Egyptian temple

Egyptian temples were built for the official

worship of the gods and in
commemoration of the pharaohs in
ancient Egypt and regions under Egyptian
control. Temples were seen as houses for
the gods or kings to whom they were
dedicated. Within them, the Egyptians
performed a variety of rituals, the central
functions of Egyptian religion: giving
offerings to the gods, reenacting their
mythological interactions through
festivals, and warding off the forces of
chaos. These rituals were seen as
necessary for the gods to continue to
uphold maat, the divine order of the
universe. Housing and caring for the gods
were the obligations of pharaohs, who
therefore dedicated prodigious resources
to temple construction and maintenance.
Out of necessity, pharaohs delegated most
of their ritual duties to a host of priests,
but most of the populace was excluded
from direct participation in ceremonies
and forbidden to enter a temple's most
sacred areas. Nevertheless, a temple was
an important religious site for all classes
of Egyptians, who went there to pray, give
offerings, and seek oracular guidance
from the god dwelling within.

The Temple of Isis at Philae, with pylons and an

enclosed court on the left and the inner building at
right. Fourth to first century BC[1]

The most important part of the temple

was the sanctuary, which typically
contained a cult image, a statue of its god.
The rooms outside the sanctuary grew
larger and more elaborate over time, so
that temples evolved from small shrines in
late Prehistoric Egypt (late fourth
millennium BC) to large stone edifices in
the New Kingdom (c. 1550–1070 BC) and
later. These edifices are among the largest
and most enduring examples of ancient
Egyptian architecture, with their elements
arranged and decorated according to
complex patterns of religious symbolism.
Their typical layout consisted of a series
of enclosed halls, open courts, and
entrance pylons aligned along the path
used for festival processions. Beyond the
temple proper was an outer wall enclosing
a wide variety of secondary buildings.

A large temple also owned sizable tracts

of land and employed thousands of
laymen to supply its needs. Temples were
therefore key economic as well as
religious centers. The priests who
managed these powerful institutions
wielded considerable influence, and
despite their ostensible subordination to
the king, they may have posed significant
challenges to his authority.

Temple-building in Egypt continued

despite the nation's decline and ultimate
loss of independence to the Roman
Empire in 30 BC. With the coming of
Christianity, traditional Egyptian religion
faced increasing persecution, and temple
cults died out during the fourth through
sixth centuries AD. The buildings they left
behind suffered centuries of destruction
and neglect. At the start of the nineteenth
century, a wave of interest in ancient Egypt
swept Europe, giving rise to the discipline
of Egyptology and drawing increasing
numbers of visitors to the civilization's
remains. Dozens of temples survive today,
and some have become world-famous
tourist attractions that contribute
significantly to the modern Egyptian
economy. Egyptologists continue to study
the surviving temples and the remains of
destroyed ones as invaluable sources of
information about ancient Egyptian
society.
Functions

Religious

Low relief of Seti I performing rituals for the

god Amun, from Seti's mortuary temple at
Abydos. Thirteenth century BC

Ancient Egyptian temples were meant as

places for the gods to reside on earth.
Indeed, the term the Egyptians most
commonly used to describe the temple
building, ḥwt-nṯr, means "mansion (or
enclosure) of a god".[2][3] A divine presence
in the temple linked the human and divine
realms and allowed humans to interact
with the god through ritual. These rituals, it
was believed, sustained the god and
allowed it to continue to play its proper
role in nature. They were therefore a key
part of the maintenance of maat, the ideal
order of nature and of human society in
Egyptian belief.[4] Maintaining maat was
the entire purpose of Egyptian religion,[5]
and it was the purpose of a temple as
well.[6]
Because he was credited with divine
power himself,[Note 1] the pharaoh, as a
sacred king, was regarded as Egypt's
representative to the gods and its most
important upholder of maat.[8] Thus, it was
theoretically his duty to perform the
temple rites. While it is uncertain how
often he participated in ceremonies, the
existence of temples across Egypt made it
impossible for him to do so in all cases,
and most of the time these duties were
delegated to priests. The pharaoh was
nevertheless obligated to maintain,
provide for, and expand the temples
throughout his realm.[9]
Although the pharaoh delegated his
authority, the performance of temple
rituals was still an official duty, restricted
to high-ranking priests. The participation
of the general populace in most
ceremonies was prohibited. Much of the
lay religious activity in Egypt instead took
place in private and community shrines,
separate from official temples. As the
primary link between the human and divine
realms, temples attracted considerable
veneration from ordinary Egyptians.[10]

Each temple had a principal deity, and

most were dedicated to other gods as
well.[11] Not all deities had temples
dedicated to them. Many demons and
household gods were involved primarily in
magical or private religious practice, with
little or no presence in temple ceremonies.
There were also other gods who had
significant roles in the cosmos but, for
unclear reasons, were not honored with
temples of their own.[12] Of those gods
who did have temples of their own, many
were venerated mainly in certain areas of
Egypt, though many gods with a strong
local tie were also important across the
nation.[13] Even deities whose worship
spanned the country were strongly
associated with the cities where their chief
temples were located. In Egyptian creation
myths, the first temple originated as a
shelter for a god—which god it was varied
according to the city—that stood on the
mound of land where the process of
creation began. Each temple in Egypt,
therefore, was equated with this original
temple and with the site of creation
itself.[14] As the primordial home of the
god and the mythological location of the
city's founding, the temple was seen as the
hub of the region, from which the city's
patron god ruled over it.[15]

Pharaohs also built temples where

offerings were made to sustain their
spirits in the afterlife, often linked with or
located near their tombs. These temples
are traditionally called "mortuary temples"
and regarded as essentially different from
divine temples. In recent years some
Egyptologists, such as Gerhard Haeny,
have argued that there is no clear division
between the two. The Egyptians did not
refer to mortuary temples by any distinct
name.[16][Note 2] Nor were rituals for the
dead and rituals for the gods mutually
exclusive; the symbolism surrounding
death was present in all Egyptian
temples.[18] The worship of gods was
present to some degree in mortuary
temples, and the Egyptologist Stephen
Quirke has said that "at all periods royal
cult involves the gods, but equally... all cult
of the gods involves the king".[19] Even so,
certain temples were clearly used to
commemorate deceased kings and to give
offerings to their spirits. Their purpose is
not fully understood; they may have been
meant to unite the king with the gods,
elevating him to a divine status greater
than that of ordinary kingship.[20] In any
case, the difficulty of separating divine and
mortuary temples reflects the close
intertwining of divinity and kingship in
Egyptian belief.[21]
Economic and administrative

Temples were key centers of economic

activity. The largest required prodigious
resources and employed tens of
thousands of priests, craftsmen, and
laborers.[22] The temple's economic
workings were analogous to those of a
large Egyptian household, with servants
dedicated to serving the temple god as
they might serve the master of an estate.
This similarity is reflected in the Egyptian
term for temple lands and their
administration, pr, meaning "house" or
"estate".[23]
Some of the temple's supplies came from
direct donations by the king. In the New
Kingdom, when Egypt was an imperial
power, these donations often came out of
the spoils of the king's military campaigns
or the tribute given by his client states.[24]
The king might also levy various taxes that
went directly to support a temple.[25] Other
revenue came from private individuals,
who offered land, slaves, or goods to
temples in exchange for a supply of
offerings and priestly services to sustain
their spirits in the afterlife.[26]
 Sunk relief of personified provinces of Egypt bearing
offerings for the temple god, from the mortuary
temple of Ramesses II at Abydos. Thirteenth century
BC[27]

