Egypt

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 8/10/2011, SPi chapter 45 ....................................................................................................... EGYPT ....................................................................................................... ANNA STEVENS 1 INTRODUCTION: THE EGYPTIANS AND THEIR WORLD .................................................................................................................. The first traces of ancient Egyptian culture emerged in the Nile Valley towards the end of the fourth millennium bc. These developed into a civilization that was to remain intact for over 3,000 years (Table 45.1) until eventually obscured by infusions of Hellenistic Greek culture, Christianity, and the effects of the Arab conquest of Egypt in ad 641. In part, this longevity of cultural cohesion can be attributed to the effectiveness of Egypt’s ritual framework (cf. Shafer in Shafer 1997: 21). Most people today are broadly familiar with ancient Egypt, or at least with certain royal figures and monuments: Tutankhamun, Cleopatra, the Giza pyramids. For most Egyptians such individuals and institutions were peripheral to their experiences. Life was acted out in a small mud-brick house in a rural village or in the more urbanized environment of a city, and was heavily tied to the land. Many people died young, after leading difficult lives (Baines 1991: 135–7). Social position was closely connected with occupation, and the small upper strata of society were dominated by high officials, whose working lives were centred upon supporting the king in his role as the administrative, religious, and military head of the land (Silverman 1995). The Egyptian conception of their universe was complex, and to some extent changeable, but was in a basic sense tripartite, comprising the heavens, earth, and the underworld (Allen 2003). Humans shared the universe with several other orders of being, amongst whom the gods, the dead, and a group known as akhu were especially prominent. They occupied a continuum of existence, and a degree of transformation between orders was possible (Lloyd 1989: 121–2); the desire after death for the average person was to become an akh, or transfigured dead at one with the gods of the afterlife. Communication between humans and divine beings was crucial because the relationships between them were those of mutual dependence. Divinities had the power to manipulate the affairs of the living in both a positive and negative way, but at the same time had a need for sustenance. Through ritual action and words of power, known as heka, humans could influence divinities and also their own situation within the cosmos (Lloyd 1989: 122). The king had a distinct role as OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 8/10/2011, SPi EGYPT 723 Table 45.1 Chronological List of the Ancient Egyptian Periods: Scholars deal with the great depth of time encompassed by ancient Egyptian history by dividing it into a series of dynasties, following the writings of the third-century-BC priest Manetho, and grouping these according to several broad periods. (After Shaw 2000: 479–83 and Kemp 2006: 14) Predynastic period (c.5300–3000 bc) Early Dynastic period (c.3000–2686 bc), Dynasties 1–2 Old Kingdom (2686–2160 bc), Dynasties 3–8 First Intermediate period (2160–2055 bc), Dynasties 9–mid-11 Middle Kingdom (2055–1650 bc), Dynasties mid-11–13/14 Second Intermediate period (1650–1550 bc), Dynasties 15–17 New Kingdom (1550–1069 bc), Dynasties 18–20 Third Intermediate period (1069–664 bc), Dynasties 21–25 Late period (664–332 bc), Dynasties 26–30, including 1st Persian period (Dynasty 27) and 2nd Persian period (Dynasty ‘31’) Ptolemaic period (332–30 bc) Roman period (30 bce–395 ad) Egypt ruled by Byzantium (395–641 ad) Arab conquest of Egypt (641 ad) intermediary between the gods and humankind and could himself possess divine attributes, although his divinity was not static and did not obscure his mortal origins (Silverman 1991: 58–87; 1995). A mythological framework helped to explain the universe, in which six key chronological events can be recognized (Pinch 2004): pre-creation, in which the universe was in a state of chaos; the formation of the world and its inhabitants, often conceptualized as taking place on a mound of earth that rose from the primeval waters; the reign of the sun god; a period of direct rule by other deities; rule by semi-divine kings (history); and the return to chaos. Preventing the latter required the upkeep of maat, or cosmic and universal order (Hornung 1992: 131–45; Teeter 1997). This was achieved largely by keeping the gods satisfied, primarily by tending and making offerings to them via their cult statues housed in temples (Figure 45.1). Because the Egyptians held two conceptions of time, linear time and cyclical time, creation happened both once in the distant past but also every morning with the rising of the sun (Hornung 1992: 49). The world was in a continual, but necessary, state of tension between the forces of order and chaos. The pervasive image of ancient Egyptian religion is one shaped by temples and tombs, in which upholding maat and attaining and maintaining an afterlife were predominant concerns. The centrality of ritual, especially exchange-based forms of communication, can be stressed. Temple cult, in particular, was one of ritual obligation. As Meskell (2004: 69) notes, ‘the words “image” and “cult” point to the very heart of Egyptian religion’. If we want to paint a picture of Egyptian religion in broad brush-strokes, this is a reasonable view, although it is a perspective acquired largely from formal contexts and based on religion conceived with a view to perpetuity. It is also unclear how relevant it is for the OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 8/10/2011, SPi 724 A N NA S T EV E N S FIGURE 45.1 Alternative means of creating sacred space. At the top, a view of the Temple of Hathor at Dendera, dating largely to the Ptolemaic period. Many of the devices used to set ritual apart from the mundane are best expressed in temple architecture, particularly the use of myth and dualism—open and closed, solar and chthonic, hidden and revealed. Progres- sion through the temple complex brought a