A few hundred privileged families controlled most of Egypt’s wealth. Wealth meant land ownership. The king (who owned everything) granted large estates to his relatives, friends, and favorites. These large landowners paid no taxes, but collected heavy taxes from their serfs (the peasants on their estates). They became fabulously wealthy “little kings.” Nobles had a moral duty under ma’at to care for the less fortunate, but were not legally required to do so.
Priests performed daily religious-magical rituals for the dead, and for gods and goddesses. These elaborate rituals were based on ancient traditions and had to be carried out exactly the same way every time. If the king-Egypt’s chief priest-did not perform the proper daily rituals, the rituals performed by ordinary priests were worthless.
The dead and the gods required daily nourishment. Rituals included offerings of food and drink, sacrifices of animals, and magical spells. One important ritual in every temple was the daily washing, feeding, and clothing of the statue of the god or goddess.
Individual priests had specialties such as teaching, record-keeping, caring for the dead, presiding at funerals, sacrificing animals, or caring for the god’s statue. They paid no taxes and were supported by the government. All but the smallest temples included granaries, libraries, healing centers, and schools. Temples also employed staffs of artisans, craftsmen, scribes, butchers, bakers, herdsmen, cooks, guards, doorkeepers, and janitors.
In large temples dedicated to the major gods, priests controlled enormous wealth. At the height of their prosperity under Twentieth Dynasty king Ramesses II, the priests of Amun-Re at Thebes controlled 90,000 serfs, thousands of acres of farmland, 500,000 head of cattle, 400 orchards, 80 ships, and 50 workshops. The Amun-Re temples received all the revenues from 65 towns and cities in Egypt and its empire.
Most priests were part-timers, working at small temples of local gods or goddesses. As Egypt’s most educated class, priests were physicians, undertakers, embalmers, astronomers, mathematicians, architects, librarians, teachers, and scribes. They also ran the temple schools.
While on duty, a priest had to be ritually pure. This meant shaving his head and body and cleaning his mouth with natron (a drying mineral), among other ritual practices. There were many things he was not allowed to do, and many things he was required to do. While performing rituals, priests wore leopard skins, masks, wands of office, and elaborate jewelry.
Women were not allowed to become priests. However, they could be professional mourners at funerals, reenacting the grief of the goddesses Isis and Nephthys at the death of Osiris. They could be sacred prostitutes in the temples of the fertility god Min, or temple musicians, shaking the sistrum (a sacred musical rattle) or playing instruments during ceremonies and processions. They also helped tend their families’ funerary cults, bringing offerings to the dead or burning incense at tombs. The term “priestess” generally meant a temple prostitute or a musician.
World History