Much of a temple's economic support

came from its own resources. These
included large tracts of land beyond the
temple enclosure, sometimes in a
completely different region than the
temple itself. The most important type of
property was farmland, producing grain,
fruit, or wine, or supporting herds of
livestock. The temple either managed
these lands directly, rented them out to
farmers for a share of the produce, or
managed them jointly with the royal
administration. Temples also launched
expeditions into the desert to collect
resources such as salt, honey, or wild
game, or to mine precious minerals.[28]
Some owned fleets of ships with which to
conduct their own trade across the
country or even beyond Egypt's borders.
Thus, as Richard H. Wilkinson says, the
temple estate "often represented no less
than a slice of Egypt itself".[29] As a major
economic center and the employer of a
large part of the local population, the
temple enclosure was a key part of the
town in which it stood. Conversely, when a
temple was founded on empty land, a new
town was built to support it.[30]

All this economic power was ultimately

under the pharaoh's control, and temple
products and property were often taxed.
Their employees, even the priests, were
subject to the state corvée system, which
conscripted labor for royal projects.[31]
They could also be ordered to provide
supplies for some specific purposes. A
trading expedition led by Harkhuf in the
Sixth Dynasty (c. 2255–2246 BC) was
allowed to procure supplies from any
temple it wished,[31] and the mortuary
temples of the Theban Necropolis in the
New Kingdom oversaw the provision of the
royally employed tomb workers at Deir el-
Medina.[32] Kings could also exempt
temples or classes of personnel from
taxation and conscription.[31]

The royal administration could also order

one temple to divert its resources to
another temple whose influence it wished
to expand. Thus, a king might increase the
income of the temples of a god he favored,
and mortuary temples of recent rulers
tended to siphon off resources from
temples to pharaohs long dead.[33] The
most drastic means of controlling the
temple estates was to completely revise
the distribution of their property
nationwide, which might extend to closing
down certain temples. Such changes
could significantly alter Egypt's economic
landscape.[34] The temples were thus
important instruments with which the king
managed the nation's resources and its
people.[35] As the direct overseers of their
own economic sphere, the administrations
of large temples wielded considerable
influence and may have posed a challenge
to the authority of a weak pharaoh,[36]
although it is unclear how independent
they were.[37]
Once Egypt became a Roman province,
one of the first measures of the Roman
rulers was to implement a reform on land
possession and taxation. The Egyptian
temples, as important landowners, were
made to either pay rent to the government
for the land they owned or surrender that
land to the state in exchange for a
government stipend.[38] However, the
temples and priests continued to enjoy
privileges under Roman rule, e.g.,
exemption from taxes and compulsory
services. On the official level, the leading
officials of the temples became part of the
Roman ruling apparatus by, for example,
collecting taxes and examining charges
against priests for violating sacral law.[39]

Development

Early development

The earliest known shrines appeared in

prehistoric Egypt in the late fourth
millennium BC, at sites such as Saïs and
Buto in Lower Egypt and Nekhen and
Coptos in Upper Egypt. Most of these
shrines were made of perishable materials
such as wood, reed matting, and
mudbrick.[40] Despite the impermanence
of these early buildings, later Egyptian art
continually reused and adapted elements
from them, evoking the ancient shrines to
suggest the eternal nature of the gods and
their dwelling places.[41]

In the Early Dynastic Period (c. 3100–

2686 BC), the first pharaohs built funerary
complexes in the religious center of
Abydos following a single general pattern,
with a rectangular mudbrick enclosure.[42]
In the Old Kingdom (c. 2686–2181 BC)
that followed the Early Dynastic Period,
royal funerary monuments greatly
expanded, while most divine temples
remained comparatively small, suggesting
that official religion in this period
emphasized the cult of the king more than
the direct worship of deities.[43] Deities
closely connected with the king, such as
the sun god Ra, received more royal
contributions than other deities.[44] Ra's
temple at Heliopolis was a major religious
center, and several Old Kingdom pharaohs
built large sun temples in his honor near
their pyramids.[45] Meanwhile, the small
provincial temples retained a variety of
local styles from Predynastic times,
unaffected by the royal cult sites.[46]
 Reconstruction of the Old Kingdom pyramid temple
of Djedkare Isesi, with causeway leading out to the
valley temple. Twenty-fourth century BC.

The expansion of funerary monuments

began in the reign of Djoser, who built his
complex entirely of stone and placed in
the enclosure a step pyramid under which
he was buried: the Pyramid of Djoser. For
the rest of the Old Kingdom, tomb and
temple were joined in elaborate stone
pyramid complexes.[47] Near each pyramid
complex was a town that supplied its
needs, as towns would support temples
throughout Egyptian history. Other
changes came in the reign of Sneferu who,
beginning with his first pyramid at
Meidum, built pyramid complexes
symmetrically along an east–west axis,
with a valley temple on the banks of the
Nile linked to a pyramid temple at the foot
of the pyramid. Sneferu's immediate
successors followed this pattern, but
beginning in the late Old Kingdom, pyramid
complexes combined different elements
from the axial plan and from the
rectangular plan of Djoser.[48] To supply
the pyramid complexes, kings founded
new towns and farming estates on
undeveloped lands across Egypt. The flow
of goods from these lands to the central
government and its temples helped unify
the kingdom.[49]

The rulers of the Middle Kingdom (c.

2055–1650 BC) continued building
pyramids and their associated
complexes.[50] The rare remains from
Middle Kingdom temples, like the one at
Medinet Madi, show that temple plans
grew more symmetrical during that period,
and divine temples made increasing use of
stone. The pattern of a sanctuary lying
behind a pillared hall frequently appears in
Middle Kingdom temples, and sometimes
these two elements are fronted by open
courts, foreshadowing the standard
temple layout used in later times.[51]

New Kingdom

Entrance pylon of Luxor Temple, one of the major

New Kingdom temples. Fourteenth to thirteenth
century BC.[52]

With greater power and wealth during the

New Kingdom (c. 1550–1070 BC), Egypt
devoted still more resources to its
temples, which grew larger and more
elaborate.[53] Higher-ranking priestly roles
became permanent rather than rotating
positions, and they controlled a large
portion of Egypt's wealth. Anthony
Spalinger suggests that, as the influence
of temples expanded, religious
celebrations that had once been fully
public were absorbed into the temples'
increasingly important festival rituals.[54]
The most important god of the time was
Amun, whose main cult center, the
Precinct of Amun-Re at Karnak in Thebes,
eventually became the largest of all
temples, and whose high priests may have
wielded considerable political influence.[55]

Many temples were now built entirely of

stone, and their general plan became fixed,
with the sanctuary, halls, courtyards, and
pylon gateways oriented along the path
used for festival processions. New
Kingdom pharaohs ceased using pyramids
as funerary monuments and placed their
tombs a great distance from their
mortuary temples. Without pyramids to
build around, mortuary temples began
using the same plan as those dedicated to
the gods.[56]

In the middle of the New Kingdom,

Pharaoh Akhenaten promoted the god
Aten over all others and eventually
abolished the official worship of most
other gods. Traditional temples were
neglected while new Aten temples,
differing sharply in design and
construction, were erected. But
Akhenaten's revolution was reversed soon
after his death, with the traditional cults
reinstated and the new temples
dismantled. Subsequent pharaohs
dedicated still more resources to the
temples, particularly Ramesses II, the
most prolific monument-builder in
Egyptian history.[53] As the wealth of the
priesthoods continued to grow, so did their
religious influence: temple oracles,
controlled by the priests, were an
increasingly popular method of making
decisions.[57] Pharaonic power waned, and
in the eleventh century BC a military leader
Herihor made himself High Priest of Amun
and the de facto ruler of Upper Egypt,
beginning the political fragmentation of
the Third Intermediate Period (c. 1070–
664 BC).[58]