transition from open courts into enclosed spaces as the floor level simultaneously rose and the roof level lowered. In this way the sanctuary, positioned at the furthest end of the temple, recalled the mythical ‘mound of creation’. Below is a hypothetical reconstruction of the Early Dynastic landscape at the site of Coptos. Excavation in 1894 revealed fragments of colossal limestone figures of the god Min, carved probably just before Dynasty 1. Drawing on evidence for the use of ‘standing stones’ at other sacred sites, of this and later periods, Kemp (2006: 129; also Kemp, Boyce, and Harrell 2000) reconstructs the colossi as an ‘[a]rc of guardian figures surrounding a central feature of interest’, the latter shown as a mound (which was revealed during excavation) with a simple hut shrine (of which no trace has been found). earliest phases of Egyptian history when the source material is limited (to such an extent that the possibility of an aniconic tradition cannot be ruled out [Kemp 2006: 118]). Within Egyptology, ritual is usually viewed as a part of religion; it is certainly most visible now within the context of formal religion. Ascertaining how far ritual existed exclusive of religion depends in part on how we define these realms (cf. Bell 1997: 94). Many ancient OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 8/10/2011, SPi EGYPT 725 Egyptian rituals had a clear mythological or cosmological explanation. Others, in lacking this, can be considered chiefly social rites, although they often involved recourse to magic or medical spells, or the intercession of divinities and spirits whose remit was everyday concerns. Although not the focus of the discussion here, a very broad definition of ritual might also find much in Egyptian society to classify as secular rites, particularly in the context of reinforcing status or event. Sources such as elite tomb scenes convey a world in which social distinctions were marked and important, and in which there was a well- developed ‘sense of occasion’, aspects that could be reinforced by the selection of costume, insignia and posture. It is not clear how strongly performance-based these selection processes were, but as strategies for differentiation they take at least a step towards ‘ritualization’ (Bell 1992). 2 SOURCES FOR THE STUDY OF RITUAL AND RELIGION .................................................................................................................. Research into Egyptian religion and ritual is driven largely by textual sources, which tend to be richest from the New Kingdom onwards. Funerary texts, largely spells designed to assist the deceased in their transition to the afterlife, are one important source, with a continuous history of copying, editing, and fresh composition starting in the Fifth Dynasty. Since the word, both written and spoken, was considered efficacious in this world and the next, these texts were themselves ritual tools. Many magico-medical spells intended for everyday use also survive (e.g. Borghouts 1978). In part, these outline the practice of religion, and so provide a fruitful context for interaction with archaeology (e.g. Szpakowska 2003). They also draw attention to ephemeral items used in religion that are rarely recognizable archaeologically, some so elaborate and unusual that we might doubt whether they ever existed other than in the imagination. Otherwise, written sources extend to such genres as mythological texts, hymns, offering formulae and prayers, ‘instruction’ literature, bio- graphical texts, so-called Dream Books and Calendars of Lucky and Unlucky Days, and occasionally private letters (e.g. Assmann 1999; McDowell 1999: 91–126; 2001; Baines 2002). In seeking to elucidate belief frameworks from these, Egyptologists need to deal with the fact that the Egyptians were more accepting of multiple truths than later societies and did not always require a linear or a written narrative. There were several different versions of the creation myth, for instance (Hornung 1992: 39–54). In a similar fashion, images and substances were often rich in symbolism, usually multivalent (Wilkinson 1992, 1994). Iconographic evidence takes the form largely of tomb and temple decoration, and the scenes on ritual objects such as stelae. As with the word, the image was considered efficacious (Hornung 1992: 34), and the two often functioned as one. By far the most common ritual scene, that of offerings being made to the gods or the deceased, showed that religious obligations were being perpetually fulfilled, whilst scenes on temple walls could be intimately connected with the rituals conducted nearby (Arnold 1962; David 1981). Occa- sionally images of divinities shown in wall reliefs themselves served as cult images, either by design or public appropriation, particularly those on temple walls and gateways (Teeter OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 8/10/2011, SPi 726 A N NA S T EV E N S FIGURE 45.2 A small sample of ritual objects, sourced from New Kingdom sites but broadly representative of material found in other periods. Bottom left: limestone stela of a priest named Yamen originally set up in a small shrine beside the elite burial of Maya and Meryt at Saqqara. Yamen, wearing panther-skin robes, offers liquid libations and incense to Osiris and to the deceased couple using purpose-made vessels, whilst offerings are piled on portable stands (after Raven 2001: pl. 28). Bottom right: a scene from the tomb of the official Horemheb showing the rite of ‘breaking of the red pots’ (after Martin 1989, pl. 123). The remaining material is from the site of Amarna: a group of pottery figures of foreigners found in the Central City, possibly the remnants of execration rites (obj. 33/34; after Pendlebury 1951, pl. LXXVIII.3), pieces of amuletic jewellery in the form of the domestic deity Bes, an anthropoid bust probably connected with ancestor worship, a crocodile, and the sacred wedjat-eye (obj. 30/784, 34801, 34128; the crocodile design is from an unnum- bered mould), and a portable limestone offering table (obj. 37678). OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 8/10/2011, SPi EGYPT 727 1997: 4–5; Brand 2007). These are a good illustration of how iconography can bridge the gap between text and archaeology. The