Exploring Religion in Ancient Egypt E-Book

Stephen Quirke

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Blackwell Ancient Religions
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 584

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Exploring Religion in Ancient Egypt offers a stimulating overview of the study of ancient Egyptian religion by examining research drawn from beyond the customary boundaries of Egyptology and shedding new light on entrenched assumptions.

• Discusses the evolution of religion in ancient Egypt – a belief system that endured for 3,000 years
• Dispels several modern preconceptions about ancient Egyptian religious practices
• Reveals how people in ancient Egypt struggled to secure well-being in the present life and the afterlife

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Cover

Blackwell Ancient Religions

Title page

Copyright page

Preface

Chapter 1: Belief without a Book

Word Worlds: Ancient and Modern

Elementals and Sources

Chapter 2: Finding the Sacred in Space and Time

Holiness: Absolute or Relative

Chapter 3: Creating Sacred Space and Time: Temple Architecture and Festival

Formalizing Sacred Space: For Offerings

Formalizing Sacred Time: Festival, Feast, and Foundation

Chapter 4: Chaos and Life: Forces of Creation and Destruction

Introduction

Myth as Speech in Religion

Constellations Outside Writing

Speaking and Narrating the Divine

Chapter 5: Being Good: Doing, Saying, and Making Good Possible

Translating Ma‘at

Sources for Ethics

Chapter 6: Being Well

Health and Well-Being: Starting from Comparative Ethnography

Chapter 7: Attaining Eternal Life: Sustenance and Transformation

Ancient Egyptian Afterlives: Sources and their Limits

Reconsidering Modern Perceptions of Ancient Egyptian Afterlives

Burying the Dead: Conceptions of the Tomb

Burying, Caring for, and Relating to the Dead: Four Questions

Burying the Dead: Chronological Survey

Centers of Writing or Drawing the Afterlife: Rituals and Eternal Regeneration

Transforming into akh-Being

Hegemony and Variety: Chronological Considerations

From Theme to Integration: Futures of Study

Bibliography

Preface

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Index

End User License Agreement

List of Tables

Chapter 01

Table 1.1 Time–space blocks of ancient Egypt

Table 1.2 The time of ancient Egypt

Table 1.3 The

sepat

, “religious provinces,” of ancient Egypt

Table 1.4 Some key published settlement sites in Egyptian archaeology

Table 1.5

Netjeru

, “deities,” in the

sepat

, “religious provinces”

Chapter 03

Table 3.1 The festival calendar in the principal New Kingdom sources

Table 3.2 Main features of foundation deposits, summarized for six periods

Chapter 07

Table 7.1 Burial scenes: The principal phases in depictions (2500–525

BC

) (Altenmüller 1975)

Table 7.2

Opening the Mouth and Eyes

: The consecration ritual of images and bodies (Otto 1960)

Table 7.3 Principal

Pyramid Text

themes (for the corpus, see Allen (2005))

Table 7.4 Principal

Coffin Text

themes (cf. Barguet 1986)

Table 7.5 Principal Going Out by Day (

Book of the Dead

) themes (cf. Barguet 1979)

Table 7.6 Twelve hours of the night journey of the sun (from Hornung (1999))

List of Illustrations

Chapter 01

Figure 1.1 Visualizing the creator as sun disk with two kingly names, as formulated in the reign of King Akhenaten, North Tombs of high officials, Akhetaten, about 1350

BC

. From Richard Lepsius (ed.),

Denkmäler aus Aegypten und Aethiopien

, Berlin 1849–1859, vol.3, pl.99.

Figure 1.2 The creator expressed in animal–human form sailing over the defeated force of chaos, depicted as giant snake, tomb of King Sety I, Valley of the Kings, Waset, about 1290

BC

. © Gianluca Miniaci.

Figure 1.3 The Nile flood (Egyptian

Ha‘py

) in dual form as two men with pendant breasts, tying together Upper and Lower Egypt. Inscribed block from the palace of King Merenptah at Mennefer, about 1225

BC

. From W. Petrie,

Memphis I

, London 1909.

Figure 1.4 Section of the Nile floodplain in Middle Egypt, where the Bahr Yussef, a lateral Nile branch, runs roughly parallel with the main river. © Wolfram Grajetzki

after Kessler 1990.

Map 1.1 The regions of Egypt as defined by arable floodplain, with central cities of 3000–525

BC

.

Figure 1.5 The

sepat

, “provinces,” Neit south and Neit north, depicted as kneeling Nile flood figures, bringing the abundance of water and food offerings, amounting to

power

(

was

scepter) and

life

(looped

ankh

hieroglyph). Red Chapel of the joint sovereigns Hatshepsut and Thutmes III, about 1475

BC

, temple of Amun-Ra, Karnak. © Gianluca Miniaci.

Figure 1.6 The High Mound of Iunu, as recorded by two early twentieth-century AD archaeologists: (a) E. Schiaparelli, redrawn after F. Contardi,

Il Naos di Sethi I da Eliopoli. Un monument per il culto del dio Sole

, Milan 2009, p.14 (b) W. Petrie,

Heliopolis, Kafr Ammar, Shurafa

, London 1912.

Figure 1.7 Synchronized differences: different depictions of deities as human, animal headed, animal, and object within the period 3100–2900

BC

: (a) stone bowl inscribed with image of a deity as a standing wrapped man in a shrine, identified by the aforementioned three single-consonant hieroglyphs as the god Ptah (Semenuhor cemeteries, tomb 231, about 3100

BC

); (b) two forms of one deity on a single seal impression, (i) falcon and falcon headed, generally identified as Horus, and (ii) mixed (?) animal and human with the same head, generally identified as Seth (images reconstructed from mud seal impressions found in tombs of late Second Dynasty kings, Abdju); (c) deities depicted through living animals and distinct objects, (i) wild (?) bull in an oval enclosure (second register) and (ii) emblem with crossed arrows in a rectilinear enclosure (first register) (wood label with name of King Aha, found in tombs of First Dynasty kings, Abdju). From (a) W. Petrie,

Tarkhan I

, London 1913 and (b) and (c) W. Petrie,

The Royal Tombs of the Earliest Dynasties II

, London 1901.

Figure 1.8 Limestone stela with two images, cow and adult woman, both with cow horns and sun disk, jointly identified in the hieroglyphic inscription between the two hearing ears of the deity as

Hathor, lady of the sycamore

. From Mennefer, about 1300

BC

. W. Petrie,

Memphis I

, British School of Archaeology in Egypt, London, pl.28.