As the New Kingdom crumbled, the

building of mortuary temples ceased and
was never revived.[59] Some rulers of the
Third Intermediate Period, such as those
at Tanis,[60] were buried within the
enclosures of divine temples, thus
continuing the close link between temple
and tomb.[61]
Later development

In the Third Intermediate Period and the

following Late Period (664–323 BC), the
weakened Egyptian state fell to a series of
outside powers, experiencing only
occasional periods of independence.
Many of these foreign rulers funded and
expanded temples to strengthen their
claim to the kingship of Egypt.[62] One
such group, the Kushite pharaohs of the
eighth and seventh centuries BC, adopted
Egyptian-style temple architecture for use
in their native land of Nubia, beginning a
long tradition of sophisticated Nubian
temple building.[63] Amid this turmoil, the
fortunes of various temples and clergies
shifted and the independence of Amun's
priesthood was broken, but the power of
the priesthood in general remained.[62]

Roman-era mammisi at Dendera Temple complex.

First to second century AD.[64]

Despite the political upheaval, the Egyptian

temple style continued to evolve without
absorbing much foreign influence.[65]
Whereas earlier temple building mostly
focused on male gods, goddesses and
child deities grew increasingly prominent.
Temples focused more on popular
religious activities such as oracles, animal
cults, and prayer.[66] New architectural
forms continued to develop, such as
covered kiosks in front of gateways, more
elaborate column styles, and the mammisi,
a building celebrating the mythical birth of
a god.[67] Though the characteristics of the
late temple style had developed by the last
period of native rule, most of the examples
date from the era of the Ptolemies, Greek
kings who ruled as pharaohs for nearly
300 years.[68]

After Rome conquered the Ptolemaic

kingdom in 30 BC, Roman emperors took
on the role of ruler and temple patron.[69]
Many temples in Roman Egypt continued
to be built in Egyptian style.[70] Others,
including some that were dedicated to
Egyptian gods—such as the temple to Isis
at Ras el-Soda—were built in a style
derived from Roman architecture.[71]

Temple-building continued into the third

century AD.[72] As the empire weakened in
the crisis of the third century, imperial
donations to the temple cults dried up, and
almost all construction and decoration
ceased.[73] Cult activities at some sites
continued, relying increasingly on financial
support and volunteer labor from
surrounding communities.[74] In the
following centuries, Christian emperors
issued decrees that were increasingly
hostile to pagan cults and temples.[75]
Some Christians attacked and destroyed
temples, as in the plundering of the
Serapeum and other temples in Alexandria
in AD 391 or 392.[76][77] Through some
combination of Christian coercion and
loss of funds, temples ceased to function
at various times. The last temple cults
died out in the fourth through sixth
centuries AD, although locals may have
venerated some sites long after the
regular ceremonies there had
ceased.[78][Note 3]
Construction

Stone construction in a wall of the Valley Temple of

Khafre. Twenty-sixth century BC.

A rock-cut chamber in the Great Temple of Abu

Simbel. Thirteenth century BC.

Temples were built throughout Upper and

Lower Egypt, as well as at Egyptian-
controlled oases in the Libyan Desert as
far west as Siwa, and at outposts in the
Sinai Peninsula such as Timna. In periods
when Egypt dominated Nubia, Egyptian
rulers also built temples there, as far south
as Jebel Barkal.[82] Most Egyptian towns
had a temple,[83] but in some cases, as
with mortuary temples or the temples in
Nubia, the temple was a new foundation
on previously empty land.[30] The exact site
of a temple was often chosen for religious
reasons; it might, for example, be the
mythical birthplace or burial place of a
god. The temple axis might also be
designed to align with locations of
religious significance, such as the site of a
neighboring temple or the rising place of
the sun or particular stars. The Great
Temple of Abu Simbel, for instance, is
aligned so that twice a year the rising sun
illuminates the statues of the gods in its
innermost room. Most temples were
aligned toward the Nile with an axis
running roughly east–west.[84][Note 4]

An elaborate series of foundation rituals

preceded construction. A further set of
rituals followed the temple's completion,
dedicating it to its patron god. These rites
were conducted, at least in theory, by the
king as part of his religious duties; indeed,
in Egyptian belief, all temple construction
was symbolically his work.[85] In reality, it
was the work of hundreds of his subjects,
conscripted in the corvée system.[86] The
construction process for a new temple, or
a major addition to an existing one, could
last years or decades.[87]

The use of stone in Egyptian temples

emphasized their purpose as eternal
houses for the gods and set them apart
from buildings for the use of mortals,
which were built of mudbrick.[88] Early
temples were built of brick and other
perishable materials, and most of the
outlying buildings in temple enclosures
remained brick-built throughout Egyptian
history.[89] The main stones used in temple
construction were limestone and
sandstone, which are common in Egypt;
stones that are harder and more difficult to
carve, such as granite, were used in
smaller amounts for individual elements
like obelisks.[90] The stone might be
quarried nearby or shipped on the Nile
from quarries elsewhere.[91]

Temple structures were built on

foundations of stone slabs set into sand-
filled trenches.[92] In most periods, walls
and other structures were built with large
blocks of varying shape.[93][Note 5] The
blocks were laid in courses, usually
without mortar. Each stone was dressed to
fit with its neighbors, producing cuboid
blocks whose uneven shapes
interlocked.[95] The interiors of walls were
often built with less care, using rougher,
poorer-quality stones.[96] To build
structures above ground level, the workers
used construction ramps built of varying
materials such as mud, brick, or rough
stone.[97] When cutting chambers in living
rock, workers excavated from the top
down, carving a crawlspace near the
ceiling and cutting down to the floor.[98]
Once the temple structure was complete,
the rough faces of the stones were
dressed to create a smooth surface. In
decorating these surfaces, reliefs were
carved into the stone or, if the stone was
of too poor quality to carve, a layer of
plaster that covered the stone surface.[99]
Reliefs were then decorated with gilding,
inlay, or paint.[100] The paints were usually
mixtures of mineral pigments with some
kind of adhesive, possibly natural gum.[99]

Temple construction did not end once the

original plan was complete; pharaohs
often rebuilt or replaced decayed temple
structures or made additions to those still
standing. In the course of these additions,
they frequently dismantled old temple
buildings to use as fill for the interiors of
new structures. On rare occasions, this
may have been because the old structures
or their builders had become anathema, as
with Akhenaten's temples, but in most
cases, the reason seems to have been
convenience. Such expansion and
dismantling could considerably distort the
original temple plan, as happened at the
enormous Precinct of Amun-Re at Karnak,
which developed two intersecting axes
and several satellite temples.[101]
Design and decoration

The temple of Ramesses III at Medinet Habu,

surrounded by the remains of subsidiary structures.
Twelfth century BC.