Egyptians also used a rich and varied material framework to support their religious beliefs and practices (Figure 45.2). Archaeology makes a great deal of this accessible, although variably so. Generally material from funerary and temple contexts is more accessible than that from settlements. The latter, traditionally situated along the alluvial flood plain, have suffered particularly from environmental degradation connected with the annual flooding of the Nile, and from overbuilding. More specific trends are the predomi- nance of mortuary monuments amongst exposed pre-New Kingdom ritual architecture, and the near absence for all periods of surviving settlements that were not regional towns. Archaeologists also have to deal with the reality that excavation in Egypt began as treasure hunting. Early-nineteenth-century antiquarians were attracted especially to tem- ples and elite cemeteries in their search for museum-quality objects, which set the tone for much work to follow. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, an interest began to emerge in the use of material culture to reconstruct everyday life, and attention turned slowly to settlement sites and non-elite cemeteries. These expeditions were often successful in producing a record of sites that have now suffered looting or been lost to urban growth and agriculture. Unfortunately, given the often cursory recording standards of the day and how large-scale excavations commonly were (Shaw 1999), the legacy is a number of important sites that are now largely ‘worked over’ and a mass of objects with limited context, often dispersed to public and private collections worldwide. Moves to make public collections accessible via online databases (e.g. MacDonald, McKeown, and Quirke 2000) are an important development. Today, cemetery- and temple-based research is still prominent, but fieldwork in Egypt covers a wider range of themes and approaches. Current priorities include the production of a fuller record of the archaeology of the Delta; exploration of the desert landscapes and oases; and the filling-in of gaps in the record of settlements, temples and shrines. At the same time, the development of a scholarly tradition that uses material culture as the basis for studying Egyptian religion and ritual, and draws its inspiration as much from modern and pre-historical material-cultures studies as it does from ancient texts, is still very much in its infancy. 3 RITUAL GENRES .................................................................................................................. The remainder of this chapter takes three ritual genres that are particularly well expressed in archaeological material—rites of exchange and communion, rites of affliction, and rites of passage—as a means of conveying further the character of the source material and some prominent directions of research. These by no means cover the full set of known Egyptian rituals, which is extensive, and extends to calendrical and commemorative rites, rites of feasting and festivals, and political rites: the full spectrum of genres, with the exception of rites of fasting, that are typical of clearly defined religious traditions (Bell 1997: 93–137). All were important in the Egyptian context, and can be in part recovered archaeologically. As is often the case, there was considerable blurring of boundaries between ritual genres: offering rites are common to all genres, for example, rites of affliction frequently accompany rites of passage, and many mortuary rituals associated with the transition to the afterlife seem to OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 8/10/2011, SPi 728 A N NA S T EV E N S have paralleled aspects of birth and childhood, and rituals undertaken at these times (Roth 1992; 1993; Roth and Roehrig 2002). 3.1 Rites of Exchange and Communion Making offerings was the fundamental ritual action, common to temple, mortuary, and domestic settings. Offerings were usually consumables and other perishables—liquid liba- tions were particularly popular and incense indispensable—but could also take the form of more robust items, as already noted. 3.1.1 Formal Exchange at Temples Temple cult had as its central ritual the daily offering to the cult image. The focus of the rite was the clothing of the statue and presentation to it of food, wine, and beer, accompanied by symbolic gestures and words (Fairman 1954: 178–81; David 1981). The offerings were sourced mainly from temple-owned agricultural land and related resources. In a practice known as the ‘reversion of offerings’, attested for most of Egyptian history, the goods offered could be redistributed to the public (Haring 1997)—clearly a key to the effectiveness of Egyptian ritual structure. Priests and temple staff claimed priority in receiving reversion offerings, to the extent that these could amount to a salary. Others could access them by making donations to the temple, especially of land and produce (e.g. Morkot 1990), although quite how far these benefits spread into the broader community is unclear. One site where an attempt has been made to match this practice with the archaeological record is Amarna (Kemp 1994; 1995: 33–4; also Kemp and Garfi 1993: 50–65; see Figure 45.3). This is the location of the ancient city of Akhetaten, which served briefly as Egypt’s capital in the late second millennium bc. The city’s founder, king Akhenaten, is remembered for his ‘heretic’ attempts to promote his own divinity and the cult of a single solar deity, the Aten, above all others (Hornung 1999). For archaeologists Amarna provides by far the largest exposure of ancient settlement anywhere in Egypt, offering something close to a true ‘cityscape’ that includes much of the original urban setting of its temples. The largest ritual arena was the Great Aten Temple, which now survives in a denuded state. The temple enclosure was enormous, and contained around 1,820 offering tables (Kemp 1995: 33), a striking illustration of the tendency in Egyptian religion towards redundancy. Scenes in officials’ tombs show these tables heaped with offerings, especially joints of meat, bread, incense, and plants. On the ground, state-run bakeries and spaces for the storage of wine and meat production can be identified not far from