Ancient Egyptian Temples: History, Types, Layout | Middle East And North Africa

Home | Category: Religion and Gods / Art and Architecture

ANCIENT EGYPTIAN TEMPLES

Seti I Temple at Qurna
Temples were regarded by the ancient Egyptians as the residences of the gods while they were on the earth. Egyptians believed that they could communicate with the souls of deities through cult statues that were in the temples. Egyptian temples were not public places of worship like churches and mosques. They were private sanctuaries. Only pharaohs or important priests could enter the shrine. Ordinary people prayed outside the temple and entered the courtyards to watch ceremonial events.

In temples gods were displayed in groups of nine and three, both thought to be auspicious numbers along with six and twelve. The major trilogy of Egyptian gods consisted of Osiris, his wife Isis and the falcon-headed Horus. Osiris carried the royal crook and flail.

The monuments of Egypt filled Herodotus him with wonder. He said that Egypt had to have more monuments than any other country in the world. Rulers often pillaged or remodeled the temples of their predecessors either to erase memory of them or save money in building materials. Smashing statues was thought of as a way to disrupt the afterlife of their predecessors.

Many of the grandest temples such as Great Temples of Hatshepsut and Temple of Amenhotep III at the Colossi of Memnon were mortuary temples designed as places for people to gather for special religious rites and offerings connected with the cult of the pharaohs. These temples were built for cult members to worship at so that the pharaohs lived on in the afterlife.

Websites on Ancient Egypt: UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, escholarship.org ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Egypt sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Discovering Egypt discoveringegypt.com; BBC History: Egyptians bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians ; Ancient History Encyclopedia on Egypt ancient.eu/egypt; Digital Egypt for Universities. Scholarly treatment with broad coverage and cross references (internal and external). Artifacts used extensively to illustrate topics. ucl.ac.uk/museums-static/digitalegypt ; British Museum: Ancient Egypt ancientegypt.co.uk; Egypt’s Golden Empire pbs.org/empires/egypt; Metropolitan Museum of Art www.metmuseum.org ; Oriental Institute Ancient Egypt (Egypt and Sudan) Projects ; Egyptian Antiquities at the Louvre in Paris louvre.fr/en/departments/egyptian-antiquities; KMT: A Modern Journal of Ancient Egypt kmtjournal.com; Egypt Exploration Society ees.ac.uk ; Amarna Project amarnaproject.com; Abzu: Guide to Resources for the Study of the Ancient Near East etana.org; Egyptology Resources fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk

Book: “The Complete Temples of Ancient Egypt” by Richard Wilkinson.

Ancient Egyptian Temple Architecture

Egyptian pillar

Temples from the Middle Kingdom onward were in large rectangular spaces enclosed by high walls with entrances flanked by two large pylons (sloping towers), with a door between them. After passing through the pylons, one entered a large courtyard with colonnades on two or three sides. This is where people gathered. Beyond the courtyard was a large hypostyle hall (a forest of columns that supported a roof). Beyond this a was sanctuary in which a statue of the deity was placed on a boat or in a shrine. Only the pharaoh and high level priests were allowed to enter this area.

Large temples, like the one at Karnak, had a series of courtyards, each with pylons, leading from the entrance, and multiple sanctuaries. These temples were regarded as embodiments of ancient Egyptian cosmology and symbols of renewal, a concept in which Egyptian civilization was largely based. The ceiling of a temple was viewed as the heavens; the floor, the fertile marsh from which life emerged. The pylons at the entrance were shaped like the hieroglyphic for “horizon,” and the whole structure, like the horizon, was seen as the nexus of heaven and earth, divine and mortal, order and chaos. The polarities and contradictiosn of the world remained in harmony and balance as long as certain rites were carried out by the Pharaoh.

Some Egyptian columns were built with ridges to imitate bundled reeds. There were ones with closed papyrus capitals and ones with open papyrus capitals.

One reason Egypt was able to build such large temples and pyramids was that it was relatively untroubled by wars and could devote its manpower to construction projects rather than the military.