Figure 1.9 The statue of Hathor and King Amenhotep II, as found in the rock-cut chapel beside the temples of Hatshepsut and Thutmes III, overlain by the later monastery Deir al-Bahari, on the West Bank at Waset. The statue is now in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo; the photograph shows the statue in its original location, just after it was uncovered. E. Naville,

Deir el Bahri I

, Egypt Exploration Fund, London, 1895, pl.27.

Chapter 02

Figure 2.1 The animal burials around Tomb 16, at site H6, Nekhen.

Figure 2.2 Rock-cut catacombs for burials of mummified animals and birds, northern cemeteries of Mennefer (Saqqara), first millennium BC. Excavation photograph, © Egypt Exploration Society.

Figure 2.3 Limestone sarcophagus for a cat named Tamiyt, inscribed with the same words used to obtain eternal life for humans, commissioned by the high priest of Ptah Djehutymes, son of King Amenhotep III, about 1375

BC

.

Figure 2.4 Ostrich egg, incised with drawing of two deer and lain in place of the head, in tomb 1480, Naqada: from the 1894–1895 excavations directed by W. Petrie, now Ashmolean Museum 1895.990.

Figure 2.5 Limestone stela from Akhetaten, with depiction of a man named Reme, with leg shriveled, perhaps by polio, at a table of offerings, together with two companions identified in the inscriptions as his wife Timia and “her son” Ptahemheb. About 1350

BC

. Now in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen.

Figure 2.6 Limestone stela inscribed with depiction and name of the dwarf Neferit, from subsidiary burial M at the tomb of the First Dynasty king Semerkhet, Abdju, about 3000

BC

.

Figure 2.7 Scene of ritual insult of a shackled hunchbacked man, on limestone wall blocks of the tomb chapel of the high official Khentika Ikhekhi, cemetery of Inebhedj (Saqqara), about 2300

BC

. Drawing © Wolfram Grajetzki.

Figure 2.8 (a) Scene depicting a woman using hairpins to arrange the hair of the king's wife Kawit, carved on the limestone sarcophagus of Kawit, Waset, about 2000

BC

, nowEgyptian Museum Cairo, E. Naville,

Deir el-Bahri

I, Egypt Exploration Fund, London, 1895; (b) group of ivory hairpins among other items of cosmetic equipment placed in the burial of the lady of the house Seneb, about 1850

BC

, cemeteries near modern Beni Hasan, Garstang 1907, 113–114; (c) scene depicting a woman arranging the hair of a woman, painted on the wooden coffin, from cemeteries of Inerty (at modern Gebelein), about 2000

BC

, now Egyptian Museum Berlin, G. Steindorff,

Grabfunde II.

Das Grab des Sebek-o, ein Grabfund aus Gebelein, W. Spemann, Berlin 1902, pl.5.

Figure 2.9 The hippopotamus–lion image variously named Reret, Ipy or Taweret, here in northern sky constellations, painted on the ceiling of the burial chamber of King Sety I, Valley of the Kings, Waset, about 1285

BC

. © Gianluca Miniaci.

Figure 2.10 Protective material: (a) hands of red carnelian among strings of amulets (nos. 4, 10, 13), as found on a burial near modern Dishasha, late Old Kingdom, about 2200

BC

. W. Petrie,

Deshasheh

, London: Exploration Fund, 1898; (b) tiyet or

Isis knot

amulet, unusually in bronze, from burial of a

pure-priest

of Isis, Saiset, at Abdju, Eighteenth Dynasty. © Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, UCL.

Figure 2.11 Depiction of man wearing a lion mask, tomb-chapel wall block, 2400

BC

, probably from cemetery of Inebhedj (Saqqara), now British Museum.

Figure 2.12 Plan of the desert-edge temple near the modern village Badari, north of ancient Tjebu (Qau); a structure with thicker walls was built perhaps by 1500

BC

over an earlier shrine of different alignment (Brunton 1930). © Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, UCL.

Figure 2.13 Limestone stela depicting the regional governor Hatiay in adoration of Seth, depicted as a hippopotamus, found in the cemeteries at the regional town Tjebu (Qau), now Egyptian Museum Cairo JE47637 (Brunton 1930). © Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, UCL.

Figure 2.14 Plan of the temple at the rock hollow on the island of Abu, Early Dynastic level.

Figure 2.15 House converted into a three-chamber chapel, with inscription of the officer Sobekemsaf, in Abu town.

Figure 2.16 House 23, excavation of the early to mid-second-millennium BC levels of Abu town.

Figure 2.17 The late Middle Kingdom town near modern al-Lahun, as recorded by W. Petrie in 1889. W. Petrie,

Illahun, Kahun, Gurob

, David Nutt, London, 1891, pl.14.

Figure 2.18 Finds from the Petrie 1889 clearance of Lahun: (a) figurine of a lion-faced naked woman and two clappers found buried with it and (b) painted-plastered cloth leonine mask from the adjoining house.

Figure 2.19 Painting in a house in the late Middle Kingdom town near modern al-Lahun, as recorded by W. Petrie in 1889.

Figure 2.20 Stone ablution (?) table at the corner of a house in the late Middle Kingdom town near modern al-Lahun, as it was in 1890, Petrie photograph no.957. © of the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, UCL.

Figure 2.21 Offering stands sculpted as figurines, found in 1889 at the late Middle Kingdom townsite near modern al-Lahun, during the clearance supervised by W. Petrie.

Chapter 03

Figure 3.1 Great stela inscribed with hymn to be sung to the Aten, on a raised platform with stepped approach and balustrade, in the court of the Great Aten Temple at Akhetaten, as depicted in the tomb of Meryra, high priest of the Aten at Akhetaten, about 1350

BC

.

Figure 3.2 Rounded mounds in enclosure at Madu (Medamud), about 2000

BC

, under the later temple of Mont.

Figure 3.3 Plan of offering chambers within trapezoidal mass cased in limestone blocks, over burial place of a palace official, south cemeteries of Inebhedj, near modern Dahshur, about 2400

BC

.

Figure 3.4 Rectilinear temple on linear axis, temple for the cult of King Ramses II, Waset, about 1275

BC

.

Figure 3.5 Peripteral temple with columns around the front, temple of Amenhotep III, Abu.