the temple. In part, these probably stocked Akhetaten’s temples, pointing to major state involvement in this practice. They may also have supplied the main royal palace, located nearby, reflecting the overlapping roles of palace and temple in ancient Egypt (Kemp 1994, 1995: 34). We can make an informed guess that goods sent to the temple were eventually distributed amongst the city’s occupants, perhaps after being laid out on the offering tables (Kemp 1995: 33–4). Much more work is needed on how the goods circulated around the city, which may be especially viable through the study of faunal evidence, generally an underutilized source in the study of religion (see Payne 2006, 2007 and Legge 2010 for preliminary work). The Great Aten Temple demonstrates another aspect of temple offering: scope for donation by the elite of items such as statues and furnishings, probably the origin of a set of metal vessels found beneath the sanctuary floor (Pendlebury 1951: 10, 12, 188–9, pl. LX.5– OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 8/10/2011, SPi EGYPT 729 FIGURE 45.3 Anticlockwise from bottom: plan of the Great Aten Temple at Amarna and adjacent areas for food production and storage (after Kemp 1994: fig. 14.4); a scene from the Amarna tomb of the official Meryra showing offering tables in the temple piled with food and incense (after Davies 1903, pl. XXVIII); a stela donated at the tomb of the official Any showing the presentation of an ox in the context of his mortuary cult (after Davies 1908, pl. XXI); and small faience plaques in the shape of bovine heads of a type commonly found amongst houses, perhaps used in offering rites (after Boyce 1995, fig. 2.23). OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 8/10/2011, SPi 730 A N NA S T EV E N S 8, fig. 25; Kemp 1995: 35, fig. 2). A further mode of contact—the provision of private mortuary cults—might be documented in a small stela donated at the Amarna tomb of the official Any. The stela shows the donor, a scribe called Nebwawi, leading an ox that has been fattened-up for offering, whilst brief inscriptions mention the king’s involvement in preparing Any’s burial (Davies 1908: 10, pl. XXI; Corteggiani 1987: 108–9). One viable interpretation of the scene is that it shows Nebwawi presenting the ox at the Great Aten Temple or a similar institution. This is one potential context in which the tomb scenes of temple offerings, the offering spaces attested archaeologically at the temples, and the realities of religious conduct overlapped. People may have acquired specially fattened cattle, from private supplies (for which see Kemp 1994: 143–5) or a centralized stock, and have them slaughtered in the presence of, and so offered to, the Aten in order that the king granted an associate an afterlife. Some of the meat could have been redistributed to the tomb or in household shrines as offerings. In this way, concerns regarding the dead may have bridged the gap between state and popular interests at Akhetaten, often held to have been in conflict. Sites such as Amarna also offer the chance to write archaeologies of religion that are integrated contextually, and so move beyond the tendency towards subdivision (state religion, private religion, funerary religion, etc.) that underlies much writing on past religion. 3.1.2 Votive Offerings Whilst layers of reciprocal obligation appear to have accompanied much formal donation to temples, something closer to spontaneous engagement seems to underlie the practice of votive offering at temples and shrines that occurs sporadically across Egyptian history (Kemp 1995: 36). Surviving deposits of votives offer an approach to the personal concerns that drove religious conduct and to the changing role of temples as outlets for public cult. As a general trend, the deposits seem to reflect an increase in such behaviour over time, but it is important not to stress too linear a development here. The deposits, and the periods in which they are absent, are difficult to position in a single cohesive narrative. The earliest substantial deposits date from the Early Dynastic period into the Old Kingdom, and are a particularly important source on the role of the temple at this time. A model in which the early votives reflect largely elite contact with temples is usually thought to best fit the cultural milieu of the time (Baines 1991: 173). The site of Elephantine in Egypt’s south offers a well-recorded set (Dreyer 1986), but there are many others (Wilkinson 2001: 269–72, 306–20; Kemp 2006: 112–35). The composition of the deposits varies. Often they comprise groups of small figurines and models, but some include obviously high-status ceremonial and ritual items such as palettes and mace heads. A long tradition of enquiry accompanies these items, which are also known beyond temple caches, particularly as sources for the emergence of the Egyptian state, and the role of ritual therein (e.g. Petrie 1953; Wengrow 2001). After a considerable hiatus, the next peak in votive offerings occurs during the Eight- eenth Dynasty. Whilst there are few excavated shrines of the intervening period, and votive material is not unheard of at these (Pudleiner 2001), the Eighteenth Dynasty deposits do seem to represent a genuine increase in the practice, although some see the donors still as a small and largely elite group (Baines 1991: 180). The deposits appear especially at shrines and temples to the goddess Hathor and related deities, where they seem often to have been OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 8/10/2011, SPi EGYPT 731 donated to address concerns relating to female fertility (Pinch 1993), but are also known elsewhere, such as the provincial shrine to the jackal god Wepwawet at Asyut (Munro 1962). A favoured offering at the Asyut shrine was stelae that range greatly in scale and quality, some being little more than small, possibly undecorated, plaques. A much greater variety of offerings appears at Hathor shrines, but again showing a range in quality, to include inscribed statues, decorated textiles, amulets and pieces of jewellery, figurines, unworked pebbles, and many other items (Baines 1991: 180–3; Pinch 1993; Kemp 1995: 27–9). Votive offering on a mass scale appears again in the archaeological record from the Third