The preceding chapters have attempted to show how ancient Egyptian religious beliefs and practices functioned in the community and how those beliefs formed patterns of human behavior. The influence of religion was everywhere. The most prominent features of the built landscape - temples and tombs - served as sacred space, and so much of the immense material legacy of the culture - coffins and mummies, statues, figurines, amulets, and papyri - are manifestations of religious beliefs. These physical traces of Egyptian religion and cult practices are uniquely and distinctively products of Egypt - they cannot be mistaken for the material legacy of any other culture. This distinctiveness may be due to the close relationship of the material culture to the environment. Their myths, religious beliefs, and resulting cult actions are all reflections of the natural world of the Egyptians, who were keen observers of their physical surroundings. Just as the environment of the Nile Valley is unique, the culture that it stimulated is unlike any encountered elsewhere.
However, it is not just the religion's creativity and uniqueness that are so striking but also its longevity. It is safe to suggest that the beliefs and practices that comprised Egyptian religion must have benefited individuals and the society itself, and must have provided what people wanted and needed. If not, the beliefs surely would have been abandoned rather than embraced as they were for three millennia.
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Perhaps the key to understanding the long-term survival of Egyptian cult practices was that they seem to have offered people a tremendous amount of comfort and support. Offering rituals assured the people that their gods would continue to heed their pleas and to help them. Religious beliefs empowered people and allowed them to improve their personal situations. Magical spells and actions, such as substituting for their enemies inscribed images that could be burned, smashed, or broken, allowed for the elimination of a foe from a safe distance and avoided direct conflict. Even if the ritual was not effective, the action gave the conjurer a sense of satisfaction and relief. Individuals could battle the forces of sickness through spells and potions, or could drink water charged with curative power by the inscriptions carved on a cippus. The idea that one could communicate with the dead through writing is a simple and compassionate solution to the grief that follows death. One was not separated forever from loved ones who were lost - they were simply away and could continue to communicate with the living.
The comforting aspect of religious beliefs must have been widespread because most cult practices were easily accessible. Chapels to deities dotted the Egyptian landscape, and Chapels of the Hearing Ears were located on the exterior walls of temples, where they could be approached by anyone. Portable stelae decorated with the ears of the god and intercessory statues gave petitioners immediate contact with gods who were regarded as being sympathetic and helpful. Access to the deities was aided by the potential low cost of worshiping them. Although one could lavish immense resources on commissioning a stone statue for dedication in the temple, a statue of inferior materials and workmanship was deemed to be as effective. In a society where there were enormous disparities between the elite and the non-elite, the equal effectiveness of prayer, without regard to a person's wealth, must have appealed to and reassured the non-elite that they had the same chance as the elite to be helped by the gods. This equality before the gods is reinforced by texts that stated that it was proper behavior, not worldly goods, that determined a person's fate before the gods.
The accessibility of religion can also be related to the level of personal involvement religion afforded Egyptians and the opportunities it gave for the less well connected to serve the gods. The structure of the priesthood reflected this inclusive rather than exclusive structure of worship. For much of the duration of Egyptian civilization, priests, priestesses, and temple
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Musicians (especially the lower ranks) worked part-time, enabling a larger number of people to participate in the formal temple cult. There is no evidence that the lower ranks of priests were literate, making those posts available to a much wider and diverse circle of the lesser elite. It is likely that working in the temple was seen as a community undertaking and that the temple served as a node of social activity.
Part of the longevity of cult practices and their evident success in meeting the needs of the society may be due to the practicality and pragmatism of the underlying religious beliefs. They were not derived from an abstract philosophy that was available only to the literate elite. The beliefs and their resulting cult activities were especially suited for a population with a high percentage of illiterate individuals who could observe the fundamental aspects of religion all around them. For example, the concept of life after death was based on nothing more complicated than recognizing what life was like and then extending that beyond death, or than observing the undying cycle of the birth, death, and rebirth of the sun. Certainly, more detailed knowledge about the transit from life to the hereafter was provided by spells from the Book of the Dead or other texts that were the domain of the high elite, but they were embellishments, not essential parts of the belief.
Another aspect of Egyptian cult practices that may have contributed to their longevity was their flexibility and variability. It was not a religion built on dogma. One could worship the god or gods in a temple, a wayside chapel, or at home. The idea of rebirth too reflects variability. It was framed in terms of the solar cycle or in union with the god Osiris. Service to the deceased in the afterlife could be provided by paintings or by statues of servants or by written reference to them. There was always a multiplicity of ways, each as effective as the other, to achieve the same result.
The economic aspect of Egyptian cults also contributed to their longevity. The whole society benefited economically from religious customs, including the men who built tombs and temples; the craftsmen who made funerary offerings of wood, stone, or faience; the people who wove textiles for clothing or for mummification,• and the thousands of men and women who worked in the temples as priests, singers, porters, and guards, as well as the farmers and herdsmen whose crops and livestock were presented as temple offerings and then reverted to the temple staff as wages. The products that religious cults demanded were the economic underpinnings of the society.
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Many of the religious practices discussed in these pages were effective social modulators. Oracles of the god were an ideal way of ensuring community harmony. Rather than directly accuse an individual of wrongdoing, the god, in the form of an oracle, could make the judgment. Correct behavior could be ensured by traditions such as the sense of the bau (spirit) of the god lingering over the wrongdoer. And as already touched on, the lavish offerings of the rich and the meager ones of the poor were equal before the god, at least in theory, perhaps lessening a sense of antagonism between the rich and the poor.
Finally, the evidence suggests that Egyptian religion was embraced by the society because of the excitement and joy that it gave. The thrill of seeing the great Theban processions of the gods accompanied by musicians, troops of soldiers, acrobatic dancers, and white-clad priests must have been a welcome diversion from daily life and tasks. Rituals and festivals, such as the Beautiful Feast of the Valley, that involved the ritualized and hence socially acceptable excessive consumption of alcohol to create an ecstatic mood of singing and dance must have been a welcome release for members of a society that otherwise celebrated and encouraged quiet and meek behavior.
Although so many aspects and practices of ancient Egyptian religion seem exotic and arcane to us today, they were, in the context of the ancient society, reasonable and functional manifestations of a belief system that created a complex and enduring network of support for individuals and the society.
World History