Oldest Temples in Egypt

The oldest known temple in Egypt is the Temple of Hierakonpolis, located in the Upper Egyptian town of Nekhen. The temple complex traces its origins back to the First Dynasty (c. 3150 - c. 2890 B.C.) Of Mesopotamia- Egypt’s Pre- Dynastic Period. Nekhen was the center of the cult of a hawk deity, Horus of Nekhen, and retained its importance as the cultic center for this divine patron of the kings long after the site had otherwise declined. [Source Wikipedia]

Egyptian pillar

The ruins of the city originally were excavated toward the end of the nineteenth century by the English archaeologists James Quibell and Frederick W. Green. Quibell and Green discovered the "Main Deposit", a foundation deposit beneath the temple, in 1894.The temple was a difficult site to excavate to begin with, so his excavation was poorly conducted and then, poorly documented. Specifically, the situational context of the items therein is poorly recorded and often, the reports of Quibell and Green are in contradiction.

The parts of Old Kingdom (2649-2134 B.C.) temples that remain appear to have been merely the substructures; they consist of immense square buildings, constructed partly of costly material, but without ornament or sculpture; the division of the space unfortunately is not certain.

In January 2021, archaeologists announced the discovery of 4,300-year-old funerary temple in the vast Saqqara necropolis south of Cairo. Famed archaeologist Zahi Hawass told reporters his team unearthed the temple of Queen Neit, wife of King Teti, the first king of the Sixth Dynasty that ruled Egypt from 2323 B.C. until 2150 B.C. Archaeologists also found a 4-meter (13-foot) long papyrus that includes texts of the Book of the Dead, which is a collection of spells aimed at directing the dead through the underworld in ancient Egypt, he said. The Saqqara site is part of the necropolis at Egypt’s ancient capital of Memphis that includes the famed Giza pyramids as well as smaller pyramids at Abu Sir, Dahshur and Abu Ruwaysh. The ruins of Memphis were designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1970s. [Source: Associated Press, January 17, 2021]

Old Kingdom Solar Temples

During the Old Kingdom's Fifth Dynasty (2494–2345 B.C.) kings explicitly associated themselves with the sun god Ra, whose cult was based at Heliopolis (biblical On) in modern Cairo. Eric A. Powell wrote in Archaeology magazine: The dynasty’s founder, Userkaf (r. ca. 2465–2458 B.C.), instituted the practice of building solar temples, elaborate complexes centered around obelisks. These were dedicated to Ra and linked the pharaoh’s authority to the sun god’s supremacy. And there is some evidence in later texts that the 5th Dynasty pharaohs had good reason to cement their legitimacy. [Source: Eric A. Powell, Archaeology magazine, November-December 2020]

A Middle Kingdom (ca. 2030–1640 B.C.) document known as the Westcar Papyrus suggests the 5th Dynasty rulers may have come at least in part from non-royal origins, making them keen to prove their bona fides as deities on Earth. The story recounted in this document is that the first two 5th Dynasty pharaohs, Userkaf and Sahure (r. ca. 2458–2446 B.C.) were sons of the god Ra. Because their royal lineage isn’t mentioned, some scholars have inferred they were not of royal stock, which would have made their connection to Ra even more important in asserting their powers as gods on Earth. All the kings of the 5th Dynasty but one took regnal names that linked their power to Ra, testifying to their special connection to the god of the sun.

A total of six solar temples were built during the 5th Dynasty. Offerings for all the royal mortuary complexes were first taken to these temples, where they were “solarized,” or exposed to the sun for a set period of time to absorb its power. Joe Pinkstone wrote in The Telegraph: The pyramids were built by pharaohs to be their final resting places and to ensure they became a god in the afterlife. Sun temples took the deification desire one step further and were intended to make the pharaoh a god while still alive. But while experts believe six were built by different pharaohs, only two have ever been found by modern archaeologists.

Massimiliano Nuzzolo, co-director of the archaeological dig and a researcher at the Institute of Mediterranean and Oriental Cultures of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. He co-directs it with Rosanna Pirelli of the University of Naples "L'Orientale" in Italy, has spent his career trying to discover the others. “Each king wanted a pyramid for achieving his resurrection but this was not enough for the fifth dynasty kings,” he said. “They wanted something more. The king built [a sun temple] to turn himself into a god. The sun god.” Sun temples were built only by a few pharaohs as the financial pinch of generations of pyramid-builders started to take its toll during the time the sun temples were built. [Source: Joe Pinkstone, The Telegraph, November 13, 2021]

The sun temple of Nyuserre Ini at Abusir

Ra, the sun god, was the most powerful god in ancient Egypt and the sun cult was a powerful cult in ancient Egyptian religion. In later times, Ra merged with Amun — the chief god of Thebes (Luxor) — to form Amun-Ra who was regarded, at least by some Egyptians, as being the most powerful of the Egyptian gods. He was worshiped until around 1,500 years ago, the time that Egyptian polytheism became extinct.