Intermediate period, proliferating in the Late period onwards. Bronze vessels and statu- ettes, usually of divinities and animal manifestations thereof, were donated in large numbers at shrines across Egypt (Roeder 1937; Hill 2001). The god Osiris was particularly popular, and inscriptions indicate that the donations were often propelled by concerns for eternal life. Most votive bronzes were discovered as caches in the early days of Egyptian archaeology and recorded only briefly before being dispersed to museum collections. Most caches are difficult to interpret, therefore, as cohesive assemblages. Fortunately, they have also been uncovered during more recent controlled excavations, including at the Sacred Animal Necropolis at Saqqara (Nicholson and Smith 1996). The bronzes overlap broadly with the appearance of such necropolises, where thousands of animal mummies have been excavated in cemeteries and subterranean catacombs (Kessler 1986, 1989, 1998; Ikram 2005). They, and the bronzes, belong in the context of a growth in the attribution of oracular powers to divine animals, and concurrently of such practices as incubation and dream interpretation to communicate with divinities. There is considerable divergence of scholarly opinion on the origin of the animal mummies, however. A common view is that they were originally donated by the public at shrines for deities to whom the animals were often sacred, and subsequently cached in necropolises (Ikram 2005). An alternative theory holds that the practice often represents the burial of animals who died within temple precincts, often sacred animals that had lived in the temple and were used within temple rituals and ceremonies (advocated especially by Kessler 1989; Kessler and Nur el-Din 2005). 3.1.3 Approaching Domestic Offering Rites In domestic contexts, rites of exchange and communion are best attested not in offerings themselves but in installations and objects that facilitated such rites. Most of the material comes from houses of the New Kingdom and later, which have been the most thoroughly investigated. But it is likely that these rites were occurring in domestic contexts prior to this time, to judge from finds of portable spouted offering tables and trays, and offering stands within earlier houses (Petrie 1891: 11, pl. VI; Adams 1998; Smith 2003: 128–9; Szpakowska 2008: 133–6). Images at least of ‘domestic’ divinities and perhaps the house owner (as living person or as deceased) were probably being erected as focal points of veneration (e.g. Mace 1921; Arnold 1996). Domestic altars proper, best known from the New Kingdom, often took the form of an elevated mud-brick platform with a projecting set of stairs or ramp, although others were simple nondescript pedestals; domestic ritual did not always use displays of grandeur to create otherness. At some sites, stone slabs set into the floors might have been designed to receive liquid libations (Spence 2007). A very rare instance where evidence of cult has been OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 8/10/2011, SPi 732 A N NA S T EV E N S found in connection with a domestic altar occurs at Askut, an Egyptian fortress in Nubia (Smith 1993; 1995; 2003). Here, a small mud-brick altar was constructed around the beginning of the New Kingdom in the courtyard of a private house. It took the form of a low mud-brick platform fronting a niche with modelled cornice (Figure 45.4). When excavated, the niche still contained a limestone stela—a fairly standard Egyptian stela on which the partially legible text comprised largely an offering formula to a man named Meryka, shown seated and receiving offerings. The platform of the altar sloped down to a pottery drain positioned above a series of buried pots. The altar was clearly designed to receive and drain liquid libations, perhaps the cause of some of the wear to its surface. Holes in the platform suggest it incorporated a wooden canopy or similar to enclose the stela niche. The courtyard location of the altar may have drawn attention to it in a semi- public domain, and perhaps taken advantage of people entering and leaving the house to draw the cult into personal routines. It is very rare, in fact, that a space seems to have been set aside exclusively for cult in the home, which we might read as a sign of its embedded- ness within domestic life—although we cannot be certain of this. Smith (2003: 133) contrasts the Askut altar with what seems to be an earlier shrine at the same site, which took the simpler form of a rectangular niche set into a wall above a low bench. He observes that the elaboration of the later shrine may represent a growth in ‘personal piety’ at Askut. The development of this aspect of religion, usually understood as direct contact with gods and personal experience of them (Baines 1991: 173), has been a prominent theme of Egyptological research, spawned mostly by New Kingdom texts in which it is more immediately apparent than in earlier sources (Baines 1991: 172–86; Assmann 1999). We might also ask whether the Askut shrine reflects growing ritualization of domestic religion, or more specifically increasing formalization of rites of exchange and communion in a domestic setting—which may have gone hand in hand with an intensifi- cation of personal closeness to divinities. 3.2 Rites of Affliction Rites of affliction are strongly attested in the Egyptian context, particularly in magico- medical spells that address such concerns as protection against harmful animals, disease and illness (often given an otherworldly source), deceased persons, and the evil eye. Treatment usually required a combination of words, carefully selected objects or ingredi- ents, and actions and gestures that could include burial, burning, breaking, making loud noises, encircling, sealing, and knot-tying (Ritner 1993; Pinch 2006: 76–89; Wendrich 2006). Often these actions were intended to contain or destroy hostile forces, but their purpose was heavily context-dependent. Communities included individuals skilled in treating affliction by magico-medical means, who were often attached to temples (Gardiner 1917; Baines 1987: 93–4; Quack 2002; Pinch 2006: 47–60). Such figures and their actions are documented almost exclusively in textual sources. An 1896 excavation