Figure 3.6 Rectilinear rock-cut offering place on linear axis: right, chapel over burial place of Governor Wahka, near Tjebu (Qau), about 1850

BC

; left, temple to the cult of Ramses II formerly in Wadi es-Seboua, Lower Nubia, about 1275

BC

.

Figure 3.7 Terraced cliff-front temples to the cult of sovereigns at Waset (covered after

AD

300 by a monastery, Deir al-Bahari, now removed): to the left (south) is the temple at the burial place of King Nebhepetra Mentuhotep, in the foreground the temple for Hatshepsut as sovereign.

Figure 3.8 Plan of the crescent-shaped lake around temple of the goddess Mut, Luxor.

Figure 3.9 Protective statue depicting King Ramses II between two goddesses, from the temple to Min and Isis at Gebtyu (Qift), now Egyptian Museum Cairo CG555.

Figure 3.10 Gold statuette of the god Heryshef found at Henennesut temple; cult images are thought to have been similarly small and of precious metal, but this example has a ring at the back as if to wear for protection.

Figure 3.11 A woman in the family of Sennefer, mayor of Waset, shakes sistrum and beads with counterpoise, in the role of the goddess Hathor, bringing life to the sacred space of the family underground burial chamber.

Figure 3.12 Limestone stela with depiction of a portable shrine in the form of a sacred boat, being carried by temple staff on procession at a festival.

Figure 3.13 Faience water flasks with inscriptions invoking Horus and Thoth (above) and Ptah, Sekhmet, and Amun (below), for the Opening of the Year. From the town site at Natahut (modern Tell el Yahidiya), about 550

BC

.

Figure 3.14 Deposits of pottery vessels from festival processions to the tomb of King Djer of the First Dynasty, identified in second to first millennium BC as tomb of Osiris. The sacred space is oriented toward the great western desert valley, visible as a gap in the background cliffs.

Figure 3.15 (a) Two of the series of foundation deposits securing the ground of the temple to Min and Isis, constructed by King Thutmes III (about 1450

BC

) at Gebtyu (Qift); (b) besides the regular provision of pottery for food and drink, one vessel has an unparalleled form, with central motif of cow and scorpions to the side, indicating variations in foundation rituals;

Chapter 04

Figure 4.1 Limestone wall blocks sculpted with depiction of singers beside the words of a hymn to King Amenhotep III, in which the words

Amun

and

all gods

have been erased during the reign of his successor Akhenaten and restored in the following reigns. Tomb chapel of the high official Rames, Waset, about 1375

BC

.

Figure 4.2 (a) Hieroglyph ‘

ankh

, “life,” flanked by facing falcons, on an early type of stamp-seal, perhaps from Upper Egypt (2300

BC

). W. Petrie,

Buttons and Design Scarabs

, British School of Archaeology in Egypt, London, 1927, pl.1. (b) Hieroglyph ‘

ankh

, “life,” flanked by facing crested ibis, on an example of residence cemetery jewelry, a gilt copper headband, from the burial of a woman in the cemeteries at modern Giza, tomb G7143B, about 2400

BC

.

Figure 4.3 (a) Underside of steatite scarab, with a visual motif to bring blessing on the wearer; the motif centers on a scepter-like sistrum with the cow-eared head of a woman, associated with the goddess Hathor and in earlier periods named Bat. Find-place not known, about 1750

BC

, now Petrie Museum UC61099. W. Petrie,

Buttons and Design Scarabs

, British School of Archaeology in Egypt, London, 1927; (b) Ivory clapper from a pair, carved with hand terminal and head of a woman with elaborate hair and necklace, associated with the goddess Hathor (Egyptian Museum, Cairo CG 69234-35): photograph © Gianluca Miniaci.

Figure 4.4 Sanctuaries of Akhetaten: the city in the floodplain has central temples to the creator as the sun disk Aten and to King Akhenaten, with major shrines in the low desert around to his mother (Tiy), wife (Nefertiti), and three eldest daughters (Meretaten, Meketaten, Ankhesenpaaten).

Figure 4.5 Depiction of Amun-Ra as sovereign creator, embracing Hatshepsut as sovereign, on her monolithic red granite obelisk at Karnak, 1475

BC

.

Figure 4.6 Depiction of King Senusret I offering to Amun in Min form, reassembled limestone blocks from the White Chapel, Karnak, about 1950

BC

.

Map 4.1 Plan of festival routes and principal cult centers in Waset.

Figure 4.7 Falcon on boat over the name of King Djer, incised on ivory comb, from burial of a palace official, Abdju, 3000

BC

, (a) photograph, (b) drawing. W. Petrie,

Tombs of the Courtiers and Oxyrhynchus

, British School of Archaeology in Egypt, London, 1925, pl.12.

Figure 4.8 Roughly incised depiction of the boat of Amun, distinguished by the ram-head terminals, carved on the sandstone roofing slabs of the Khons temple, Karnak. Drawing © Wolfram Grajetzki, after Jacquet-Gordon,

Temple of Khonsu, Volume 3. The Graffiti on the Khonsu Temple Roof at Karnak: A Manifestation of Personal Piety

, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2003.

Figure 4.9 (a) Faience hedgehog-boat rattle, provenance unknown, perhaps late Old Kingdom, UC45081. © Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, UCL. (b) Limestone wall relief with depiction of a river boat with a hedgehog-head prow. From the chapel over the burial place of Seneb, whose dwarf stature is integrated into the task of

raising the sail

of his eternal journey. Cemeteries near modern Giza, about 2500

BC

.

Figure 4.10 Small-scale votive stela with depiction of a baboon with a crescent, identified in the hieroglyphic caption as

Thoth lord of Khemenu

, limestone, provenance unknown, UC35815.

Figure 4.11 Limestone votive stela with depiction of

Seth of Nubet

, inscribed as made by the “pure one of Amun, head of sculptors Nedjem,” from Nubet, about 1400

BC

. W. Petrie,

Naqada and Ballas

, Quaritch, London, 1896, pl.78.

Figure 4.12 Limestone votive stelae with depictions of supplicants in prayer, the name and image of the god Ptah, and the hearing ears of the god, from the area of the later palace of Merenptah, Mennefer.

Figure 4.13 Limestone votive stela with an unnamed child–god–king figure facing hippopotamus–lion protectress of infant and mother at birth.

Figure 4.14 Image of Nut on the ceiling of Sety I Osiris tomb, Abdju. Drawing from expedition directed by Henri Frankfort, © Egypt Exploration Society.

