cairo CG555. W. petrie, Kaptas, Quaritch, London, 1895, pl. 17.
Figure 3.10 Gold statuette of the god Heryshef found at Henennesut temple; cult images are thought to have been similarly small and of precious metal, but this example has a ring at the back as if to wear for protection. W. petrie, Bhnasya, Egypt Exploration Fund, 1905, frontispiece.
Human-form inner coffin. The focus of this all-important ritual is overcoming death, and, accordingly, the ritual is outlined in Chapter 7 (see there, Table 2).
Daily ajfering rituals
The direct evidence for offerings deposited at a site would be physical remains at shrines, but not all offerings were necessarily left with the recipient. An Egyptian phrase wedjeb khet, “reversion of offerings,” implies removal for consumption by others, whether kings/deities/blessed dead, or other living communities. Temple inscriptions of around 1450 bc record the daily offerings to a statue of Amun-Ra, main deity at Karnak (Barta 1968, offering list Type E), with similar lists for the god Min and, a century later, for the goddess Mut at Luxor. The offerings begin with libation and incense, to purify the space, or intensify its purity, followed by a heading, affering list af Nun, the primeval waters, presumably here as source of all life and so of all material to be offered. Three different types of jar with water are presented with natron, another purifying natural material, and, the first food on the table, a large loaf and twenty cakes. Another libation of two different jars of water then introduces the main meal: two different jars of wine; five cuts of meat, including liver, along with the knife to cut them; and a jug of milk with one final wine offering. A ritual note interrupts the flow of material, and the proceedings end with a jug of water and some honey. Although there is no cooking manual, the gist of the ritual evokes a rich formal banquet, as if king/deity/blessed dead take the role of owner in a large estate. On this model, the sacred space is a crucible for a special kind of alchemy, enabling earthly energy to pass to these invisible forces. Any sculpted image in these offering spaces may need to be consecrated, but it seems never to be the object of worship; instead, it provides a material focus to provide orientation for the offerer and perhaps a physical object space where the invisible force could collect the energies being offered in form of food, drink, or incense.
The other inscriptional and pictorial evidence for activity in the innermost part of sacred space confirms that the inhabitant of offering space (king/deity/blessed dead) is treated as the estate owner in a large estate. The principal sources for repeated daily ritual are manuscripts from Karnak temples of Amun and Mut and depictions with hieroglyphic inscriptions in the Karnak Amun temple, on obelisks from the temple, and in the Abdju temple for King Sety I. The main manuscript source (ninth century BC) starts with the words “Beginning of the pronouncements of the god's offerings that are made at the House of Amun-Ra king of the gods, in the course of every day, by the main pure-one who is on his day (of duty)” (for the following series of actions, see Assmann 2001, 47-50). First, the main pure ane has to light a torch and incense at the approach to the sacred place (Egyptian bu djeser). He then opens the sanctuary that houses a small shrine containing the little image of Amun-Ra, by breaking a seal on a cord, followed by the opening af the face (to light) and the sight af the gad, where the officiant has to prostrate himself, kissing the ground, before making morning-meal offerings. Crucially, now, comes the hymn ta Amun. Words are another material to be offered. With another offering of incense, the main pure ane says the words for entering the temple and entering the sanctuary of the god, before opening the small shrine itself, prostrating himself, and repeating the words to be recited at the opening of the face and sight of the god. By this stage, repetition of phrases would be creating chant-like rhythms within the incense and dim torchlight, a powerful psychological combination. A further offering of incense ushers in a whole series of hymns to Amun, culminating in the core rite of “offering What is Right,” the primary act of kingship, cementing order in the created world. Incense can then be offered to the nine deities, a collective expression for all the named forces accompanying the focal deity in this particular place. The practical task of the morning follows: washing (purifying) the image, clothing it with four sacred cloths of different colors or perhaps more importantly different textures, and anointing the image and applying eye paint, green (copper ore) and black (the lead ore galena, in a preparation like Arabic kohl). To return the image to the small shrine, the main pure one strews sand and performs final rites of purification and censing.