of a Thirteenth Dynasty tomb at Thebes, however, revealed what seems to be the toolkit of a ‘chief of mysteries’ (Quibell 1898: 3–4, pl. 3; Bourriau 1988: 110–27), whilst a study of female figurines from the Temple of Mut at Luxor has concluded that they were the remnants of healing rituals conducted by temple personnel on behalf of the public (Waraksa 2007). An important role of archaeology in OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 8/10/2011, SPi EGYPT 733 FIGURE 45.4 The shrine for Meryka at Askut: a photograph of the shrine as found, with stela still in place (note the layers of floor build-up in the excavator’s cut in the foreground), and a hypothetical reconstruction of the house showing the courtyard location of the shrine. OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 8/10/2011, SPi 734 A N NA S T EV E N S this context is to test how far actions such as these spread beyond temples and specialized practitioners, in light of the influential view that Egyptian religious knowledge was deliber- ately restricted to the elite (Baines 1990: 6–10). One remarkable discovery, in a late-fifth-century-bc house at Tell el-Muqdam, was of several figurines sealed in the lower parts of the walls (Redmount and Friedman 1994, 1997). The figurines take the form of erotic figures (usually males with enormous phalli), but also animals, horse-and-rider figurines and a possible image of a woman giving birth. The excavators noted that all of the figurines ‘were incomplete or broken in some way, but were placed carefully, one by one and never in groups, at various points—usually corners and abutments—within the first above-ground course of the wall’ (Redmount and Friedman 1997: 63). The deposits suggest a tradition of domestic foundation offerings, far better known from state cult buildings (Montet 1964; Weinstein 1973; Rossi 2004: 148–73). The house, and by extension its occupants, was the focus of protection, a level of concern otherwise known mainly in magic spells (Jankuhn 1972; Borghouts 1978, 15, 82–3, nos. 15, 121). Unfortunately there is no way of ascertaining, from the archaeology alone, whether the house owner oversaw the rite or commissioned a specialist practitioner. Nor are the layers of meaning that accompanied the selection of the figurine types immediately apparent. 3.2.1 Temple Cult as Rite of Affliction Egyptian temple cult itself embraced a form of community-wide rite of affliction, often pre- emptively maintaining balance but at other times focusing on destroying evil or addressing specific hardships. One ritual, documented both in tomb and temple inscriptions and archaeologically, focused on foreigners, who were considered a source of chaos and magical disruption to the universe. Cursing formulae naming foreigners, and sometimes Egyptian criminals and the deceased, were inscribed on jars and anthropomorphic figurines and disabled by such means as breakage and burial, whilst wax figures were burnt (Posener 1975; Willems 1990: 46–8; Wimmer 1993; Ritner 1993: 136–42). Most surviving execration deposits have been recovered from cemeteries, placing the ritual within the private domain (Baines 2007: 8). But the largest deposit yet found originates from the Egyptian fortresses at the Nubian site of Mirgissa. Here, a large pit contained 7,000 inscribed potsherds and other items that included three figurines and a dismembered body, the only clear case of actual human sacrifice accompanying the rite (Ritner 1993: 153–80). At another of the Nubian fortresses, at Buhen, a group of hippopotamus skulls were excavated near the Middle Kingdom Temple of Horus, perhaps a rare archaeological survival of a rite in which the king harpooned a hippopotamus, an animal associated with Seth, the main god of chaos (Säve-Söderbergh 1953; Smith 1979: 72). It is no coincidence that such rites appear in Egyptian occupied territories abroad. These were liminal zones (as were cemeteries) in which threats to Egypt and Egyptians were magnified. Even the practice of conducting foreign correspondence from within Egypt itself may have required counteractive measures, to judge from the excavation at Amarna of broken figurines of foreigners in the general vicinity of the building where cuneiform tablets (the Amarna Letters) documenting exchanges between the Egyptian court and Near Eastern kings and dignitaries were stored (Pendlebury 1951: 118, pl. LXXVIII.3; and Figure 45.2). OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 8/10/2011, SPi EGYPT 735 3.3 Rites of Passage Finally, rites of passage are most visibly represented in archaeological and other source material in connection with death and, to a lesser extent, birth. Although the Egyptians conceived of life as being divided into stages, or forms, which included the afterlife, evidence of rituals accompanying life transitions has otherwise proven obscure. Allowing for the inevitable incompleteness of the source material, it has been speculated that lives, particularly of females, were not as punctuated with marked or symbolic transition points as we might assume (Meskell 2002: 89–90). Male circumcision was practised, but probably never widespread (Meskell 2002: 87–8; also Roth 1991: 72), whilst female circumcision is known only in texts from the Ptolemaic period and possibly later (Baines 1991: 144, note 59; Huebner 2009). There is no clear evidence for a marriage ceremony, although rituals involving naming and hair cutting may have taken place during child- hood (Baines 1991: 144). It is tempting to interpret finds of mud balls containing human hair as remnants of hair-cutting rites (e.g. Crompton 1916), partly in light of modern ethnographic accounts of childhood rituals that involved the cutting of hair, which was sometimes buried in a ball of clay (Blackman 1927: 86; Ayrout 1968: 132). 