Most cults centered on the daily
tending and worship of
an image of a deity and were analogous to
the pattern of human life. The shrine containing the image was opened at dawn,
and then the deity was purified, greeted and praised, clothed, and fed. There
were several further services, and the image was finally returned to its shrine
for the night. Apart from this activity, which took place within the temple and
was performed by a small group of priests, there were numerous festivals at
which the shrine and image were taken out from the sanctuary on a portable
barque, becoming visible to the people and often visiting other temples. Thus,
the daily cult was a state concern, whose function was to maintain reciprocity between
the human and the divine, largely in isolation from the people. This
reciprocity was fundamental because deities and humanity together sustained the
cosmos. If the gods were not satisfied, they might cease to inhabit their
images and retreat to their other abode, the sky.
Temples were constructed as microcosms whose purity and wholeness symbolized
the proper order of the larger world outside.
The priesthood became
increasingly important. In early periods there seem to have been no full-time
professional priests; people could hold part-time high priestly offices, or
they could have humbler positions on a rotating basis, performing duties for
one month in four. The chief officiant may have been a professional. While
performing their duties, priests submitted to rules of purity and abstinence.
One result of this system was that more people were involved in the cult and had
access to the temple than would have been the case if there had been a
permanent staff. Although most priestly positions were for men, women were
involved in the cult of the goddess Hathor, and
in the New Kingdom and later many women held the title of “chantress” of a
deity (perhaps often a courtesy title); they were principally involved in
musical cult performances.Festivals allowed more-direct interaction
between people and the gods. Questions were often asked of a deity, and a
response might be given by a forward or backward movement of the barque carried
on the priests’ shoulders. Oracles, of which
this was one form, were invoked by
the king to obtain sanction for his plans, including military campaigns abroad
and important appointments. Although evidence is sparse, consultation with
deities may have been part of religious interaction in all periods and for all
levels of society.
Apart from this interaction between deities
and individual people or groups, festivals were times of communal celebration,
and often of the public reenactment of myths such as
the death and vindication of Osiris at Abydos or
the defeat of Seth by Horus at Idfū. They had
both a personal and a general social role in the spectrum of religious
practice.Nonetheless, the main audience for the most
important festivals of the principal gods of state held in capital cities may
have been the ruling elite rather than the people as a whole. In the New
Kingdom these cities were remodeled as vast cosmic stages for the enactment of
royal-divine relations and rituals.
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