Staff in offering spaces
In both popular and scientific imagination, a recurrent orientalist prejudice casts ancient Egypt as a theocracy, a state ruled by priests. In direct contradiction of this, ancient writings provide explicit evidence of a rota system where temple staff served a month at a time (Roth 1991). In the third millennium, staff were divided into five watches (Egyptian sau); after 2000 bc, the number was reduced to four, each then providing staff for three of the twelve months in the year. On one papyrus from Lahun, names and titles are recorded for all men in each watch; each month, one watch would have to deliver enough staff for the temple to function—not everyone in the watch would have to serve duty every time its month came. In this way, the system could allow flexibly for the busy lives of men generally engaged in other activities, either service for other institutions or managing or manually working on their own fields or other means of procuring food or income. The rota system itself shows that the idea of a priestly caste is foreign to ancient Egypt. Most temple staff were not priests in the sense of individuals trained in a special body of knowledge; at Lahun, the only full-time staff member seems to have been the temple accountant. By the rota of watches, far more people would have been included within the circle of temple staff at all levels, undermining any separation of secular from religious spheres that we might expect. There is not even a single word corresponding to the English priest: the two titles most often translated priest are wa'fo, literally “pure (for entering a sanctuary),” encountered previously in the daily offering liturgy, and hem-netfer, “agent/servant of the god.” The word hem denoted a force, including a human being, that enabled physical intervention on behalf of another: manual workers were called hem of the king in the period 2000-1700 BC, and when Horus fights Seth in a narrative copied in 1250 BC, the aggressive actions are said to be carried out by the hem of Horus or hem of Seth (summarizing Berlev 1972, 33-41). The term was appropriate for those who had to move material to and from the netfer; the same term was used for staff serving the cult of the blessed dead, where the hem ka, “servant of the ka-spirit,” is the main title in written sources from third to first millennia BC. In centers of cult for kings, the term wa'b nesut, “pure one of the king,” was most often used. A third term is often found, it-netjer, “father of the god,” also used for father-in-law of a king in many periods (Blumenthal 1987). No written sources explain how this term came to be used for temple staff or which tasks distinguished the it-netjer from the other titleholders; perhaps care for the image was considered analogous to the care of a father for a child.
In the name lists at Lahun and other sources, the temple staff comprises men. Women appear in formal positions within sacred space most often in the role of music provider, as the revivifying force of Hathor, goddess of the sensuous. In the singular, the third-millennium BC sources use the term “god's servant of Hathor,” while the second-millennium sources have chantress, replaced from 800 bc by sistrum-player (Quirke 1999). Since depictions of chantresses often show them shaking the sistrum, the metal rhythm marker strongly associated with Hathor, it seems that all three terms denote the providers of music in sacred service at each period (Figure 3.11). The corresponding male term chanter is less often found, perhaps because chantress and sistrum-player are designations for almost all wealthier women, specifically those whose husbands held official positions in temple, palace, or regional administration. In the collective, the Egyptian word khener denotes the musicians, particularly women who sang and provided music at rituals and festivals. It is not known how often khener groups were called to serve; a Lahun papyrus of 1800 bc shows that the rota system also applied to singers and dancers enlisted for festivals at a temple there (Collier and Quirke 2006, 101-104, UC32191). Staff of larger temples might have included a permanent group of musicians. Around 1800 bc, some women were designated member of the khener, beside their name, their main identity for eternity (Nord 1981). However, the term does not necessarily indicate a full-time indication.