Like all ancient Egyptian architecture,

Egyptian temple designs emphasized
order, symmetry, and monumentality and
combined geometric shapes with stylized
organic motifs.[102] Elements of temple
design also alluded to the form of the
earliest Egyptian buildings. Cavetto
cornices at the tops of walls, for instance,
were made to imitate rows of palm fronds
placed atop archaic walls, while the torus
molding along the edges of walls may
have been based on wooden posts used in
such buildings. The batter of exterior
walls, while partly meant to ensure
stability, was also a holdover from archaic
building methods.[103] Temple ground
plans usually centered on an axis running
on a slight incline from the sanctuary
down to the temple entrance. In the fully
developed pattern used in the New
Kingdom and later, the path used for
festival processions—a broad avenue
punctuated with large doors—served as
this central axis. The path was intended
primarily for the god's use when it traveled
outside the sanctuary; on most occasions
people used smaller side doors.[104] The
typical parts of a temple, such as column-
filled hypostyle halls, open peristyle courts,
and towering entrance pylons, were
arranged along this path in a traditional
but flexible order. Beyond the temple
building proper, the outer walls enclosed
numerous satellite buildings. The entire
area enclosed by these walls is sometimes
called the temenos, the sacred precinct
dedicated to the god.[105]
The temple pattern could vary
considerably, apart from the distorting
effect of additional construction. Many
temples, known as hypogea, were cut
entirely into living rock, as at Abu Simbel,
or had rock-cut inner chambers with
masonry courtyards and pylons, as at
Wadi es-Sebua. They used much the same
layout as free-standing temples but used
excavated chambers rather than buildings
as their inner rooms. In some temples, like
the mortuary temples at Deir el-Bahari, the
processional path ran up a series of
terraces rather than sitting on a single
level. The Ptolemaic Temple of Kom Ombo
was built with two main sanctuaries,
producing two parallel axes that run the
length of the building. The most
idiosyncratic temple style was that of the
Aten temples built by Akhenaten at
Akhetaten, in which the axis passed
through a series of entirely open courts
filled with altars.[106]

The traditional design was a highly

symbolic variety of sacred
architecture.[107] It was a greatly
elaborated variant on the design of an
Egyptian house, reflecting its role as the
god's home.[23] Moreover, the temple
represented a piece of the divine realm on
earth. The elevated, enclosed sanctuary
was equated with the sacred hill where the
world was created in Egyptian myth and
with the burial chamber of a tomb, where
the god's ba, or spirit, came to inhabit its
cult image just as a human ba came to
inhabit its mummy.[108] This crucial place,
the Egyptians believed, had to be insulated
from the impure outside world.[104]
Therefore, as one moved toward the
sanctuary the amount of outside light
decreased and restrictions on who could
enter increased. Yet the temple could also
represent the world itself. The
processional way could, therefore, stand
for the path of the sun traveling across the
sky, and the sanctuary for the Duat where
it was believed to set and to be reborn at
night. The space outside the building was
thus equated with the waters of chaos that
lay outside the world, while the temple
represented the order of the cosmos and
the place where that order was continually
renewed.[109]

Inner chambers

Shrine in the cella of the Temple of

Edfu. Fourth to third century BC[110]
The temple's inner chambers centered on
the sanctuary of the temple's primary god,
which typically lay along the axis near the
back of the temple building, and in
pyramid temples directly against the
pyramid base. The sanctuary was the
focus of temple ritual, the place where the
divine presence manifested most strongly.
The form in which it manifested itself
varied. In Aten temples and traditional
solar shrines, the object of ritual was the
sun itself or a Benben stone representing
the sun, worshipped in a court open to the
sky.[111] In many mortuary temples, the
inner areas contained statues of the
deceased pharaoh, or a false door where
his ba ("personality") was believed to
appear to receive offerings.[112]

In most temples, the focus was the cult

image: a statue of the temple god which
that god's ba was believed to inhabit while
interacting with humans.[Note 6] The
sanctuary in these temples contained
either a naos, a cabinet-like shrine that
housed the divine image, or a model
barque containing the image within its
cabin, which was used to carry the image
during festival processions.[114] In some
cases the sanctuary may have housed
several cult statues.[115] To emphasize the
sanctuary's sacred nature, it was kept in
total darkness.[116] Whereas in earlier
times the sanctuary lay at the very back of
the building, in the Late and Ptolemaic
periods it became a freestanding building
inside the temple, further insulated from
the outside world by the surrounding
corridors and rooms.[104]

Subsidiary chapels, dedicated to deities

associated with the primary god, lay to the
sides of the main one. When the main
temple god was male, the secondary
chapels were often dedicated to that god's
mythological consort and child. The
secondary chapels in mortuary temples
were devoted to gods associated with
kingship.[117]

Several other rooms neighbored the

sanctuary. Many of these rooms were
used to store ceremonial equipment, ritual
texts, or temple valuables; others had
specific ritual functions. The room where
offerings were given to the deity was often
separate from the sanctuary itself, and in
temples without a barque in the sanctuary,
there was a separate shrine to store the
barque.[118] In late temples the ritual areas
could extend to chapels on the roof and
crypts below the floor.[105] Finally, in the
exterior wall at the back of the temple,
there were often niches for laymen to pray
to the temple god, as close as they could
come to its dwelling place.[119]

Halls and courts

Hypostyle hall of Esna Temple. First century

AD.[120]

Hypostyle halls, covered rooms filled with

columns, appear in temples throughout
Egyptian history. By the New Kingdom they
typically lay directly in front of the
sanctuary area.[121] These halls were less
restricted than the inner rooms, being
open to laymen at least in some cases.[119]
They were often less dark as well: New
Kingdom halls rose into tall central
passages over the processional path,
allowing a clerestory to provide dim light.
The epitome of this style is the Great
Hypostyle Hall at Karnak, whose largest
columns are 69 feet (21 m) tall. In later
periods, the Egyptians favored a different
style of hall, where a low screen wall at the
front let in the light.[121] The shadowy halls,
whose columns were often shaped to
imitate plants such as lotus or papyrus,
were symbolic of the mythological marsh
that surrounded the primeval mound at the
time of creation. The columns could also
be equated with the pillars that held up the
sky in Egyptian cosmology.[122]

Beyond the hypostyle hall were one or

more peristyle courts open to the sky.
These open courts, which had been a part
of Egyptian temple design since the Old
Kingdom, became transitional areas in the
standard plan of the New Kingdom, lying
between the public space outside the
temple and the more restricted areas
within. Here the public met with the priests
and assembled during festivals. At the
front of each court was usually a pylon, a
pair of trapezoidal towers flanking the
main gateway. The pylon is known from
only scattered examples in the Old and
Middle Kingdoms, but in the New Kingdom
it quickly became the distinctive and
imposing façade common to most
Egyptian temples. The pylon served
symbolically as a guard tower against the
forces of disorder and may also have been
meant to resemble Akhet, the hieroglyph
for "horizon", underscoring the temple's
solar symbolism.[123]
The front of every pylon held niches for
pairs of flagpoles to stand. Unlike pylons,
such flags had stood at temple entrances
since the earliest Predynastic shrines.
They were so closely associated with the
presence of a deity that the hieroglyph for
them came to stand for the Egyptian word
for "god".[123]

Enclosure

Outside the temple building, proper was

the temple enclosure, surrounded by a
rectangular brick wall that symbolically
protected the sacred space from outside
disorder.[124] On occasion, this function
was more than symbolic, especially during
the last native dynasties in the fourth
century BC, when the walls were fully
fortified in case of invasion by the
Achaemenid Empire.[125] In late temples,
these walls frequently had alternating
concave and convex courses of bricks, so
that the top of the wall undulated
vertically. This pattern may have been
meant to evoke the mythological waters of
chaos.[126]
 Brick storehouses at the Ramesseum. Thirteenth
century BC.

