FestivaL

Festivals structured the practice of ancient Egyptian religion and gave ordinary people a chance to be actively involved in cult celebrations. The most sacred cult functions enacted in temple sanctuaries (see Chapter 3) excluded common people and even the lower ranks of priests. By contrast, religious festivals allowed for broad and direct public participation. Egyptians celebrated hundreds of festivals, both local and national, at regular intervals; most were held once a year. Records at Karnak from the reign of Thutmose III indicate that 54 days of each 365-day year were dedicated to festivals. By the reign of Ramesses III, the number had increased to 60. Each of these festivals provided an opportunity for the public to see and honor the god. Commoners could participate by witnessing a sacred performance, by communing with the gods through prayer and oracles, or simply by singing, dancing, and feasting. For ordinary Egyptians, festivals were a time of sensory stimulation through sound, movement, scents, and the nervous anticipation of being in the company of the divine. Festivals were community affairs, a time for the residents of a village or town to abandon their daily tasks and come together in celebration. These periodic, regularly recurring events helped mark the passing of the seasons in the agricultural calendar. Their repeated commemoration was part of the rhythm of life, providing security through predictability. This was particularly true of the celebrations marking the renewal of the king (such as the Opet or the Decade Festival), which symbolized the victory of order over chaos. Their important structural role was demonstrated and reinforced by the festivals' longevity. For example, festivals of Osiris were enacted for more than two thousand years, from at least the Middle Kingdom until the Roman era.

Festivals also served to bolster state control and promote royal ideology. Although in theory the king was the primary officiant for all festivals, in practice he was represented by a High Priest. The Opet and Sed (jubilee) festivals specifically commemorated the renewal of the king's power. Festivals also illustrated how little separation there was between the concepts of funerary and nonfunerary practices. For example, festivals of Osiris, the god of the afterlife, were celebrated in the Karnak Temple and recorded in detail at the Temple of Hathor at Dendera, structures that are not usually associated with mortuary cults.

Festivals presented logistical and economic challenges. They required huge amounts of bread, beer, wine, and precious incense, and the preparation for the larger festivals involved massive mobilizations of people and resources. If the king was to attend, the additional needs of the members of the royal court had to be met. This apparently meant that citizens could be subject to an unreasonable requisitioning of supplies. The Edict of Horemheb (Dynasty 18) expressly forbade the "agents of the queen's estate" from harassing "the local mayors, oppressing them and searching for the [supplies] for the trip downstream _ each year during the [festival of Opet]." According to the decree, "The agents of the royal quarters would approach the mayors saying 'give the supplies which are lacking for the journey, for look, pharaoh is making the trip to the festival of Opet.'"1

Some festivals are known only from brief references in letters or graffiti. Others are recorded in considerable detail in texts and in representations on the walls of tombs and temples. For example, the walls of the second court of Medinet Habu are covered with scenes of the rituals of the festivals of Min and Sokar. Scenes of the annual Theban festival of Opet, when the gods and king traveled from Karnak to Luxor (Map 2), appear in the Temple of Ramesses HI at Karnak, in the colonnade hall of the Luxor Temple, and on the upper terrace of the Temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el Bahri in western Thebes.

Private tomb scenes and personal texts provide a more individual perspective on festival participation. Autobiographical texts refer to individuals taking part in festivals, and duty rosters record when workers were required to work during a festival or were given time off to join the celebration. Yet,

Festivals

Even with this amount of information, the records have a certain hollowness because we lack the more intangible aspects of festivals - the noise of peoples' shouts; the music,- the aromas of roasting meat, incense, and perfumes,-and the general atmosphere of excitement that we would recognize today. A text from the Temple of Horus at Edfu gives a vivid impression of the sensory aspects of festivals:

There are all kinds of bread in loaves as numerous as grains of sand. Oxen abound like locusts. The smell of the roast fowl, gazelle, oryx and ibex reach the sky. Wine flows freely throughout the town like the Nile bursting forth from the Two Caverns [its supposed source]. Myrrh scattered on the brazier with incense can be smelled a mile away. The city is bestrewed with faience, glittering with natron and garlanded with flowers and fresh herbs. Its youths are drunk, its citizens glad, and its young maidens are beautiful to behold, rejoicing is all around it and festivity is in all its quarters. There is no sleep to be had there until dawn.2

These festivals were greatly anticipated events in the community calendar. They were times to see and adore the god and also opportunities to join the community in celebration, breaking the routine of the work week - but in an ordered, predictable, unthreatening way.