Results and discussion

Egyptians also practiced their religion differently from modern people whose attendance is expected at a church, temple or mosque for participation in joint prayer, recitation of common beliefs and practice of rituals. Egyptian lives were so filled with gods they felt no need to set aside special times for praying together. Only on rare festival days might groups congregate outside a temple to witness a performance of holy rites. In every other respect the business of religion was conducted entirely by proxy: only priests were permit-ted inside temples and only priests were allowed to perform the rituals. In effect, being a believer required no action whatsoever.

An Egyptian temple was a dark, mysterious place considered to be the divine residence of a specific god or god’s family, rather than a communal gathering place for worshippers. Far inside, in the

“holy of holies,” the innermost room of the temple, stood a sacred statue of the temple god. These statues—usually bronze images up to two feet tall inlaid with gold and silver or, occasionally, com-posed of solid gold—were meticulously served and cared for by specially trained priests as if they were living gods. Each morn-ing the priests opened the doors to the shrine, placed food before the statue for its first meal, painted cosmetics around its eyes, per-fumed it, and dressed it in white linen. These rituals complete, they closed the doors to the shrine until it was time for the next rites.

The only occasion an average Egyptian might see his cult statue was on important festival days when people crowded into temple courtyards for rare glimpses of their god’s image as it was carried outside on portable litters of gilded wood.

According to ancient texts, these cult statues could nod their heads and talk. Perhaps the reality was that priests secretly pulled strings to make the head move, spoke for the god by throwing their

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voices, or otherwise represented their own words as the deity’s.

Whatever the illusion employed, statues were consulted for their opinions on a variety of personal problems; one ancient record even credited a statue with solving a crime.

A papyrus in the British Museum describes a theft that took place in Thebes. When, during the festival of Opet, the great statue of Amun was carried from Luxor to Karnak Temple, about a mile and a half away, a citizen named Amunemwia who guarded the storehouse of a nobleman appeared before his local statue to report that five colored shirts had been stolen while he napped one day.

Addressing the statue, he asked, “My good and beloved lord, wilt thou give me back their theft?” to which the papyrus states that

“the god nodded very greatly.” Amunemwia began to read a list of townspeople. The statue, upon hearing the name of the farmer Pethauemdiamun, nodded and said, “It is he who stole them.”

When the accused farmer was dragged in front of the statue he denied the theft and appealed to the oracle of his own district, Amun of Te-Shenyt, whose judgment agreed with the first statue.

Pethauemdiamun again denied the theft and was brought before a third statue, Amun of Bukenen, “in the presence of many wit-nesses,” with the same result. Returning to the original statue of Amun of Pe-Khenty, Pethauemdiamun was forced to ask, “Was it I who took the clothes?” When he received an affirmative nod he finally broke down and confessed. He was beaten a hundred times with a palm-rib and made to swear that, if he went back on his word to return the clothes, he would be thrown to the crocodiles.

Cult statues even served as judges in courts of law. In a case involv-ing a dispute over the ownership of a tomb, an oracle actually—

somehow—wrote its decision. A workman named Amenemope had laid claim to a tomb he said belonged to his ancestor Hai, but necropolis officials who inspected the site questioned his claim when they found only a coffin with no name, funerary equipment or offerings. To settle the matter, Amenemope appealed to his local god who, according to his own account, “gave me the tomb of Hai in writing”—a mystery indeed. Perhaps two papyri—one support-ing Amenemope’s claim, the other denysupport-ing it—were presented to the statue who indicated his choice with a “nod.”

Another case, involving a dispute over a house, is recorded on a pottery fragment in the British Museum. The builder Kenna had found an abandoned house in poor repair and renovated it for himself, but he was prevented from moving in by his neigh-bor, Mersekhmet, who claimed that he had previously consulted

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the statue of Amenhotep I and been told that he and Kenna should share the house. Kenna decided to take the case before the same statue in the presence of witnesses. As townspeople assembled outside the temple, the “carriers of the god” paraded the statue for all to see and heard the god say, “Give the dwelling to Kenna its owner again . . . no one shall divide it.” Perhaps one of the priests uttered the actual words. In any event, Kenna got his house.