There are also examples of women with the title gad's servant for goddesses other than Hathor, though these are relatively a small proportion across the surviving written sources. In the third millennium BC, the most prominent is the gad's servant af Neit, Neit being the main goddess at Sau (Sais) in the western Delta, with a major cult center at Mennefer and later at Esna in southern Upper Egypt. After 1550 bc, in the process of reunification of Egypt under the Theban king Ahmes, a new position is created for his wife Ahmes Nefertari at the Amun temple at Karnak. According to a remarkable inscription immortalizing the legal act, her (inherited?) title second gad's servant af Amun was transferred to a new position, with supporting agricultural estates, the gad's wife af Amun. In the following centuries, this is sometimes associated with another leading temple title for women at Karnak, the worshipper af the gad (often translated gad's adaratrice af Amun), perhaps specifically lead singer in the chanting of hymns. After 700 bc, the women in this position played a major role in cult and, apparently, in stability and legitimacy of the kingship, as the holder was daughter of the reigning king, and adopted as successor a daughter of the following ruler (Robins 1993). After Assyrian invasions in 671 and 661 bc, the kings of Napata (Twenty-fifth Dynasty of Egypt) lost control of Egypt; their god's wife Amenirdis then adopted as successor Nitiqret, daughter of Psamtek ruler of Sau (Sais), then emerging under Assyrian protection as the new king of all
Figure 3.11 A woman in the family of Sennefer, mayor of Waset, shakes sistrum and beads with counterpoise, in the role of the goddess Hathor, bringing life to the sacred space of the family underground burial chamber. Waset, about 1400 bc. © Gianluca Miniaci.
Egypt. Again, an inscription that immortalizes the adoption has survived, recording the ceremonial progress from Sau to Waset. The roles of these individuals in political history might be read as exceptions in the surviving record. Yet they keep our attention focussed on the prominence of women throughout sacred space in practice. As much as any other social domain, the gendering of temple ground may be variable, in ways negotiated by a wider population than may appear on the written and pictorial record we select for analysis.
Kingship, temple ojferings, and temple stajf: in practice
According to the writings and depictions summarized previously, at least one person would enter the sanctuary located at the back of the temple, open the doors of the shrine concealing the image that enabled the deity to be present, and present offerings. Temple depictions regularly show the king alone in this role, but the geographical spread of contemporary temples with these depictions means that a single person could not make offerings at all temples every day. Therefore, the initiation of the king into the lethally pure space of the divine must have been shared, to enable others to substitute for him at each temple where offerings from king to deity were being depicted. The question, how many, remains to be researched for each period. Few of the highest staff held distinctive titles in earlier periods, and the rare examples occur first at the palace and then at the temple centers most closely connected with kingship: the Greatest of Seers at Iunu, Greatest of Directors of Craftsmen at Mennefer, and Greatest of the Five at Khemenu (Grajetzki 2000, 110-111). In later periods, similarly specific titles appear for the highest positions in a series of other regional temples, but, unexpectedly, never at Waset. The temple of the creator as Amun-Ra at Karnak in Waset is the largest of the well-preserved temples and accordingly the place most regularly identified as a center of priestly as opposed to royal power in popular histories of Egypt. Yet here, the most important official held no special or ancient designation, being known simply as First God's Servant of Amun.
In other respects, too, the evidence for relations between kingship and the Amun-Ra temple contradicts general assumptions about priesthood in practice. The Karnak temples expanded under the most powerful kings of Egypt, and there is no evidence that the temple staff became a separate political force. After the New Kingdom, the kingship of Egypt was taken up by a military family of west Saharan (Libyan) nomadic origins, ruling from a new royal center in the east Delta, Djanet (Tanis); relatives of the Djanet kings took the title First God's Servant of Amun, some adding kingly titles and some moving on to become kings at Djanet. Modern historians often portrayed this change as a takeover of the Egyptian state by the Amun priesthood. However, it seems more accurate to see it as almost the reverse: a military takeover using the prestige of the Amun temple to legitimate the unprecedented new separation of powers between northern and southern branches of the new ruling family (Jansen-Winkeln 2006). Despite struggles involving military men at Waset, and despite the evident prestige of the city and its great concentration of temple architecture, the northern kingship seems always to have remained primary.
For occasions when the highest officeholder at the temple was absent or where a temple complex contained numerous shrines to service, additional substitutes would be required. However, for these daily offering tasks, the personnel needed to be physically and ethically clean during temple service, not to have sacred knowledge. None of the regularly attested temple positions previously mentioned—god's servant, god's father, and pure one—can readily be identified as a group of priestly initiates with special knowledge. The ancient Egyptian economy of sacred knowledge does not seem to match the expectations of modern categories and needs to be approached now within its dominant setting, the world of kingship.