The walls enclosed many buildings related

to the temple's function. Some enclosures
contain satellite chapels dedicated to
deities associated with the temple god,
including mammisis celebrating the birth
of the god's mythological child. Sacred
lakes found in many temple enclosures
served as reservoirs for the water used in
rituals, as places for the priests to ritually
cleanse themselves and as
representations of the water from which
the world emerged.[105]

Mortuary temples sometimes contain a

palace for the spirit of the king to whom
the temple was dedicated, built against the
temple building proper.[127] The Mortuary
Temple of Seti I at Abydos incorporates an
unusual underground structure, the
Osireion, which may have served as a
symbolic tomb for the king.[128] Sanatoria
in some temples provided a place for the
sick to await healing dreams sent by the
god. Other temple buildings included
kitchens, workshops, and storehouses to
supply the temple's needs.[129]
Especially important was the pr ꜥnḫ "house
of life", where the temple edited, copied,
and stored its religious texts, including
those used for temple rituals. The house
of life also functioned as a general center
of learning, containing works on non-
religious subjects such as history,
geography, astronomy, and medicine.[130]
Although these outlying buildings were
devoted to more mundane purposes than
the temple itself, they still had religious
significance; even granaries might be used
for specific ceremonies.[129]

Through the enclosure ran the

processional path, which led from the
temple entrance through the main gate in
the enclosure wall. The path was
frequently decorated with sphinx statues
and punctuated by barque stations, where
the priests carrying the festival barque
could set it down to rest during the
procession. The processional path usually
ended in a quay on the Nile, which served
as the entrance point for river-borne
visitors and the exit point for the festival
procession when it traveled by water.[131]
In Old Kingdom pyramid temples, the quay
adjoined an entire temple (the valley
temple), which was linked to the pyramid
temple by the processional causeway.[132]
Decoration

The temple building was elaborately

decorated with reliefs and free-standing
sculpture, all with religious significance.
As with the cult statue, the gods were
believed to be present in these images,
suffusing the temple with sacred
power.[133] Symbols of places in Egypt or
parts of the cosmos enhanced the
mythical geography already present in the
temple's architecture. Images of rituals
served to reinforce the rituals' magical
effect and to perpetuate that effect even if
the rituals ceased to be performed.
Because of their religious nature, these
decorations showed an idealized version
of reality, emblematic of the temple's
purpose rather than real events.[134] For
instance, the king was shown performing
most rituals, while priests, if depicted,
were secondary. It was unimportant that
he was rarely present for these
ceremonies; it was his role as an
intermediary with the gods that
mattered.[135]

Painted relief in the Temple of Khonsu at Karnak.

Twelfth century BC
The most important form of decoration
was relief.[136] Relief became more
extensive over time, and in late temples,
walls, ceilings, columns, and beams were
all decorated,[137] as were free-standing
stelae erected within the enclosure.[138]
Egyptian artists used both low relief and
sunken relief. Low relief allowed more
subtle artistry but involved more carving
than sunken relief. Sunken relief was
therefore used on harder, more difficult
stone and when the builders wanted to
finish quickly.[99] It was also appropriate
for exterior surfaces, where the shadows it
created made the figures stand out in
bright sunlight.[87] Finished reliefs were
painted using the basic colors black, white,
red, yellow, green, and blue, although the
artists often mixed pigments to create
other colors,[99] and Ptolemaic temples
were especially varied, using unusual
colors such as purple as accents.[139] In
some temples, gilding or inlaid pieces of
colored glass or faience substituted for
paint.[100]

Temple decoration is among the most

important sources of information on
ancient Egypt. It includes calendars of
festivals, accounts of myths, depictions of
rituals, and the texts of hymns. Pharaohs
recorded their temple-building activities
and their campaigns against the enemies
of Egypt.[136] The Ptolemaic temples go
further to include information of all kinds
taken from temple libraries.[140] The
decoration in a given room either depicts
the actions performed there or has some
symbolic tie to the room's purpose,
providing a great deal of information on
temple activities.[141] Interior walls were
divided into several registers. The lowest
registers were decorated with plants
representing the primeval marsh, while the
ceilings and tops of walls were decorated
with stars and flying birds to represent the
sky.[109] Illustrations of rituals, surrounded
by text related to the rituals, often filled the
middle and upper registers.[142] Courts and
exterior walls often recorded the king's
military exploits. The pylon showed the
"smiting scene", a motif in which the king
strikes down his enemies, symbolizing the
defeat of the forces of chaos.[143]

The text on the walls was the formal

hieroglyphic script. Some texts were
written in a "cryptographic" form, using
symbols in a different way than the normal
conventions of hieroglyphic writing. The
cryptographic text became more
widespread and more complex in
Ptolemaic times. Temple walls also
frequently bear written or drawn graffiti,
both in modern languages and in ancient
ones such as Greek, Latin, and Demotic,
the form of Egyptian that was commonly
used in Greco-Roman times. Although not
part of the temple's formal decoration,
graffiti can be an important source of
information about its history, both when its
cults were functioning and after its
abandonment. Ancient graffiti, for
instance, often mention the names and
titles of priests who worked in the temple,
and modern travelers often inscribed their
names in temples that they visited.[144]
Graffiti left by priests and pilgrims at
Philae include the last ancient hieroglyphic
text, inscribed in AD 394, and the last one
in Demotic script, from AD 452.[145]

Large, free-standing sculpture included

obelisks, tall, pointed pillars that
symbolized the sun. The largest, the
Lateran Obelisk, was more than 118 feet
(36 m) high.[146] They were often placed in
pairs in front of pylons or elsewhere along
the temple axis. Statues of the king, which
were similarly placed, also reached
colossal size; the Colossi of Memnon at
the mortuary temple of Amenhotep III and
the statue of Ramesses II at the
Ramesseum are the largest free-standing
statues made in ancient Egypt.[147] There
were also figures of gods, often in sphinx
form, that served as symbolic guardians of
the temple. The most numerous statues
were votive figures donated to the temple
by kings, private individuals, or even towns
to gain divine favor. They could depict the
god to whom they were dedicated, the
people who donated the statue, or
both.[148] The most essential temple
statues were the cult images, which were
usually made of or decorated with
precious materials such as gold and lapis
lazuli.[149]
Painted relief Frieze of
on doorframes sculpted uraei,
and ceilings at or rearing
Medinet Habu. cobras, atop a
Twelfth wall at the
century BC. pyramid
complex of
Djoser.
Twenty-eighth
century BC.
Relief on a Obelisk of
screen wall Senusret I at
between Heliopolis.
columns at Twentieth
Dendera, with century BC.
images of
marsh plants
at the base,
torus moldings
framing the
relief, and a
 ,
cavetto
cornice with a
winged sun
emblem
topped by a
frieze of uraei.
First to second
century AD.[64]
Statue of
Pinedjem I, the
High Priest of
Amun at
Karnak, as a
pharaoh.
Eleventh
century BC.
Personnel

A priest burning incense depicted in a

papyrus. Tenth century BC.