3.3.1 Birth and Life The moment of birth itself is rarely represented, but magico-medical rites were undoubt- edly prominent at this time. One set of spells was said over amuletic bricks on which the mother squatted during delivery (Roth and Roehrig 2002, 19–33; and Wegner 2002 for an excavated example), whilst groups of buried placenta and birthing equipment excavated at the New Kingdom village of Deir el-Medina have also been suggested as the remnants of birthing rituals (Bruyère 1937: 11; Meskell 2002: 71, 81). After birth, the mother and child probably entered a period of seclusion, which may have included purification rituals. The main source here is a group of New Kingdom ostraca showing women, sometimes with infants, in vine-draped arbours (Brunner-Traut 1955: 24; Pinch 1993: 219– 20), whilst a period of seclusion of 14 days is listed in a Middle Kingdom papyrus (Papyrus Westcar: Lichtheim 1975: 221). A related rite was the probable seclusion of women during menstruation, implied in a New Kingdom text (Wilfong 1999; Meskell 1998: 235–7; 2002: 90). Efforts to identify ‘seclusion spaces’ in the archaeological record (e.g. Kemp 1986: 25; Meskell 1998: 235–7) have proven inconclusive, although a feature of settlement remains generally is the prominence of objects with protective imagery, often connected with childbirth and the care of children, such as amulets of the composite lion–hippopota- mus–crocodile goddess Taweret, or the leonine dwarf Bes (Figure 45.2). Such figures also appear occasionally on domestic altars and wall paintings (Bruyère 1939; Kemp 1979, 2009), which probably served in part to form a protective backdrop to everyday life. This material, along with votive deposits to the goddess Hathor, has been a favoured source for gender- based approaches to religion, which have done much to explore the relationship between females and fertility concerns, but not extended far beyond this (although see Meskell 1998; 2002: 110–21). OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 8/10/2011, SPi 736 A N NA S T EV E N S 3.3.2 Death, Burial, and the Afterlife Egyptian mortuary rituals were concerned both with death and burial, and with the continued upkeep of the deceased. They are known through funerary texts, representations in tombs and on cult equipment, and burials themselves. Ideally the body was embalmed, a process that included the ritual placement of amulets on the body, burning of incense and recitation of spells (Ikram and Dodson 1998). The excavation of unmummified human remains at non-elite cemeteries, however, shows that for most this ceremony was probably abridged, or abandoned completely. Individuals buried at a non-elite cemetery under excavation at Amarna, for example, are showing no clear signs of deliberate mummification (see Kemp 2005: 22–3; 2007; Ambridge and Shepperson 2006; Dolling 2007, 2008). The funerary rituals that followed were directed largely towards enabling the deceased to complete the perilous journey to the afterlife. The Opening of the Mouth ceremony, undertaken from at least the Old Kingdom, was central here (Fischer-Elfert 1998). Designed to animate the body and render the deceased capable in the next world, it involved purification, censing, anointing, incantation, and touching ritual items to various parts of the body. At the Amarna cemetery, mummification may have been forgone but a version of this ritual may have been retained for at least one individual, with a small adze, an implement connected with this ceremony, recovered from the grave of a juvenile (Dolling 2008: 31). Another distinctive funeral ritual was the ‘breaking of the red pots’ in which vessels were broken at tombs, probably to keep at bay evil forces lurking at the boundaries of the ordered world (Borchardt 1930; van Dijk 1985; 1993: 173–88; Figure 45.2). Similar rites are recorded in temple contexts. Following burial, rituals for the maintenance of the deceased consisted mainly of making offerings of food and drink, communal feasting and acts of remembrance such as pronouncing the deceased’s name. Part commemorative, part rite of affliction, in helping propitiate the afterlife such activities can also be considered a form of ongoing rite of passage. So fundamental was this aspect of the mortuary cult—the maintenance of the dead in the world of the living—that its development has been suggested as one of the driving forces behind the emergence of the Egyptian state, in prompting developments in ritual architecture and bureaucracy (Wengrow 2006: 266–8). Ideally, it seems, maintenance of the deceased took place at the gravesite. Offerings to the dead and feasting are documented in the archaeological record of cemeteries, particularly in deposits of pottery (e.g. Seiler 1995). But at the Amarna cemetery, again, a somewhat different picture of usage is emerging. So far, work has revealed the cemetery, at least in parts, to be crowded with little space between burials, few of which seem to have had markers by which their occupants could be identified. Whilst something more like com- munity-level commemoration may have taken place, perhaps on the adjacent open ground, this is nonetheless raising questions of how far the cemetery served as a ritual arena beyond interment. The hope for most at Amarna was probably to be remembered in other ways: perhaps through temple offerings, and certainly in domestic ancestor cults. The latter are particularly well attested in stelae, statues, and amulets that show private individuals usually thought to be deceased (although this is not always made explicit) from Amarna and other sites and mainly of New Kingdom date (Demarée 1983; Keith-Bennett 1981; Friedman 1985; Keith in press; Figure 45.2). OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 8/10/2011, SPi EGYPT 737 This is the context of the Meryka shrine at Askut discussed above, a particularly interesting case because of the depth of time it represents. Stratigraphic and ceramic evidence suggest that some kind of shrine existed on this spot for over 300 years, with Meryka himself worshipped for several generations: his stela seems to have been manu- factured some 200 years before the shrine was abandoned (Smith 2003: 129). Perhaps Meryka was still living when the stela was first built, the stela beginning life as a monument to a figure of local importance, and becoming a cult image after his death. Egyptian religion was concerned largely with conditions in the present and future, but at Askut domestic ancestor cults seem to have perpetuated memory of the past in a familial context. Such links may have had added significance to this expatriate community, and perhaps also a legitimizing function to their circumstances. Archaeological evidence that the shrine was an active ritual space and not simply a background memorial is important because performance, in conjunction with the erection of memorials, seems to be a particularly effective means of perpetuating memory (Meskell 2004: 64). 