Figure 4.15 Silhouette depicting a figurine of a falcon-headed deity, over which a person should recite the dialogue of Atum and Osiris, in the papyrus for Going Out by Day (

Book of the Dead

), made for the head architect Kha, Waset.

Figure 4.16 Depiction of the heavenly cow, accompanying the narrative which gives explanations for the distance between the creator and people, including the near destruction of humankind. Side chamber in the tomb of King Sety I, Waset, about 1285

BC

.

Chapter 05

Figure 5.1 Depiction of the king offering ma‘at, wall-relief in the tomb of King Ramses III, Waset, about 1285

BC

.

Figure 5.2 Authorizing “what is Right” and prescribing punishment for transgressors: limestone stela inscribed with decree of King Neferirkare, addressed to the overseer of god's servants and to the chief local authority, exempting local temple staff from certain obligations of the central administration and specifying penalties against transgressors. From the main temple precinct at Abdju, about 2400

BC

.

Figure 5.3 (a) Limestone stela inscribed with decree of a king, whose name has been erased and replaced by that of King Khasekhemra Neferhotep, about 1750

BC

. Found at Abdju at edge of town northern cemeteries, on processional route to the tombs of the earliest kings; now in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo. (b) Detail from the decree, where a clause stipulates that any person infringing the sacred space demarcated by the stelae “is to be branded” (the vertical sign at left is the hieroglyph for a torch, used for words involving fire).1902.

Figure 5.4 Depiction of King Ramses II poised to smite an enemy from the northeast, in the presence of the creator Atum, presenting him with a curved sword. From Per-Atum (Tell el-Retaba), about 1275

BC

.

Figure 5.5 Depiction of the king poised to smite an enemy, on a votive stela, Ramesside reign of Thutmes IV, about 1400

BC

,

Figure 5.6 Rounded limestone flake inscribed on one side with figure of a bound man, a stream of blood emerging from his forehead. Pyramid field cemeteries, at modern Giza.

Figure 5.7 The earliest manuscript source for the Teaching of Kaires, with the injunction to care for estate workers as the foundation of well-being. Writing board deposited in a tomb at Waset, early Eighteenth Dynasty, about 1550

BC

.

Figure 5.8 Part of a papyrus roll with the only surviving copy of the dialogue between a man and his ba, followed by a marsh tale.

Chapter 06

Figure 6.1 Men in a boat make a protective gesture against the crocodile at the ford, as a calf turns back to the cow at the front of their herd. Limestone wall relief in a chapel over the tomb of the high official Ankhmahor, cemeteries of Mennefer, about 2350

BC

.

Figure 6.2 The burials of a woman named Madja and an unnamed man.

Figure 6.3 Shell with animal depictions and extensions, from Badari burial 3217, about 2200

BC

.

Figure 6.4 Calcite beetle vase, with stopper; the excavation director W. Petrie thought it would have contained a desiccated example of the beetle portrayed.

Figure 6.5 Aha/Bes and Ipy/Taweret on a chair inscribed for the king's daughter Satamun, from the burial of Yuya and Tjuyu, parents of queen Tiy, about 1375

BC

.

Figure 6.6 Lion-headed and hippopotamus-lion protectors, earliest example on a headrest, inscribed for the accountant of the main recruitment enclosure, Neferhotep, from his burial in Waset, about 1750

BC

.

Figure 6.7 Sharp face, flame face, awake face, and alive face: protectors of the image of Osiris at Abdju. On limestone stela from Abdju, now British Museum EA808.

Figure 6.8 Container for a decree of protection issued by an oracle.

Figure 6.9 Divination equipment, game set, or both? Ivory rods and ball, from a burial in the cemeteries of Semenuhor, (Kafr Turki), about 3000

BC

, now Petrie Museum UC15485.

Chapter 07

Figure 7.1 Chapels over burials, with stacks of pottery storage jars from the care for the dead, Semenuhor (Kafr Turki), tombs 740 and 1231, about 3000

BC

.

Figure 7.2 Burial equipment about 2400

BC

, in the cemeteries at modern Giza: (a) underground chamber of tomb 585, Selim Hassan excavations, showing small box of cosmetic equipment to side and predominantly pottery outside and inside the coffin, with second layer (right) with animal bones, food offerings, and/or remains of funeral meal; (b) shaft and burial chamber under mastaba G2220B, George Reisner excavations, found intact and sparsely equipped.

Figure 7.3 Motifs selected from provision of offerings for an estate, overseen by the beneficiary, and from fauna and flora of Nile and low desert. Raised relief scene on limestone blocks of wall in chapel over the burial of the high official Ptahhotep, northern cemeteries of Inebhedj (Saqqara).

Figure 7.4 Wooden models as found in the burial chamber of the estate overseer Karenen, cemeteries of Mennefer near modern Saqqara, about 1950

BC

.

Figure 7.5 Depiction of the sailing to Abdju, painted on the tomb chapel (?) of a man named Sehetepibra, at Waset, about 1750

BC

.

Figure 7.6 Burial of the lady of the house Senebtysy, with regalia and anthropoid coffin including the headcloth of kingship, securing her afterlife through identification as Osiris king of the dead and Horus king of the living.

Figure 7.7 Burial of a wealthy woman in a gilt wood anthropoid coffin and two children in wood boxes, pottery, and baskets around the coffins.

Figure 7.8 Female–male complementarity as a visual ordering principle: a man raises his hands in adoration, accompanied by his wife in the role of

chantress

, shaking sistrum, in the tomb chapel of the estate overseer Rey and his wife chantress of Amun Nebettawy, Waset (Theban Tomb 255).

Figure 7.9 Painted plastered wall of chapel of Nakht, accountant of temple staff, Waset, about 1375

BC

: (a) detail from the scenes of production on an estate.(b) plan of the chapel and shaft (crossed rectangle) leading to underground chambers for burials (dotted).

Figure 7.10 (a) The open court of a tomb chapel, as depicted on a limestone block from a chapel at Mennefer, now Petrie Museum UC408; (b) plan of the temple-sized chapel over burial place of Maya, treasurer in the court of King Tutankhamun, about 1325

BC

, cemeteries of Mennefer (Saqqara).

Figure 7.11 Plan of a large offering chapel with shaft in rear court leading to underground complex of burial chambers. Abdju, tomb D38, about 1200–900

BC

. D.

Figure 7.12 Burial equipment of Nakhtefmut, at Waset: (a) cartonnage casing for the embalmed and wrapped body. (b) amulets, winged scarab, shabtis, flowers, fastening straps and protective figures of deities placed in the tomb.