A temple needed many people to perform

its rituals and support duties. Priests
performed the temple's essential ritual
functions, but in Egyptian religious
ideology, they were far less important than
the king. All ceremonies were, in theory,
acts by the king, and priests merely stood
in his place. The priests were therefore
subject to the king's authority, and he had
the right to appoint anyone he wished to
the priesthood. In fact, in the Old and
Middle Kingdoms, most priests were
government officials who left their secular
duties for part of the year to serve the
temple in shifts.[150] Once the priesthood
became more professional, the king
seems to have used his power over
appointments mainly for the highest-
ranking positions, usually to reward a
favorite official with a job or to intervene
for political reasons in the affairs of an
important cult. Lesser appointments he
delegated to his vizier or to the priests
themselves. In the latter case, the holder
of an office named his own son as his
successor, or the temple clergy conferred
to decide who should fill an empty
post.[151] Priestly offices were extremely
lucrative and tended to be held by the
wealthiest and most influential members
of Egyptian society.[152] In the Greco-
Roman period, priestly offices continued to
be advantageous. Especially in rural areas,
Egyptian priests distinguished themselves
from other inhabitants by means of
income and privileges attached to priestly
offices, but also by their education in
reading and writing. High-ranking offices
were, still, so lucrative that some priests
fought over their occupation in lengthy
court cases. However, that may have
changed in the later Roman period, when
Egypt was subject to large-scale
processes of economic, social, cultural
and religious change.[153]

The requirements for the priesthood

differed over time and among the cults of
different gods. Although detailed
knowledge was involved in priestly offices,
little is known about what knowledge or
training may have been required of the
officeholders. Priests were required to
observe strict standards of ritual purity
before entering the most sacred areas.
They shaved their heads and bodies,
washed several times a day, and wore only
clean linen clothing. They were not
required to be celibate, but sexual
intercourse rendered them unclean until
they underwent further purification. The
cults of specific gods might impose
further restrictions related to that god's
mythology, such as rules against eating
the meat of an animal that represented the
god.[154] The acceptance of women into
the priesthood was variable. In the Old
Kingdom, many women served as priests,
but their presence in clergies declined
drastically in the Middle Kingdom before
increasing in the Third Intermediate
Period. Lesser positions, such as that of a
musician in ceremonies, remained open to
women in even the most restrictive
periods, as did the special role of a
ceremonial consort of the god. This latter
role was highly influential, and the most
important of these consorts, the God's
Wife of Amun, even supplanted the High
Priest of Amun during the Late Period.[155]

At the head of the temple hierarchy was

the high priest, who oversaw all the
temple's religious and economic functions
and in the largest cults was an important
political figure. Beneath him might be as
many as three grades of subordinate
priests who could substitute for him in
ceremonies.[156] While these higher ranks
were full-time positions from the New
Kingdom onward, the lower grades of
priesthood still worked in shifts over the
course of the year.[157] Whereas many
priests did a variety of menial tasks, the
clergy also contained several ritual
specialists.[158] Prominent among these
specialized roles was that of the lector
priest who recited hymns and spells during
temple rituals, and who hired out his
magical services to laymen.[159] Besides
its priests, a large temple employed
singers, musicians, and dancers to
perform during rituals, plus the farmers,
bakers, artisans, builders, and
administrators who supplied and managed
its practical needs.[160] In the Ptolemaic
era, temples could also house people who
had sought asylum within the precinct, or
recluses who voluntarily dedicated
themselves to serving the god and living in
its household.[161] A major cult, therefore,
could have well over 150 full or part-time
priests,[162] with tens of thousands of non-
priestly employees working on its lands
across the country.[163] These numbers
contrast with mid-sized temples, which
may have had 10 to 25 priests, and with
the smallest provincial temples, which
might have only one.[164]

Some priests' duties took them beyond the

temple precinct. They formed part of the
entourage in festivals that traveled from
one temple to another, and clergies from
around the country sent representatives to
the national Sed festival that reinforced
the king's divine power. Some temples,
such as those in the neighboring cities of
Memphis and Letopolis, were overseen by
the same high priest.[165]
At certain times there was an
administrative office that presided over all
temples and clergies. In the Old Kingdom,
kings gave this authority first to their
relatives and then to their viziers. In the
reign of Thutmose III the office passed
from the viziers to the High Priests of
Amun, who held it for much of the New
Kingdom.[166] The Romans established a
similar office, that of the high priest for all
Egypt, which oversaw the temple cults
until their extinction.[167]
Religious activities

Daily rituals

Amenhotep III presents a variety of offerings

in a relief from Luxor Temple. Fourteenth
century BC.

The daily rituals in most temples included

two sequences of offering rites: one to
clean and dress the god for the day, and
one to present it with a meal. The exact
order of events in these rituals is uncertain
and may have varied somewhat each time
they were performed. In addition, the two
sequences probably overlapped with each
other.[168] At sunrise, the officiating priest
entered the sanctuary, carrying a candle to
light the room. He opened the doors of the
shrine and prostrated himself before the
god's image, reciting hymns in its praise.
He removed the god from the shrine,
clothed it (replacing the clothes of the
previous day), and anointed it with oil and
paint.[169] At some point the priest
presented the god's meal, including a
variety of meats, fruits, vegetables, and
bread.[170]
The god was believed to consume only the
spiritual essence of this meal. This belief
allowed the food to be distributed to
others, an act that the Egyptians called the
"reversion of offerings". The food passed
first to the other statues throughout the
temple, then to local funerary chapels for
the sustenance of the dead, and finally to
the priests who ate it.[171] The quantities
even for the daily meal were so large that
only a small part of it can have been
placed on the offering tables. Most of it
must have gone directly to these
secondary uses.[172]
Temple artwork often shows the king
presenting an image of the goddess Maat
to the temple deity, an act that represented
the purpose of all other offerings.[169] The
king may have presented a real figurine of
Maat to the deity, or the temple reliefs
depicting the act may have been purely
symbolic.[173]

Other offering rituals took place at noon

and at sunset, though the sanctuary was
not reopened.[169] Some ceremonies other
than offerings also took place daily,
including rituals specific to a particular
god. In the cult of the sun god Ra, for
instance, hymns were sung day and night
for every hour of the god's journey across
the sky.[174] Many of the ceremonies acted
out in ritual the battle against of the forces
of chaos. They might, for instance, involve
the destruction of models of inimical gods
like Apep or Set, acts that were believed to
have a real effect through the principle of
ḥkꜣ (Egyptological pronunciation heka)
"magic".[170]

In fact, the Egyptians believed that all ritual

actions achieved their effect through
ḥkꜣ.[175] It was a fundamental force that
rituals were meant to manipulate. Using
magic, people, objects, and actions were
equated with counterparts in the divine
realm and thus were believed to affect
events among the gods.[176] In the daily
offering, for instance, the cult statue,
regardless of which deity it represented,
was associated with Osiris, the god of the
dead. The priest performing the ritual was
identified with Horus, the living son of
Osiris, who in mythology sustained his
father after death through offerings.[177] By
magically equating himself with a god in a
myth, the priest was able to interact with
the temple deity.[176]
Festivals

On days of particular religious

significance, the daily rituals were replaced
with festival observances. Different
festivals occurred at different intervals,
though most were annual.[178] Their timing
was based on the Egyptian civil calendar,
which most of the time was far out of step
with the astronomical year. Thus, while
many festivals had a seasonal origin, their
timing lost its connection with the
seasons.[179] Most festivals took place at a
single temple, but others could involve two
or more temples or an entire region of
Egypt; a few were celebrated throughout
the country. In the New Kingdom and later,
the festival calendar at a single temple
could include dozens of events, so it is
likely that most of these events were
observed only by the priests.[180] In those
festivals that involved a procession
outside the temple, the local population
also gathered to watch and to celebrate.
These were the most elaborate temple
ceremonies, accompanied by the
recitation of hymns and the performance
of musicians.[181]
 Priests carrying a festival barque in a relief from the
Ramesseum. Thirteenth century BC.

