Mythic Development: An Organic Approach

Many of the creation myths of the Egyptians focus upon the activity of the first god-force, which often occurred upon a primeval mound emerging from the flood-waters. The god, in various forms or aspects, depending upon where you were in Egypt, settled upon the high mound and created the universe and everything in it. It is likely that the central sanctuary of a temple was intended to represent this first mound of creation at the first moment or time of the creation. The ground level of the sanctuary, therefore, would be higher than the surrounding temple, as is the case in most of the surviving cult temples, and the enclosed mound of the early Hierakonpolis temple may represent the creation center. The analogy to the first time of creation did not stop there, however, and it is likely that the whole of the temple could be seen as a recreation in stone of the landscape of the First Time (Baines 1976). The setting was imagined as the turbulent waters of Nun, the mound growing with swamps of reeds and papyrus, and an enclosed area for the god, perhaps made from reeds and mud. The story of the beginning of the world and the first ‘‘temple’’ is evocatively told in the Temple of Edfu, including the dimensions of the first structure in a series of symbolic numbers and a description of the beings who helped the creator god Horus Behdety (Reymond 1969; figure 35.1. If the sanctuary of a temple was the enclosure of the creator, then looking out of this space along the axis of the temple, one views the whole of creation. From this dark and hidden space, the god could see everything he had made, while those outside cannot see him, hidden in the darkness - he is present, but not seen. Looking towards the darkness of the sanctuary, the viewer is channeled towards this inner space, on a journey through time, gateways to the First Moment of creation.

Figure 35.1 Plan of the temple of Edfu. Courtesy Penelope Wilson.

The large columns in the halls leading to the sanctuary could have been seen as the papyrus swamps around the mound, and the floral capitals of the columns evoke not only swamps with their papyrus umbels and buds, but also the lotuses of the primeval waters as well as palm tree groves. From the Ptolemaic Period there are also composite column capitals, which bring together many different types of plants, almost as a bouquet or bundle, especially in the Esna temple pronaos, for example. The friezes of papyrus and lotus plants along the lower parts of the walls also evoke this organic world and, in their original state when painted green or blue, would have been a clear reminder of the watery beginnings of the world.

Above the doorways the cavetto cornice also evokes the organic aspects of decoration. The cornice is shown as fan of plant or reed material, often palm fronds, bent over walls and doorways, perhaps originally intended as a shade against dust and light. Similarly the ''torusmoulding’’ running around the upper parts and down the edges of walls is derived from organic and mud structures (Arnold 2003: 46-7). The walls would have been made of reeds, with strong edging bundles holding horizontal matting or small reed bundles in place. A strengthening, horizontal band of reeds would have been tied to the top of the matting to maintain the integrity of the wall. When the whole wall was plastered to give a smooth, strong and waterproof surface, the horizontal band at the top would stand out from the wall creating a rounded band. Such a distinctive feature of organic building was copied in stone by the Egyptians. They also decorated the upper areas of temple walls with colorful friezes and bands reminiscent of decorative matting, textile hangings or geometric paintwork. On some walls the main decorative element of the upper area is the kheker-frieze, kheker in Egyptian meaning “decoration,” “ornamentation.” The kheker-frieze may have originated in the bundles of reeds used in the walls of organic and mud houses, which would have emerged through the torus binding and had to be tied off with a knot. Even so there would be a fringe of unruly reeds, which was left at the top of walls and could be trimmed down to a more decorative tuft. This area would have been left free of mud and could have been painted in real enclosures. On temple walls the kheker-frieze is often depicted hieroglyphically at the top of the wall, but its main function is to inform the observer that this is the wall or enclosure top and, in an architectural sense, to provide a framework for the decorated areas. The organic elements could be painted red, yellow, blue, or green to emphasize their origins, and, in due course, they were further elaborated with lines of uraei-cobra in friezes, cartouches of the king, and other symbolic motifs.