Ra was the focal point of many elaborate rituals. Each sun temple featured a large courtyard encompassing a tall, pyramid-like obelisk that aligned perfectly with the eastwest axis of the sun. This was designed so that on the summer solstice the sun rose and shone through the plaza entrance and basked the obelisk in light at the crack of dawn, with the sun setting at the exact opposite side of the temple.

4,500-Year-Old Sun Temple Near Cairo

The sun temple of the 5th Dynasty pharaoh Niuserre (r. ca. 2420–2389 B.C.) lies just north of the necropolis of Abusir and had extensive storage facilities for these sacred gifts, which could include everything from food to furniture. “Rich and varied offerings flowed from the residence of the king to the solar temples and from there to individual mortuary temples where, after they were symbolically offered on altars, they were used as payments in kind to different ranks of officials,” says Bárta. “In a situation when more and more non-royal officials started to occupy even the highest positions in the state administration, this enabled the king to maintain some control of the country’s resources.” [Source: Eric A. Powell, Archaeology magazine, November-December 2020]

In August 2022, archaeologists said they had unearthed the remains of a 4,500-year-old temple dedicated to the Egyptian sun god Ra near the Niuserre Sun Temple at the site of Abu Ghurab, about 20 kilometers (12 miles) south of Cairo. Owen Jarus wrote in Live Science: The temple was built sometime during ancient Egypt's fifth dynasty (circa 2465 B.C. to 2323 B.C.) — a "period in which the cult of the sun reached its apex with the construction of a new type of monument specifically devoted to the sun god, commonly known as 'Sun Temple,'" said Nuzzolo [Source: Owen Jarus, Live Science, August 5, 2022

The newly uncovered sun temple was made from mud bricks and measured at least 197 feet long and 66 feet wide (60 meters by 20 m). It contained an L-shaped entrance portico, a courtyard, storage rooms and rooms that may have been used for cultic purposes, Nuzzolo told Live Science. "The walls of this building were all plastered in black and white and often also show traces of painting in red and blue," Nuzzolo said. The entrance portico was partially made of white limestone and had two limestone columns. The temple was ritually demolished, possibly before it was even finished, so that a new sun temple could be made from stone at the site for a Pharaoh Niuserre. Niuserre "reused part of the structure as a platform or subfoundation for his new temple," Nuzzolo said.

The archaeologists found two deposits of artifacts, one of which has dozens of intact beer jars and a few finely made and red-slipped vessels, while the other contains seal impressions, including the seals of pharaohs who ruled during the fifth and sixth dynasties. One of the earliest seals belongs to Shepseskare, an "enigmatic" pharaoh who ruled Egypt before Niuserre, Nuzzolo said. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City lists Shepseskare as reigning from circa 2438 B.C. to 2431 B.C., and Raneferef (also known as Neferefre) ruling from circa 2431 B.C. to 2420 B.C. Archaeologists aren't sure which pharaoh began construction of the mud brick sun temple, but it was likely either Shepseskare or Raneferef, Nuzzolo said.

layout of the The sun temple of Nyuserre Ini at Abusir

New Kingdom Temples

The few remains that we have of temples of the Middle Kingdom (2040 to 1782 B.C.) are essentially in harmony with the plans of those of the New Kingdom (1550 to 1070 B.C.) , and if we may trust the statement of a very late inscription, the same disposition of the various halls which we meet with after the time of the New Kingdom was customary even in the time of the 6th dynasty. [Source: Adolph Erman, “Life in Ancient Egypt”, 1894]