Although temples generally employed groups of priests to tend cult statues, say prayers and conduct temple business, during Egypt’s earliest history, pharaohs bore the sole responsibility for maintain-ing divine order by actmaintain-ing as high priest, in addition to servmaintain-ing as king. As Egypt grew more populous, pharaohs no longer had time to perform all the duties and rituals demanded by the burgeoning numbers of temples. The designees who were selected as stand-ins evolved into Egypt’s priestly class. Because they merely rep-resented the pharaoh, these men were not required to hold deep religious convictions; only their duties distinguished them from other government workers. Priests, in fact, often held regular jobs as carpenters, scribes, or goldsmiths in addition to their religious responsibilities because most worked in the temple only a total of Priests with shaved heads carry the sacred barque of a god. The god’s image was placed in the shrine in the middle of the “boat.”

three months a year: their tours of duty lasted thirty days, followed by three months of secular life.

Because each temple needed some full-time person to manage its operations, the position of first god’s servant evolved. As tem-ples grew more complex and powerful, these men oversaw temple-owned farms, fields, cattle, and orchards and managed the temple staff. The position carried such responsibility and power that par-ents frequently advised their children to become scribes because it was from these ranks that first god’s servants were chosen. In the case of large temples, second and third god’s servants existed beneath the first god’s servant; beneath them were endless other priests, each performing a specific job.

Regular priests fell into two categories: those directly responsible for the cult statue and those who performed other kinds of reli-gious duties. Wab priests, held to the highest standards of cleanli-ness because they came in contact with the cult statue, shaved all their body hair to avoid lice and wore nothing but pure white linen clothing. Even their internal purity was monitored: they had to swear they had not recently eaten fish, considered ritually unclean, before touching the idol. Other priests, called “scroll car-riers,” managed the sacred scrolls in the temple library, recorded donations and estate revenues, kept inventory and recited prayers.

When the bakers, beer brewers and cooks, who supplied each tem-ple with offerings, and the farmers, herdsmen and overseers of the temple estates were all counted, these thousands and thousands of religious functionaries in ancient Egypt formed the largest bureau-cracy, in terms of percentage, the world had ever seen.

Priests were primarily paid—directly or indirectly—from the pha-raoh’s coffers. When warrior pharaohs returned from conquered foreign lands with gold and other booty, they donated a portion of their plunder to the temples, both in gratitude for the gods’ favor and to ensure their continued goodwill. Foreign conquests also supplied Egypt with captives who provided an important source of manpower for temple construction and work on temple estates.

Further adding to the wealth of the temples, pharaohs often donated large tracts of their own land to temples as continuing annuities until the holdings of Egypt’s religious orders paralleled those of the Roman Catholic Church in Medieval Europe—each growing to rival the wealth of its kings.

Egyptian priests spent little time dealing with the well-being of individuals, seldom advising or counseling those with personal problems, but concentrating instead on cosmic matters such as

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keeping the sun in the sky and ensuring the fertility of the land.

Any individual who desired special favors from the gods could, however, pay for offerings and prayers that priests would perform on their behalf.

The only other personal service priests regularly performed for believers was to interpret their dreams—also for a fee. One might even arrange to spend the night near a temple god, hoping to receive a divine message during sleep. Since all dreams were considered prophetic, the key lay in their interpretation, a service priests performed with the help of special books. Since these books were written thousands of years before the idea of an unconscious mind, they ignore the possibility that a dream might result from the dreamer’s experiences.

Along the right-hand margin of one surviving copy of a Dream Book¹ run the words, “If a man sees himself in a dream”; an accom-panying horizontal line describes a dream and categorizes it as either “good” or “bad” and why, as in these examples:

Dream Prophecy

Killing an ox Good. Enemies will be removed from one’s presence.

Seeing a large cat Good. A large harvest is coming to the dreamer.

Climbing a mast Good. He will be suspended aloft by his god.

Seeing one’s face as Good. Authority will be gained over the

a leopard townsfolk.

A dwarf Bad. Half his life is gone.

Bare backside Bad. He will soon be an orphan.

Picking dates Good. He will find food from his god.

A dream’s details, not its theme, determined its meaning: Egyp-tians viewed their dreams as messages from the gods. Regardless of who the dreamer was, dream symbols were universal, carrying the same message for everyone.