4 CONCLUSIONS .................................................................................................................. Given the long history of archaeology in Egypt, it is unrealistic to expect that future excavation will expand greatly the range of material evidence available for the study of religion—although we can certainly anticipate data that has been more closely provenanced than in the past, and the addition of more environmental material. One of the main contributions of archaeological research into religion is in building profiles of ritual according to social, contextual, or temporal bases. Execration and foundation rituals provide a strong basis for such research in Egypt. Another is to supply ideas and terms that originate within more theoretical archaeological writing that is not necessarily connected with ancient Egypt at all. There is much scope for the continuation of such lines of enquiry. These often highlight the strength of material evidence in elucidating non- elite and non-formal experiences of religion which, as often from the ancient world, are not expressed strongly in Egyptian textual or iconographic sources. A related path of enquiry is to seek something of the ‘actuality’ of religion, both in testing the reality of non-material sources but also in the sense of repopulating religion with people and positioning it in a real-life setting. Such aims have particular resonance in the Egyptian context because of the strong tendency towards idealism in text and representation, whilst the belief in the efficaciousness of the word and image sees religion at times almost reaching a stage where it is played out apart from people in texts and images themselves. This might be achieved by further positioning the material evidence for religion alongside that of other activities (e.g. Smith 2003), and considering how everyday activity patterns, including religious performance, are reflected in the layout and organization of settlements. Life- history approaches remain very relevant, and further engagement with the concept of ritualization is likely to be beneficial. The task of challenging the view from elite tombs that has come to represent the standard image of Egyptian mortuary religion is a clear priority (Richards 2005: 49–54), as is that of reintegrating the religious landscapes of tomb, temple, house, and so on. OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 8/10/2011, SPi 738 A N NA S T EV E N S A further goal is to formulate approaches to material culture that are both specific to ritual and religion within the Egyptian context, and contribute to the ways in which we conceptualize these realms. The broad division of religion into ritual and belief that underlies much archaeological discourse, for example, does not comfortably accommodate such forms of conduct as the wearing of amulets or use of protective paintings and reliefs that are strongly attested in the Egyptian source material. This is especially the case if we understand ritual to involve an element of action. Indeed, this fundamental division of religion into belief and practice can only be taken so far in Egypt where ritual, as a means of making religion effective, is not optional, at least in the world of temple cult. The archaeology of ritual and religion in Egypt is as much the archaeology of problem solving, lifestyle, performance, experience, and faith. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am most grateful to Professor Barry Kemp for his comments on a draft of this chapter. SUGGESTED READING A key text is Kemp’s (2006) overview of ancient Egyptian society in which archaeological material is brought to the fore and religion is a recurrent theme. For Egyptian religion generally see the volume edited by Shafer (1991), and similarly that on temples (Shafer 1997). Also on temples and temple cult, the conference proceedings edited by Quirke (1997) and Dorman and Bryan (2007) provide an up-to-date source. The key source on foundation deposits at temples is Weinstein (1973); see also Rossi (2004: 148–73). The nature of early temples is a prominent research theme (Kemp 1995: 41–5; Kemp, Boyce, and Harrell 2000; Kemp 2006: 111–35; O’Connor 1992; Seidlmayer 1996), as is the role of smaller private chapels (Bomann 1991; Weatherhead and Kemp 2007). Wegner’s (2007) excavation report on the Mortuary Temple of Senwosret III is a good introduction to the realities of excavation at temple sites. For the Early Dynastic and Old Kingdom votive material, the excavation report by Dreyer (1986) is a starting point (see also Kemp 2006), whilst the standard reference for New Kingdom votives at Hathor shrines is Pinch (1993). On the religious roles of animal mummies see Ikram (2005). For tombs and mortuary practice see Ikram and Dodson (1998), Dodson and Ikram (2008), Assmann (2003), and Grajetski (2003), amongst others; Richards (2005) focuses especially on material remains, and Wengrow (2006) on the role of mortuary religion in the emergence of the Egyptian state. Phenomenological approaches to the study of sacred space, including that beyond buildings proper, are rare, but see Donohue (1992), Richards (1999), O’Connor (1982; 1989; 1997), and Meskell’s (2002) work on New Kingdom social life. Syntheses of religious material from Middle and New Kingdom settlement sites include: Friedman (1994), Meskell (1998), Smith (2003: 124–35), Quirke (2005), Stevens (2006), and Szpakowska (2008: 128–49), and Weiss (2009). On ancient Egypt generally, see the volumes edited by Shaw (2000) and Wilkinson (2007). OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 8/10/2011, SPi EGYPT 739 REFERENCES Adams, M. 1998. ‘The Abydos Settlement Site Project: Investigation of a major provincial town in the Old Kingdom and First Intermediate period’ in C. J. Eyre (ed.), Proceedings of the Seventh International Congress of Egyptologists (Leuven: Peeters), pp. 19–30. Allen, J. P. 2003. ‘The Egyptian concept of the world’ in D. O’Connor and S. 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