Figure 7.13 Amulets from early first-millennium BC burials at Lahun. Excavation archive negative PMAN 1951.

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Blackwell Ancient Religions

Ancient religious practice and belief are at once fascinating and alien for twenty-first century readers. There was no Bible, no creed, no fixed set of beliefs. Rather, ancient religion was characterized by extraordinary diversity in belief and ritual.

This distance means that modern readers need a guide to ancient religious experience. Written by experts, the books in this series provide accessible introductions to this central aspect of the ancient world.

Published

Ancient Greek DivinationSarah Iles Johnston

Magic in the Ancient Greek WorldDerek Collins

Religion in the Roman EmpireJames B. Rives

Ancient Greek Religion, Second EditionJon D. Mikalson

Ancient Egyptian Tombs: The Culture of Life and DeathSteven Snape

Forthcoming

Religion of the Roman RepublicLora Holland

Greek and Roman ReligionsRebecca I. Denova

Exploring Religion in Ancient Egypt

Stephen Quirke

This edition first published 2015© 2015 Stephen Quirke

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Quirke, Stephen, author. Exploring religion in ancient Egypt / Stephen Quirke.  pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index.

 ISBN 978-1-4443-3199-8 (cloth) – ISBN 978-1-4443-3200-1 (pbk.)1. Egypt–Religion. I. Title.  BL2441.3.Q575 2015 299′.31–dc23     2014017662

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Cover image: Detail from outer sarcophagus of Khonsu, from Tomb of Sennedjem, Luxor, c.1270 BC. Egyptian Museum Cairo/photo © Jürgen Liepe.

Preface

A proposal to present a new book on ancient Egyptian religion is a double challenge: first, to do justice to the vast range of existing studies across all that the topic can cover, and, then, to find the most productive ground for those interested in and actively working in those broad areas. From the foreign territory of English literature studies, the Palestinian-American writer Edward Said once delivered to an anthropological audience a frontal assault on the entire practice of anthropology (Said 1989). In the deconstructive approach of the time, every word in the title of his paper became an invitation to work with words more seriously, to appreciate how the ground of our study shifts like sand in the field of language users. His aim was not to remove the ground for research, but to pursue any enquiry fully conscious of its difficulty. Said is most famous for his longer assault on European study of the Arab World (Said 1978), where his methods and conclusions have long been both denounced and acclaimed. In that wider debate, readers sympathetic to his motivation have expressed fundamental objections to the precedence given to the literary, misgivings which I share (Ahmad 1994). Nevertheless, in his paper on anthropology, Said offers a cautionary model to follow, particularly in Egyptology, considered part of the study of human societies. Rather than taking any term for granted, I would never underestimate the weight of the baggage we bring from the twenty-first century across more than two millennia to the land and people of Kemet.

In this spirit, the first chapter begins with caution over the words we use, and may have to use, to talk about people in another time—and, for anyone outside Egypt, another space. In turning our attention to something we call ancient Egyptian religion, even the first recognition of words in a book title may imply that we have a sense roughly of where we are going and where we are. That sense of familiarity can be a powerful motor in learning, but it may also involve blocks of assumptions that need rethinking. Accordingly, the chapter identifies some core terms that cannot be left unattended in any effort at archaeological or historical understanding. The very first word that needs a warning sign is religion itself, closely followed by priest, king, and temple. For an Egyptologist, defining any of these is a problem to be explored—an active research agenda, awaiting always new study and discussion. In the battle to dislodge, or at least make visible, the embedded obstacles of vocabulary, researchers may return to different ranges of sources: first, to the evidence of the full archaeological record, rather than the selection dominant in Egyptology, where the focus has been on ancient writings and depictions; secondly, to comparative anthropology and cultural studies, and the wider circles of social and historical sciences. Many Egyptologists have advocated and worked on comparative approaches, and my aim has been to follow their example.

Chapter 1 also introduces some of the places and deities prominent in sources, and here every writer in a language foreign to the people who wrote those sources must become a translator, and apply choices, conscious or not. The names in this and any other West European language translate into Latin-based scripts such as English the written form as preserved in the ancient African script of Kemet—Egyptian hieroglyphs, and its handwritten variants. Those scripts preserve the hard and more constant edge of language sounds, called consonants in English, but not the movements between them, called vowels in English. This “consonantal writing,” also known from many other scripts, is perfect for conveying the meaning of many languages, including Egyptian; alphabetic writing makes Egyptian harder, not easier, to read, because words are built on roots or sound-groups, and so, regularly, a whole group of words may sound the same (Loprieno 1996). Despite a widespread view that the alphabet is the vocation of script (countered by Harris 1986), there is no deficiency or lack in Egyptian hieroglyphs. However, the difference in script does compound the difficulties already present in translation from one language to another, multiplying the choices available to translators. Three means of translating names predominate in Egyptology, and two centuries of European-language writing on ancient Egypt leave little option other than to mingle these. The first approach is to accept previous European writings, starting from ancient Greek and Latin versions (e.g., Heliopolis, Sesostris). The second approach is to return as closely as possible to the ancient writing (e.g., Iunu, Senusret). In a third, more radical approach, indirect sources such as ancient and medieval writings in other scripts are used to estimate the ancient sound behind the writing (e.g., On, Senwosre). Throughout the book, I have attempted to follow the less-ambitious second approach, while accepting some European forms for names, particularly where the original consonantal core is not certain (so, Osiris instead of Wesir/Asetir/Isetir and Isis instead of Iset/Aset). In the aim of returning as closely as possible to the tangible evidence, I risk introducing confusion from unfamiliar versions of ancient names. The place names in particular may seem unnecessarily different: Abu for Elephantine, and for Memphis even two names, Inebhedj for the early Old Kingdom, and Mennefer from the late Old Kingdom onwards. I would ask the reader to use my choices again as an invitation to think about our distance from the world under study, and, whichever choice the reader wishes to make, to make the choice consciously and on the basis of evidence.