Festival ceremonies entailed reenactment

of mythological events or the performance
of other symbolic acts, like the cutting of a
sheaf of wheat during the harvest-related
festival dedicated to the god Min.[182]
Many of these ceremonies took place only
within the temple building, such as the
"union with the sun disk" festival practiced
in the Late Period and afterward, when cult
statues were carried to the temple roof at
the start of the New Year to be enlivened
by the rays of the sun. In festivals that
involved a procession, priests carried the
divine image out from the sanctuary,
usually in its model barque, to visit another
site. The barque might travel entirely on
land or be loaded onto a real boat to travel
on the river.[183]

The purpose of the god's visit varied.

Some were tied to the ideology of
kingship. In the Opet Festival, an extremely
important ceremony during the New
Kingdom, the image of Amun from Karnak
visited the form of Amun worshipped at
Luxor Temple, and both acted to reaffirm
the king's divine rule.[184] Still other
celebrations had a funerary character, as
in the Beautiful Festival of the Valley, when
Amun of Karnak visited the mortuary
temples of the Theban Necropolis to visit
the kings commemorated there, while
ordinary people visited the funerary
chapels of their own deceased
relatives.[185] Some may have centered on
ritual marriages between deities, or
between deities and their human consorts,
although the evidence that ritual marriage
was their purpose is ambiguous. A
prominent example is a festival in which
an image of Hathor from the Dendera
Temple complex was brought annually to
visit the Temple of Edfu, the temple of her
mythological consort Horus.[186] These
varied ceremonies were united by the
broad purpose of renewing life among the
gods and in the cosmos.[187]

The gods involved in a festival also

received offerings in much larger
quantities than in daily ceremonies. The
enormous amounts of food listed in
festival texts are unlikely to have been
divided among the priests alone, so it is
likely that the celebrating commoners also
participated in the reversion of these
offerings.[188]
Sacred animals

The Apis, depicted on a coffin. Eleventh to

tenth century BC.

Some temples kept sacred animals, which

were believed to be manifestations of the
temple god's ba in the same way that cult
images were. Each of these sacred
animals was kept in the temple and
worshipped for a certain length of time,
ranging from a year to the lifetime of the
animal. At the end of that time, it was
replaced with a new animal of the same
species, which was selected by a divine
oracle or based on specific markings that
were supposed to indicate its sacred
nature. Among the most prominent of
these animals were the Apis, a sacred bull
worshipped as a manifestation of the
Memphite god Ptah, and the falcon at Edfu
who represented the falcon god Horus.[189]

During the Late Period, a different form of

worship involving animals developed. In
this case, laymen paid the priests to kill,
mummify, and bury an animal of a
particular species as an offering to a god.
These animals were not regarded as
especially sacred, but as a species, they
were associated with the god because it
was depicted in the form of that animal.
The god Thoth, for instance, could be
depicted as an ibis and as a baboon, and
both ibises and baboons were given to
him.[190] Although this practice was
distinct from the worship of single divine
representatives, some temples kept stocks
of animals that could be selected for
either purpose.[191] These practices
produced large cemeteries of mummified
animals, such as the catacombs around
the Serapeum of Saqqara where the Apis
bulls were buried along with millions of
animal offerings.[192]
Oracles

By the beginning of the New Kingdom, and

quite possibly earlier, the festival
procession had become an opportunity for
people to seek oracles from the god. Their
questions dealt with subjects ranging from
the location of a lost object to the best
choice for a government appointment. The
motions of the barque as it was carried on
the bearers' shoulders—making simple
gestures to indicate "yes" or "no", tipping
toward tablets on which possible answers
were written, or moving toward a particular
person in the crowd—were taken to
indicate the god's reply.[193] In the Greco-
Roman period, and possibly much earlier,
oracles were used outside the festival,
allowing people to consult them
frequently. Priests interpreted the
movements of sacred animals or, being
asked questions directly, wrote out or
spoke answers that they had supposedly
received from the god in question.[194] The
priests' claim to speak for the gods or
interpret their messages gave them great
political influence and provided the means
for the High Priests of Amun to dominate
Upper Egypt during the Third Intermediate
Period.[193]
Popular worship

Votive statue of a man donating a

shrine containing a figure of Osiris.
Thirteenth to eleventh century BC.

Although they were excluded from the

formal rituals of the temple, laymen still
sought to interact with the gods. There is
little evidence of the religious practices of
individual people from early Egyptian
history, so Egyptologists' understanding of
the subject derives mostly from the New
Kingdom or later periods.[195] The evidence
from those times indicates that while
ordinary Egyptians used many venues to
interact with the divine, such as household
shrines or community chapels, the official
temples with their sequestered gods were
a major focus for popular veneration.[196]

Unable to address the cult image directly,

laymen still attempted to convey their
prayers to it. At times they related
messages to priests to deliver to the
temple deity; at other times they
expressed their piety in the parts of the
temple that they could access. Courts,
doorways, and hypostyle halls might have
spaces designated for public prayer.[119]
Sometimes people directed their appeals
to the royal colossi, which were believed to
act as divine intermediaries.[197] More
private areas for devotion were located at
the building's outer wall, where large
niches served as "chapels of the hearing
ear" for individuals to speak to the god.[119]

The Egyptians also interacted with deities

through the donation of offerings, ranging
from simple bits of jewelry to large and
finely carved statues and stelae.[196]
Among their contributions were statues
that sat in temple courts, serving as
memorials to the donors after their deaths
and receiving portions of the temple
offerings to sustain the donors' spirits.
Other statues served as gifts to the temple
god, and inscribed stelae conveyed to the
resident deity the donors' prayers and
messages of thanks. Over the centuries,
so many of these statues accumulated
within a temple building that priests
sometimes moved them out of the way by
burying them in caches beneath the
floor.[198] Commoners offered simple
wooden or clay models as votives. The
form of these models may indicate the
reason for their donation. Figurines of
women are among the most common
types of votive figures, and some are
inscribed with a prayer for a woman to
bear a child.[199]

Festival processions offered a chance for

laymen to approach and perhaps even
glimpse the cult image in its barque, and
for them to receive portions of the god's
food.[200] Because the key rituals of any
festival still took place within the temple,
out of public sight, Egyptologist Anthony
Spalinger has questioned whether the
processions inspired genuine "religious
feelings" or were simply seen as
occasions for revelry.[201] In any case, the
oracular events during festivals provided
an opportunity for people to receive
responses from the normally isolated
deities, as did the other varieties of oracle
that developed late in Egyptian history.
Temples eventually became a venue for
yet another type of divine contact: dreams.
The Egyptians saw dreaming as a means
of communion with the divine realm, and
by the Ptolemaic period many temples
provided buildings for ritual incubation.
People slept in these buildings in hopes of
contacting the temple god. The petitioners
often sought a magical solution to
sickness or infertility. At other times they
sought an answer to a question, receiving
the answer through a dream rather than an
oracle.[202]