Exploring Religion in Ancient Egypt Kingship, initiation, and holders of sacred knowledge
Another widespread title, not always so closely linked with the temple, was Bearer of the Festival Book. Rare Middle Kingdom copies of festival book-rolls are written in hieroglyphs, on one example combined with scenes comprising depictions of schematic figures performing rituals. The Bearer of the Festival Book would have had to know how to read hieroglyphic script, as well as the cursive handwriting script in daily use for letters and accountancy. possibly, then, the Bearer of the Festival Book stands at the center of the history of sacred knowledge. If there were knowledge brokers in ancient Egypt, closer to concepts of clergy in world religions today, the most important would have served not at the regional temples of deities, but at the centers of kingship, perhaps above all at the court of the king. From the Old Kingdom to the Late period, the royal court included one or more holders of the title Chief Bearer of the Festival Book; the tombs of two of these contained an exceptional range of afterlife literature (Sesenebnef late Middle Kingdom; padiamenipet, period of Napatan rule to early Twenty-sixth Dynasty). Distribution of sacred writings provides clues for the ways in which sacred knowledge of sacred space might have circulated and how far across the ancient society.
The principal visual and written sources cluster around the ruler, particularly at periods when the tomb of the ruler is decorated. From these, Jan Assmann and Joachim Quack have outlined how the ruler was distinct in having special knowledge of the workings of the solar circuit, in the manner of an initiate into secrets of life (Quack 2002). The key Egyptian word is bes, “to initiate”; although it may have sounded similar, this verb is not linked by ancient writings to the slightly differently spelled word bes, “fetus/neonate,” discussed in Chapter 2. The act of bes (initiating) revolves around the person of the nesut, “king,” between temple of the creator and palace of the king, as if these constitute magnetic poles in the force field of life tensions. In formal terms, within the written and visual record of tomb and temple, there is only one priest in Egypt, the ruler as priest of the sun-god, the creator. Oleg Berlev drew from written and visual sources a picture of ancient Egyptian conceptions of rule as two suns, both rulers, the netjer 'aa, “elder god,” in the heaven and the netjer nefer, “younger god,” on earth (Berlev 2000). With this difference in his very being, the ruler remained throughout ancient Egyptian history the primary holder of a sacred knowledge, disseminated across all regions by practical substitution of ruler by the main “readers” of the localized temples. The life of the country was maintained in offering by a double movement of (i) generation of sacred books and (ii) preservation of rituals. Both tasks would be appropriate to a Chief Bearer of the Festival Book and might have been carried out at an institution attached to the palace of the ruler, the House of Life. In Egyptology, the House of Life has come to be seen as a knowledge center equivalent to a European-style university. Such an equation encourages appreciation of its centrality, though at the risk of misreading the specific cultural and social context, and in particular the specific relation to temple of the creator and palace of the king. In the ptolemaic period, every temple may have had its own House of Life, but this is not clearly attested earlier, and the later versions may have been primarily for annual Osiris
Rituals of rebirth, as part of the Osirification of temple ritual throughout Egypt. The only example of a House of Life attested in architectural remains in the archaeological record is at Akhetaten, where a mudbrick structure with bricks stamped in hieroglyphs “House of Life” stands equidistant from the Aten temple and the official House of the King (pendlebury 1951, pl. 19). The palace of the ruler may also have been the original home of the principal generator of material production in the sustenance of deities through offerings: the House of Gold, where the sacred images were produced in precious metals. Again, later each temple had its own House of Gold, and the precise history of the spread of the institution remains to be charted. For earlier periods, the constellation palace—House of Life—House of Gold perhaps provided a sacred institutional kernel that generated the hegemonic core and its models across the country. All of this landscape seems far from the way in which we have become used to writing about kingship, priesthood, and temples of ancient Egypt.
World History