Christiane Zivie-Coche wrote: “The New Kingdom (1550 to 1070 B.C.) was a period of great development of divine temples (dedicated to gods) and "mansions of millions of years" (memorial temples). If the constructions in the Delta (Tell el-Balamun, Pi-Ramesse) have been poorly preserved, those of Upper Egypt, especially at Thebes, display the grandeur typical of New Kingdom Temples. The Karnak complex developed over an extended period in an evolutionary fashion along its two major axes (East-West and North-South), allowing us to grasp its building stages with their various aims and purposes at specific moments in time. In the temples of Ramses III at Karnak and Medinet Habu, we can discern a model that was used regularly in later periods, albeit with a number of modifications. [Source: Christiane Zivie-Coche, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris Sorbonne, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology 2008, escholarship.org ]

New Kingdom temple building began with Queen Hatshepsut, who as the heiress queen seized power in default of male claimants to the throne. She was particularly devoted to the worship of the god Amun, whose cult was centered at Thebes. She built a splendid temple dedicated to him and to her own funerary cult at Dayr al Bahri in western Thebes. [Source Library of Congress *]

One of the greatest temples still standing is that of Pharaoh Amenophis III at Thebes. With Amenophis III, statuary on an enormous scale makes its appearance. The most notable is the pair of colossi, the so-called Colossi of Memnon, which still dominate the Theban plain before the vanished portal of his funerary temple.*

Ramesses II was the most vigorous builder to wear the double crown of Egypt. Nearly half the temples remaining in Egypt date from his reign. Some of his constructions include his mortuary temple at Thebes, popularly known as the Ramesseum; the huge hypostyle hall at Karnak, the rock-hewn temple at Abu Simbel (Abu Sunbul); and his new capital city of Pi Ramesses.*

Karanak Temple Layout

Layout of Ancient Egyptian Temples

The approach to the sanctuary of an ancient Egyptian temple like Karnak in Thebes (Luxor) was by a paved road, with sphinxes on either side. One or more of the pylons stood in front of the temple. These great gates were flanked with two towers, which may originally have actually served as a protection for the entrance; under the New Kingdom, however, they stood inside the surrounding wall of the sanctuary, and were then purely decorative; their colored walls and the high flag-staves and obelisks were intended to impress the visitor with the sanctity of the place he was about to enter. [Source: Adolph Erman, “Life in Ancient Egypt”, 1894]

Immediately beyond the pylon was the great court, surrounded by a colonnade of massive pillars. In the further wall of the court was the entrance into the so-called hypostyle hall, a gigantic hall supported by pillars, and lighted by small windows under the roof The festivals were celebrated in the columned court and the hypostyle hall, but these were not the abode of the god. He dwelt in the central one of the three dark chapels situate behind the hypostyle hall; here was kept the divine bark with the image of the god; the two adjoining rooms belonged as a rule to his consort and to his son. These three chapels were the most holy parts of the temple; " he who enters must purify himself four times," was written close to the doors of these chapels. Often, as at Karnak and Luxor, the Holy of Holies had a second entrance at the back, and behind it were all kinds of rooms serving as storerooms for temple provisions, etc.

The above description may be considered as the general plan of all the larger temples; smaller temples were content with fewer rooms — thus the pretty little temple erected by Thutmose III. at Medinet Habu consisted of but one hall, supported by pillars and columns, shut in on the outer side by a screen of intercolumnar slabs. In the center was the sanctuary of Amon; at the further end were three chambers dedicated to Amon, Mut, and Khons. These few rooms might well suffice for the temple of a suburb of the capital.

The fact that the plans of the temples seem to us most complicated arises from the circumstance that they were not built from one design. Temples such as Luxor, or more particularly Karnak, owe the development of their plan to the many hands which have worked at them. Lach king, fired with ambition to build, designed some new addition to the temple of the Theban Amon; he wished his plan to surpass if possible an} previous project, but it was granted to few to complete the work they had designed. Thutmose I erected his pylon at Karnak, and thought thus to have completed the facade for ever; he also began but never finished those splendid buildings intended to meet this facade, and to unite that great temple with the temple of Mut. Amenhotep III spoiled this plan by adding another pylon in front, and the kings of the 19th dynasty went so far as to place their gigantic hypostyle hall before this latter pylon, so that the facade of the 18th dynasty was left in the very center of the temple; a new pylon (the fourth), greater than any other, formed the entrance. Incredible as it may appear," the temple was not yet complete; when Ramses III. built his little temple to the Theban gods, he placed it in part closely in front of the facade of the great temple. Afterwards, the Libyan princes felt it their duty to build an immense hall of pillars in front again, which curiously enough happened exactly to cross the temple of Ramses III. If we consider that at the same time similar additions were made to the back of the temple and to the interior, we gain a little idea of the extreme confusion of the whole.