Chapters 3–7 test the exploratory approach of opening to wider or different ranges of sources across archaeology and comparative studies. Each chapter takes one thematic area prominent in the archaeological record and in current Egyptological writing: temple and festival, deities and the relations between them (including the Egyptological debate over the presence or absence of myths), ethics (ma'at “what is right”), healing and well-being (conceived holistically, in opposition to modern divisions such as magic and medicine), and burial customs. Before entry into this sequence of segmented areas, Chapter 2 presents the issues that unify all themes: in Kemet, what does it mean to be human, how are human life stages understood and expressed, and which spaces and times, if any, are marked as different, as more intensely sacred than others. The first part of this chapter offers more general discussion, followed by case studies where the reader can tread in greater detail in the footsteps retrieved in archaeological fieldwork. These sections sketch a threshold at which to pause and consider the full social, material, and historical context for all the evidence for the themes in Chapters 3–7. At the end of Chapter 7, I briefly return to the question of unity and segmentation, toward a future collaborative approach for a more holistic understanding of past people along the Saharan Nile.

Chapter 1Belief without a Book

Word Worlds: Ancient and Modern

Religion?

In this book, I seek to address those questions of life in ancient Egypt that most speakers of modern European languages might place under the word religion. More neutrally, the core question could be rephrased as: how did inhabitants of Egypt in ancient times express their places in the worlds of Nile and Sahara and their relation to one another, to other peoples, and to the forces and features of life? The terms religion, from Latin, and philosophy, from Greek, can be used for these topics, but both belong firmly within European histories and therefore carry associations that may fail or obscure attempts to understand non-European settings. The French writer Jacques Derrida has emphasized the specifically West European weight of the word and concept religion (Derrida 1998). If we replace religion with the word belief, we find the same risks of imposing alien ways of thinking on other peoples (Davies 2011). Today, the declaration “I believe in One God” defines the speaker as not believing that there are many gods, as holding one belief and not another. Such affirmations place belief in a system of choices, where personal faith may be built on the rock of one Holy Book, as with the Torah of Judaism, Christian Bible, and Quran of Islam. Before and outside the idea of the sacred book, faith and belief may not be matters of choice between opposing systems. Whereas religions of the book refer explicitly to other options of believing or disbelieving, a human group may instead express itself without reference to any contemporary or earlier other society or way of expression.

An analogy might be drawn with literacy. A part-literate society deploys writing in different ways to a fully literate society; in part literacy, then, our clearest analogy would be not reading-and-writing literacy, the norm in richer countries, but computer literacy, still variably extended through social lives. Today, religion occupies a part in a society, even in a deeply religious society, because the religion expresses itself in relation to other religions and other beliefs such as agnosticism or atheism, denoting them, for example, as superstition, paganism, or apostasy. Most sources for ancient Egyptian society correspond instead to a single expression of being in the world: the expression applies across not a part, but the whole, of social life—much as reading–writing literacy may cover most of West European or East Asian society.

After 525 BC, long-term foreign rule brings different belief systems into the Nile Valley more emphatically than before. Achaemenid Iranian rule (525–404, 343–332 BC) introduced Zoroastrian ideas as well as some larger Jewish communities into Egypt; Macedonian Hellenistic rule (323–30 BC) then installed the Greek. When Egypt became a province of the Roman Empire after 30 BC, the pace of Hellenization increased, accompanied strongly from the third century AD by conversion to Christianity, the state religion from AD 313. With these changes, the final millennium of ancient Egyptian religion seems to involve a mixed environment structurally closer to the present world of differing belief systems (see papers in Clarysse et al., 1998).

By contrast, in the history of Egypt from the first writing (3100 BC) to the beginning of Achaemenid Iranian rule (525 BC), only once was a different choice expressed as the new and now sole option: years 5–17 in the reign of King Akhenaten. For those dozen years, old expressions of a divine Hidden One (in Egyptian Amun) were physically erased in word and image, and all images of the king were directed to a new formulation expressed in image as a sun sphere (in Egyptian Aten) extending the hieroglyph ankh, “life,” to the nose of the king, and in words as “Ra Horus-of-the-Horizon, rejoicing in the horizon, in his name as Light which is in the aten” (Figure 1.1). The next generation restored the earlier system (Figure 1.2) and eventually dismantled the monuments of Akhenaten; later king lists omitted the names of those who had made offerings to the creator in the formula “Ra Horus/Ruler-of-the-Horizon, rejoicing in the horizon, in his name as Light which is in the aten.” Egyptologists have emphasized this reign as a breakthrough in the history of religions, as the first visible example of monotheism or of belief, and as the exception that illustrates what was ancient Egyptian religion for the rest of this 2500-year span (Assmann 2001). The Akhenaten rupture may be of particular fascination for twenty-first-century readers also because they can more easily understand it as a choice in belief, confirming the modern meaning of religion. For other periods, without that apparent choice, the words belief, faith, and religion may stand in the way of an attempt to understand the lives and self-expression of past people.

Figure 1.1 Visualizing the creator as sun disk with two kingly names, as formulated in the reign of King Akhenaten, North Tombs of high officials, Akhetaten, about 1350 BC.

From Richard Lepsius (ed.), Denkmäler aus Aegypten und Aethiopien, Berlin 1849–1859, vol.3, pl.99.

Figure 1.2 The creator expressed in animal–human form sailing over the defeated force of chaos, depicted as giant snake, tomb of King Sety I, Valley of the Kings, Waset, about 1290 BC. © Gianluca Miniaci.

Modern study of ancient worlds

The words for the object of study are not the only obstacles: the words for, and practices of, the study itself raise equally serious barriers. Over the past 200 years, distinct university disciplines were developed for study of societies. Despite efforts at interdisciplinary research, a university might separate the department of archaeology to study past societies, anthropology for contemporary small-scale societies, sociology for contemporary large-scale societies, history for written documents, and art history for visual sources. Much as past and present producers in different materials adopt forms and technologies from one another, each discipline has developed productive methods and approaches that other disciplines can then take up for study of their own main area. To take two prominent examples, ethnoarchaeologists developed anthropological applications to interpret archaeological evidence, and the mid-twentieth-century Annales historians adopted quantitative measures from sociology.