The original mud enclosure of the sanctuary was regarded as unroofed or open to the sky. This seems to have been the reason for the creation of the naos-box, or small shrine of the god, as a “house” to provide cover for the deity. In addition, the ceilings of the inner parts of the temple were usually covered in stars - golden yellow, five-armed stars against the blue canopy of the sky - demonstrating that the temple was open to the night sky. In the case of Dendera temple the effect was taken one step further with an elaborate depiction of the sky goddess Nut arching her body over the pronaos, swallowing and giving birth to the sun and surrounded by the decans (ten-degree arcs of the night sky) and constellations of the sky (Cauville 1990: 34-7). In some temples the effect of the sky was enhanced by decorating the lintels and undersides of the architraves with falcons, flying cobras, or flying vultures - the goddess Nekhbet in her zoomorphic form. The vultures could alternate with the name of the king in cartouches, perhaps also to indicate his presence in the ether.

The inner darkness of the temple itself is the cloaking protection of the god, but in this case, why was it necessary to decorate and paint in vivid colors the walls inside the temple? They could only be viewed by lamp or torchlight, by braziers kept burning in the temple by the priesthood, or perhaps by mirror-light reflected from outside through doors and narrow window slits. In this respect, the hidden decoration is important as different parts of it could be revealed in different rituals or at different festivals. As each ritual was perhaps illuminated by torches during its performance in the temple, the decoration would be animated by the light, performed and made effective, then recede back into the gloom in a kind of suspended animation as the light moved on - like the gods themselves - hidden and potent, but awaiting renewal. It would follow, therefore, that every part of the wall surface should be decorated, so that no part of the small beams of light were wasted. Similarly, in order to make the most of each small particle of light, the interior walls of temples were decorated in raised relief, while the outside walls, bathed in copious amounts of strong sunlight, were decorated in more tolerant sunk relief. In Dendera temple windows allowing light into the staircases at the sides of the temple were decorated with the sun and its rays pouring down the light funnel.

Continuing the theme of the organic nature of the temple, the hypostyle halls of temples, most fantastically realized at Karnak by the architects of Sety I, represent the papyrus swamps lying at the base of the primeval mound as the flood waters subsided. The fenestrated windows at the top of the columns and sides of the hall, as well as the differential height between the central rows of columns and the outer rows, ensure that sunlight plays down into the hall in interrupted shafts of light, diffused beams, and constantly moving shadows. The effect created when walking through the hall is one of being in a reed bed of divine proportions, where the light flickers and changes all the time.

Beyond the swamps there is the newly created world of the First Time and the open courtyard, surrounded by a columned walkway, indicates that in the open space the sun god is lord and shines down upon a place where people can gather to make offerings to him. It is also the space used in festivals and where the local elite could gather at specific times. The walls of the open courts are often decorated with scenes of festival processions, showing the priests carrying the boats of the gods with the naos-boxes and the king leading the procession, as well as musicians, offering bearers and cattle for sacrifice. The Festival of Min at Medinet Habu and the Opet festival in the Temple of Luxor have lively scenes of the celebrations.

In theory, the open courtyards may have been accessible to elite people termed the paat, the ‘‘sun people’’ and the rekhyt. For this reason, the columns of the more external areas are decorated with many images of the lapwing or hoopoe - rekhyt-birds - indicating the places where ‘‘people’’ were allowed to walk. In practice it is unlikely that ‘‘ordinary’’ Egyptian people ever had access to the temple compound and that all those who came inside it were holders of some kind of priestly rank or favor. The forbidding architecture, with its huge enclosure walls and gateways, suggests such exclusivity.