After abandonment

After their original religious activities

ceased, Egyptian temples suffered slow
decay. Many were defaced by Christians
trying to erase the remnants of ancient
Egyptian religion.[203] Some temple
buildings, such as the mammisi at Dendera
or the hypostyle hall at Philae, were
adapted into churches or other types of
buildings.[204] Most commonly the sites
were left disused, as at the Temple of
Khnum at Elephantine, while locals carried
off their stones to serve as material for
new buildings.[205] The dismantling of
temples for stone continued well into
modern times.[206] Limestone was
especially useful as a source of lime, so
temples built of limestone were almost all
dismantled. Sandstone temples, found
mostly in Upper Egypt, were more likely to
survive.[207] What humans left intact was
still subject to natural weathering.
Temples in desert areas could be partly
covered by drifts of sand, while those near
the Nile, particularly in Lower Egypt, were
often buried under layers of river-borne
silt. Thus, some major temple sites like
Memphis were reduced to ruin, while many
temples far from the Nile and centers of
population remained mostly intact. With
the understanding of the hieroglyphic
script lost, the information about Egyptian
culture that was preserved in the surviving
temples lay incomprehensible to the
world.[208]

The situation changed dramatically with

the French campaign in Egypt and Syria in
1798, which brought with it a corps of
scholars to examine the surviving ancient
monuments. The results of their study
inspired a fascination with ancient Egypt
throughout Europe. In the early nineteenth
century, growing numbers of Europeans
traveled to Egypt, both to see the ancient
monuments and to collect Egyptian
antiquities.[209] Many temple artifacts,
from small objects to enormous obelisks,
were removed by outside governments
and private collectors. This wave of
Egyptomania resulted in the rediscovery of
temple sites such as Abu Simbel, but
artifacts and even whole temples were
often treated with great carelessness.[210]
The discoveries of the period made
possible the decipherment of Egyptian
hieroglyphs and the beginnings of
Egyptology as a scholarly discipline.[211]
 Reconstruction work on the Ninth Pylon at Karnak
(fourteenth century BC), from whose interior talatat
blocks from the Amarna Period are being
retrieved[212]

Nineteenth-century Egyptologists studied

the temples intensively, but their emphasis
was on the collection of artifacts to send
to their own countries, and their slipshod
excavation methods often did further
harm.[213] Slowly the antique-hunting
attitude toward Egyptian monuments gave
way to careful study and preservation
efforts. The government also took greater
control of archaeological activity as
Egypt's independence from foreign powers
increased.

Yet even in recent times, the ancient

remains have faced threats. The most
severe was the construction of the Aswan
Dam in the 1960s, which threatened to
submerge the temples in what had been
Lower Nubia beneath the newly formed
Lake Nasser.[214] A major effort by the
United Nations disassembled some of the
threatened monuments and rebuilt them
on higher ground, and the Egyptian
government gave several of the others,
such as the Temple of Dendur, Temple of
Taffeh, and Temple of Debod, as gifts to
nations that had contributed to the
preservation effort. Nevertheless, several
other temples vanished beneath the
lake.[215]

Today there are dozens of sites with

substantial temple remains,[216] although
many more once existed, and none of the
major temples in Lower or Middle Egypt
are well preserved.[217] Those that are well
preserved, such as Karnak, Luxor, and Abu
Simbel, draw tourists from around the
world and are therefore a key attraction for
the Egyptian tourist industry, which is a
major sector of the Egyptian economy.[218]
Three temple sites—Ancient Thebes with
its Necropolis, Memphis and its
Necropolis, and the Nubian Monuments
from Abu Simbel to Philae—have been
designated by UNESCO as World Heritage
Sites. The Egyptian government is working
to balance the demands of tourism
against the need to protect ancient
monuments from the harmful effects of
tourist activity.[219] Archaeological work
continues as well, as many temple
remains still lie buried and many extant
temples are not yet fully studied. Some
damaged or destroyed structures, like the
temples of Akhenaten, are even being
reconstructed. These efforts are improving
modern understanding of Egyptian
temples, which in turn allow a better
understanding of ancient Egyptian society
as a whole.[220]

See also

List of ancient Egyptian temples

Minoan palaces

Notes

1. Many Egyptologists, such as Wolfgang

Helck and Dietrich Wildung, have argued
that the Egyptians did not believe their
kings were divine. Nevertheless, the divinity
of the king is constantly emphasized in
official writings: the products of the royal
 court and religious establishment.
Therefore, regardless of whether ordinary
Egyptians believed in it, the king's divine
nature is key to the ideology of the Egyptian
temple.[7]
2. The phrase "mansion of millions of years" is
often taken as the Egyptian term for a
mortuary temple. In several instances the
Egyptians used this phrase to refer to
sacred buildings that are not generally
regarded as "mortuary", such as Luxor
Temple and the Festival Hall of Thutmose
III at Karnak.[16] Patricia Spencer suggests
that the term applied to "any temple in
which the cult of the king was observed,
even if the temple was dedicated, in the
 first instance, to the chief god of the
area."[17]
3. Many temples were abandoned during or
before the third century, although mentions
of priests in papyrus texts show that some
cults continued to exist until at least the
330s.[79] The Temple of Isis at Philae, at
Egypt's southern frontier with Nubia, was
the last fully functioning temple. Scholars
have traditionally believed, based on the
writings of Procopius, that it was closed in
about AD 535 by a military expedition under
Justinian I. Jitse Dijkstra has argued that
Procopius's account of the temple closure
is inaccurate and that regular religious
activity there ceased shortly after the last
date inscribed at the temple, in AD 456 or
 457.[80] Eugene Cruz-Uribe suggests
instead that during the fifth and early sixth
centuries the temple lay empty most of the
time, but that Nubians living nearby
continued to hold periodic festivals there
until well into the sixth century.[81]
4. Because the axis was aligned at 90 degrees
from the river's generally north-south flow,
irregularities in the Nile's course meant that
the orientation did not always conform to
true directions.[84]
5. In their earliest stone constructions the
Egyptians made small blocks shaped like
mud bricks. Large blocks were typical of all
other periods, except in the Amarna period,
when temples to the Aten were built with
small, standardized talatat blocks, possibly
 to speed up construction.[93] Ptolemaic and
Roman temples were built in regular
courses, with the blocks within each course
cut to the same height.[94]
6. No surviving statues of deities are known
for certain to have been cult images,
although a few have the right
characteristics to have served that
purpose.[113]

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20. Haeny 1997, pp. 123–126.
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28. Haring 1997, pp. 372–379.
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31. Katary 2011, pp. 4–7.
32. Haring 1997, p. 395.
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58. Kemp 2006, pp. 299–300.
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63. Arnold 1999, pp. 46, 308.
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Further reading

Arnold, Dieter (1992). Die Tempel

Ägyptens: Götterwohnungen, Kültstatten,
Baudenkmäler (in German).
Bechtermünz Vlg. ISBN 3-86047-215-1.
Oakes, Lorna (2003). Temples and
Sacred Centres of Ancient Egypt: A
Comprehensive Guide to the Religious
Sites of a Fascinating Civilisation (http
s://archive.org/details/templessacredsit
 0000oake) . Southwater. ISBN 1-84215-
757-4.
Vörös, Győző (2007). Egyptian Temple
Architecture: 100 Years of Hungarian
Excavations in Egypt, 1907–2007.
Translated by David Robert Evans. The
American University in Cairo Press.
ISBN 978-963-662-084-4.

External links

Ancient Egyptian Wikimedia

Commons
architecture: temples
has media
(http://www.digitalegyp related to
Ancient
t.ucl.ac.uk/art/temple.h
Egyptian
temples.
 tml) at Digital Egypt for Universities

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