Both the separation of disciplines and their reconnection in new fields such as cultural studies can help generate fresh insights in understanding the world we inhabit. Egyptology occupies a curious position within this academic landscape, somewhere between archaeology and history. Taken literally, the combination of French or English Egypt(e) with Greek logos, “word,” might be expected to designate a holistic study of Egypt. Yet, already from its early use in the nineteenth century, it was taken for granted that Egyptology never meant all Egyptian studies—that would have covered land, fauna, flora, and people of all ages, in short, the full range found in the monumental Description of Egypt published out of the French Expedition of 1798–1801 (Godlewska 1995). Instead, the word narrowly denotes study of the Egyptian past through the ancient Egyptian language as preserved in hieroglyphic inscriptions on monuments, together with any associated finds. The latest version of the language, Coptic, is still used in Christian liturgy in Egypt and is often added to Egyptological study area. Any reader enquiring after ancient Egypt needs to be aware that, in university departments, Egyptologists generally train to read Egyptian writing, not to undertake archaeological fieldwork, or study visual arts, or even comparative or historical linguistics. The discipline developed, not as an area study, but as the philological recovery and study of ancient writings—less Egyptology study of Egypt, than Egyptiology study of ancient Egyptian. If the reader does not know this, she or he may have false expectations over what we can presently know, and the very name of the discipline can become an obstacle to understanding the past. The same risks are run with the rest of our vocabulary, as with modern categories religion, philosophy, and indeed economy, society, and nation; each writer and reader must make their own decisions on which terms can be used and how, and few are likely to make great impact on how, collectively, any one term will continue being used in any group. For our choices, individual and collective, some awareness of the history of use can still be useful. In the case of ancient Egyptian religion, the recovery of available evidence may be distorted as much by the term Egyptology, as by the category religion.

Three hurdles

From the experience of preparing a workshop in Berlin on animal cults in ancient Egypt, the Egyptologist Martin Fitzenreiter identified several major failings in Egyptology, with substantial impact on the modern question of religion in ancient Egypt (Fitzenreiter 2004): eurocentrism, overemphasis on written sources, and lack of theoretical reflection.

Eurocentrism

Egyptians today speak Arabic, and people of different cultural backgrounds around the world express strong interest in the ancient past of Egypt. Yet, early twenty-first-century Egyptology remains overwhelmingly a European-language study in institutions of European form: research university and, to a lesser extent, museum. Eurocentrism makes this condition seem natural, assuming lack of interest by non-European peoples in their own histories (Said 1978; Colla 2007). Internal factors contributed to the emergence of West European studies of the Egyptian past, ahead of Egyptian Arabic and Ottoman Turkish, in the mid-nineteenth century (Mitchell 1988). Current gaps between Arabic-language and European-language production follow most directly from European overseas intervention. Anglo-French control of Egyptian finances after the construction of the Suez Canal opened the way to British invasion of Egypt (1882), with military occupation down to 1952 (Al-Sayyid Marsot 1985; Cole 2000). London-dictated budgets, laws, and university fees and structures, along with Anglo-French agreements on museum directorship and antiquities inspectorate, ensured that Egyptology neither supported Egyptian professionals nor published in Arabic (Reid 2002).

Already from the 1820s, the first people to be called Egyptologists were as European as that word itself. It was they who defined as primary target of study the script area of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic script. That script first became accessible in print publication in French through Jean-François Champollion (1824 Précis, following his announcement in the 1822 Letter to M. Dacier). Inside and outside the discipline, we forget that he was taught Egyptian language (Coptic) by an Egyptian Christian in Paris, Father Hanna Chiftigi (Louca 2006, 89–116), and that numerous Arabic studies on ancient Egypt were written before print by Egyptian and other Arab world geographer–historians such as Makrizi and Abd al-Latif of Baghdad, drawing in part on earlier Muslim scholars such as Dhu al-Nun (El Daly 2004). The endemic historical amnesia maintained by Egyptologists led the contemporary feminist Egyptian writer Nawal El Saadawi to accuse them of cultural genocide (El Saadawi 1997, 169).

Overemphasis on writing

Since the Champollion 1820s publications, Egyptology has remained predominantly a study of ancient writings in the Egyptian language. In the history of ancient Greek and Roman archaeology, written evidence also tended to receive most attention (Morris 1994). As there, philological focus on particular writings separated Egyptology from archaeological fieldwork practice and theory (Giddy 1999). With relatively few exceptions, Egyptologists worked on monumental temples and tombs and failed to apply the advances in prehistoric archaeology to settlement sites, resulting in chronic gaps and distortions throughout our knowledge of the ancient society (Moreno Garcia 2009).

When Eurocentric philological Egyptology adopted as its object of study the language area of ancient Egyptian, they might have defined ancient Egypt as one speech community, tangible in space and time through ancient manuscript and inscription. For emergent nations of nineteenth-century and above all early twentieth-century history, language area may have provided an implicit natural definition as the earliest nation-state. However, in Egyptological practice, script took precedence over language. Although Egyptian is still today written in a Greek-based alphabet, Coptic, and although Coptic is taught in many Egyptology departments, Egyptologists keep the ancient hieroglyphic script as the hallmark of their area of study. Their choice builds on intermittent precedents in Greek, Latin, Renaissance, and later European writings, where hieroglyphs epitomized enigmatic, mystical forces of symbolism. Definition by hieroglyphic script delineates a time–space block ancient Egypt as the span 3100 BC–AD 400, in Nile Valley and Delta, from Aswan to the Mediterranean. The block has been expanded to cover prehistoric material culture in the lower Nile Valley, where it is considered ancestral to ancient Egypt, and to adjacent areas where ancient Egyptian script is found—eastern and western Egyptian deserts, Nubia to the south in the Nile Valley and adjacent deserts, and Sinai to the east, with more limited distribution of hieroglyphic inscriptions across southwest Asia and Mediterranean islands and coasts.

In general, a linguistic definition of ancient Egypt provides a clear criterion and so a clear object of study. The focus on writing has brought remarkable advances, particularly in the privileged domain of literary studies (Loprieno 1996). Yet the discipline has become too easily isolated and lost the advantages of comparative and interdisciplinary study, with surprisingly limited engagement even with the disciplines of linguistics and history. Written sources often interweave with figurative art and can only be understood in architectural context, and philological Egyptologists have often included study of visual arts. Nevertheless, despite remarkable studies within Egyptology, no developed contribution can be found within art history, perhaps the result of too little sustained contact with art historians.

The extent of disciplinary isolation can be exaggerated, and the problem is not confined to Egyptology (archaeology and ancient history Sauer 2004; and anthropology Gosden 1999). Although Egyptology and archaeology tend to practice mutual exclusion, some archaeological expeditions in Egypt have introduced current archaeological theory into Nile Valley fieldwork (Wendrich 2010). The inclusion of prehistoric Egypt into many Egyptological departments and conferences has allowed greater contact with archaeology and anthropology (Wengrow 2006). In some countries, there are also strong links between Egyptology and religious studies (West Germany after World War II, the Netherlands, where Egyptology sometimes belongs within theology departments).