Even the imposing pylon towers of temples framing the main gateways are part of the newly created world. Beyond the valley proper, especially in Upper Egypt, the most significant aspects of the landscape are the mountains of the east and western sides of the desert. Whether these are the tall singular mountains of places such as Thebes, Amarna, and Aswan or the escarpment edges of the desert at Giza and Saqqara, they represent the borders of the Black Land and Red Land. The mountain hills are the boundaries of the created world beyond which even the inundation could not go in order to spread its life-giving mud and water. Temple pylons at the front of the temple complex were constructed to emulate these mountains and, with the gateway in the center, they are a giant hieroglyph for the word “akhet,” meaning “the horizon.” In this construct, the horizon is where the sun sets and rises, perhaps implying that the creative force of the sun sets and abides inside the temple itself, but also that the horizon represents the beginning and the end of the sun's journey, the two limits of eternity. The pylon brought to the temple the solar creative force so that it was united with the creator force of the primeval waters, but at the same time kept it separate. The effect of the two pylon-mountains is to create a central axis, which is also the highway along the Nile, with the river and its waters seen as the primary axis of the land, leading in this case into the temple and to the primeval mound. The gatehouse of the pylon is the place where the temple boundaries are entered, and, therefore, this threshold is particularly important in terms of its decorative scheme. Beyond the temple, the flagstaffs against the pylons are called the “supports of heaven” - they are there to hold up the sky and stop it from crashing down onto the temple cosmos.

Beneath the temple there could be constructed crypts, with hidden entrances in the floors and walls. These dark subterranean rooms were intended as places in which to store the cult objects and precious ritual objects of the temple, as suggested at Dendera (Cauville 1990: 54-9). The texts here also allude to the chthonic (subterranean) nature of these rooms. Evidently the idea of beautiful, precious materials of gold and glowing precious stones, held in the dark, captivated the Egyptians, who saw the hidden gold and jewels as existing with creative power and internal light, despite being surrounded by darkness. At a more practical level the crypts under temples also functioned as the cellars for the storage of precious things, as was the case in the houses of ordinary people. What could be more secure than objects with families of people or gods sitting upon them? The decoration of the Dendera crypts shows the images of the cult and ritual objects kept there and also alludes to how they were made.

The roofs of the temple could be accessed by staircases, often leading from the Hall of Offerings before the sanctuary, and they were the setting for astronomical events or festivals. Firstly, and most practically, the roofs were the places where the astronomer priests could go each day and night to make their lunar, stellar, and solar observations, which were most important for the timing of rituals and festivals held inside the temple. Important festivals such as the New Year Festival held their key moments here. In particular at Edfu the statue of Horus Behdety was carried to the roof just before dawn on New Year's Day, at the same time as the heliacal rising of the star Sirius (Sothis). As the first rays of the sun emerged they would strike the image of the god in a highly-charged moment, which renewed the god present within his statue and ensured the success of the coming year. The place where this ceremony occurred at Edfu has not survived, but it is most likely to have been carefully aligned just for this purpose.

The alignment of temples to celestial events is also implied by the layout of the temple of Thoth on Thoth Mountain at Thebes. Excavations have uncovered the plans of two temples built on top of one another, but almost one thousand years apart. The axes of the two temples differs by 2.17 degrees, and Vorcls has suggested that the reason is that the main function of the first temple was to align with the sighting of Sirius on New Year’s Day. By the time the temple was renewed in the reign of Sankhkare Mentuhotep III, nearly one thousand years later, the angle of the earth in relation to the star had changed slightly, so that the star now rose in a slightly different place. The new temple was thus aligned to compensate for the shift in the axis of the planet (Voros 1998). Such cosmic alignments may be present in other temples, particularly in smaller shrines and buildings no longer extant, or structures built for specific occurrences, such as the rising of Sirius, solstices, eclipses, lunar phases, and transits of planets. The form of the temple and its decoration and design in the widest sense, therefore, was integrated with real cosmic phenomena.

Finally, the very stones from which temples and their contents were made embodied powers to support the gods and reflected the mineral universe (Aufrere 1991). Temples were dependent upon their geographical position for the choice of stone for the main body of the temple, from the ferruginous sandstone of Nubia to the smoother sandstones of Thebes, Esna, Edfu, and Dendera and limestone for Abydos. Some of the hardstones chosen for doorway elements, obelisks, statues, and columns embody specific benefits because of their physical hardness as well as more symbolic considerations. Red granite and orthoquartzite with its color range from brown to orange to red held the power of the sun. Black granite, bekhen-stone from the Wadi Hammamat, and basalt embodied earth’s creative powers or the power of the night. Further embellishments in gold or electrum would highlight particular parts of the reliefs on walls or the tops of obelisks or details on statues, for example, in order to catch the light and focus the sun’s power.