If these links all tend to remain within Eurocentric philosophical frames, that itself is a general problem in interdisciplinarity. From its service in colonialism, anthropology developed the strongest self-critical debate, with insights of great potential for the future of Egyptology and archaeology (Asad 1973; Fabian 1983, 2007). Self-critique holds the power to return beyond the disciplines to their more humane motivation, a description of a society where we seek to understand rather than to control another, aware that understanding only avoids control when resistance is possible from the other side. In his 1940 Theses on the Philosophy of History, Walter Benjamin warned that even the dead are not safe from lethal impositions of the present (translation Benjamin 1968 [1940]). The moment of danger does not pass. If we aim to hear, as well as study, past people of Egypt during its centuries with written evidence in Egyptian scripts, the most secure path may be within comparative social sciences, incorporating the advances in understanding provided from philology. In this approach, the study of religious practice or ideas about life can start as an open source-grounded effort to recognize what members of that society marked as distinctive and how—whether or not that corresponds to religion within our own understanding of societies.

Egyptologists prioritize written sources in their own writing about ancient Egyptian religion, perhaps because their questions and assumptions over religion require narrative evidence. Despite the anticlerical Republicanism of early nineteenth-century philologists including Champollion, the first question in religious studies of ancient Egypt came to be, did they believe in One God (monotheism) or many (polytheism)? In answering this anachronistic question, the researcher would extract from collections of written sources the evidence for or against monotheism. Fitzenreiter emphasizes how, whether consciously or not, the models for the approach were scripture and theological commentary as developed in and for monotheistic religions of the book. In prominent sources, ancient writings combine with images are strongly framed by monumental architecture, the principal home of inscriptions and images from ancient Egypt. However, art and architecture did not provide ready verbal answers to such questions as the creation of the world, or the relation to divinity. Instead, these answers were sought in narratives of deities, in manuals for rites, or in hymns and prayers. The work of Jan Assmann stands out for the way he questions what religion means in the context of ancient Egypt and for his close attention to the specific context of each piece of writing and to changing contexts over time. Relatively few studies have started from a wider context as in landscape archaeology, but this aspect is receiving more study now (Effland and Effland 2010; Jeffreys 2010). Similarly, few general accounts of ancient Egyptian religion start from settlement evidence, outside the monumental frame. Nor, where monuments form part of the living landscape, have we yet considered the impact in practice of a monument or inscription on what might be called, following the historian–sociologist Michel de Certeau, the daily invention of each social life (de Certeau 1980).

Reflection

Despite a professed love of word, the philological focus has been on detail rather than holistic picture. Philologists have left intact a received picture of ancient Egypt, by their unreflective use of generalized concepts and categories such as society, economy, and religion. For describing any other society, particularly outside the European frame, our vocabulary for cultural and material practices may be inappropriate. Even our most general categories turn out to be unexpectedly recent: Timothy Mitchell has charted the extraordinarily late (mid-twentieth-century) development of the contemporary meaning of economy in European-language use (Mitchell 2002). General terms for dimensions such as economic, political, religious, and social may be useful filters for sifting and analyzing evidence. Yet they continually merge and overlap in practice, and the way we use each term in the set must affect our understanding of each of the others and of the whole set. Our approach will differ according to whether we adopt society or culture or ethnic group as the label for the totality, however porous and impermanent we consider it. If we do not define our terms, or reconsider our categories, we are likely simply to reproduce the dominant ideas of our place and time. This problem, raised by Marxist historians (de Ste Croix 1989), should be of concern to all interested in studying any society, because those dominant ideas may not apply automatically to our particular field of study.

An ancient Egyptian definition of religion? The composition the King as Priest of the Sun

For the dimension of religion, over the past fifty years, Jan Assmann has worked most prolifically to define our terms explicitly in a West German theological and literary frame. From eight sources connected with kingship and its writings, Assmann reconstructed a remarkable ancient Egyptian written composition, with no ancient title, called by him The King as Priest of the Sun. One key passage states why the creator sun-god Ra installed the nswt, “king,” on earth (Assmann 2001, 3–6):

the Sun-god installed the king on the earth of the living, for ever and eternity,to judge between people and to satisfy the gods,to create what is Right, to annihilate what is Evil,giving offerings to the gods, voice-offerings to the blessed dead.

Assmann interprets the first two lines as a broad definition of religion, as ethics and justice: the king must make possible ma‘at, “what is right,” the just and ethical behavior among humans, underpinned by law, to judge between people. The next two lines would then respond to a narrow definition of religion as ritual: the king must ensure that offerings were made to satisfy deities and the blessed dead. By using this source to illustrate his broad and narrow definitions of religion, Assmann anchors the Egyptological argument firmly in ancient writing.

The power of the research by Assmann comes not least from his unsurpassed knowledge of the written sources and sensitivity to their architectural and historical context. Yet here, the limitations of the definition from writing can also be seen, both in the restricted circle of sources for this ancient articulation and in the openness of writing to different analysis. In other ancient Egyptian written sources, particularly the literary genre of Teachings, the concept of  just and ethical behavior, includes care for the deities, and the dead (see Chapter 5). Therefore, the division between ethics and cult, central to religious movements such as Reformation Christianity, may not apply in any clear-cut fashion to that ancient Egyptian definition of kingship. In another evident limitation, the Teachings describe ethical precepts as given by father to son: even within a conceptual frame of the nuclear family, they leave unanswered how a father might have advised a daughter and a mother a son or daughter and how sisters and brothers spoke. Feminism and gender studies introduce fresh questions and prospects for research.

Accordingly, in place of a theological focus on the most developed expressions of religious thought, Fitzenreiter prefers an anthropological focus in order to consider more broadly religious practice, as social activity, out of which religion might emerge as a collective longer-term presence, as religious institutions. This approach allows him to suspend certain Eurocentric assumptions, such as the centrality of a written tradition, or the monotheism versus polytheism debate (as in Hornung 1996), extensively discussed in Egyptology, with reference both to the definition of the word netjer (used in Christian writing in its Coptic form noute as the translation for Greek theos, “God”) and to the dozen years when King Akhenaten focussed worship and offerings exclusively on one deity. According to Fitzenreiter, a shift away from word focus to practice allows greater attention to recurrent and prominent phenomena marginalized in previous histories of Egyptian religion, such as ancestor cult and divination, oracles, and the phenomena studied under the heading of animal cults.