Temples and Desert Altars at Amarna

sacrificial table

Amarna is an extensive ancient Egyptian archaeological site that was briefly the capital city of Egypt during the late Eighteenth Dynasty of the New Kingdom. The city was established in 1346 B.C. by the Pharaoh Akhetaten and abandoned shortly after his death in 1332 B.C. on the main temples found there, Anna Stevens of Cambridge University wrote: “On the eastern side of the Royal Road lay the Great Aten Temple and Small Aten Temple. The former occupied an area of 800 x 300 m, much of it apparently left empty, contained by a mud-brick enclosure wall. A reexamination of the building began in 2012, confirming that it had two main construction phases. In its final phase, the enclosure contained at least two main buildings: a structure now termed the Long Temple (originally perhaps the Gem-pa-Aten ) towards the front, and the Sanctuary to the rear. The former contained at least six open-air courtyards occupied by several hundred offering tables. Tomb scenes suggest that three of the courts contained cultic focal points: a raised altar in one case, and offering tables in the other two. Along the front of the temple was a series of pedestals surrounded by white-plastered basins. Offering tables and pedestals surrounded by basins were also a feature of an earlier iteration of the temple here, largely buried beneath the later structure. Massive fields of mud-brick offering tables that flank the Long Temple to its north and south have also now been shown to belong to the first phase of the temple. [Source: Anna Stevens, Amarna Project, 2016, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2013 escholarship.org ]

“The Sanctuary comprised a rectangular stone building divided in two parts, each open to the sky and filled with offering tables, although recent fieldwork has shown that this area initially featured a grove of trees and a mud-brick altar or pedestal. Three further features occupied the ground in front of the Sanctuary. A building comprising four suites of rooms with lustration slabs was built across the northern enclosure wall, perhaps as a purification s pace for people entering the temple (although identified as the “hall of foreign tribute” by the EES excavators). To the south there was originally an altar or similar construction that supported a stela, pieces of which have been recovered during excavation, and probably a statue of the king, as shown in tomb scenes. To the west of the stela lay a butchery yard, which presumably facilitated the supply of meat offerings to the Aten. Immediately south of the Great Aten Temple is a series of buildings that p robably also served the temple cult, especially the preparation of food offerings. These comprise: the house of the high priest Panehesy; a building containing several columned halls with stone-lined floors and lower walls, troughs, and ovens, perhaps connected with meat processing; a bakery formed of chambers often containing ovens, near which lie large dumps of bread mold fragments; and a set of storerooms and associated buildings.

“The Small Aten Temple, or Hut Aten , lay immediately south of the King’s House, occupying a walled enclosure of 191 x 111 meters that was divided into three courts. The first court contained a field of offering tables flanking a large mud-brick platform of uncertain purpose. The second court contained a house-like building with small dais that was perhaps a throne base; there is space for other structures here that might have been entirely destroyed. The final court contained the stone Sanctuary, very similar in layout to that at the Great Aten Temple and likewise containing many offering tables. The Sanctuary was flanked by trees, and there were several small brick buildings in the ground around it. South of the Small Aten Temple was another set of chambered structures recalling those beside the Great Aten Temple and which may likewise have served as bakeries, although there is also evidence that faience and glass items were produced here.

“The Desert Altars lie on the desert floor not far from the North Tombs. The complex had two main enclosures. The first, in its final form, contained three separate foundations arranged in a line within a court formed simply by clearing the desert of stones. The southernmost supported a colonnaded building, the central construction formed a large altar flanked by two smaller altars, and the northernmost foundation comprised a mud-brick altar approached by ramps on four sides. The second enclosure was originally defined by a mud-brick wall and contained at least one stone-built chapel. It has been suggested that the complex was associated with private funerary cults ; Kemp has also noted similarities between the arrangements of the shrines here and buildings shown in the “reception of foreign tribute” scenes in the nearby tombs of Huya and Meryra II.

“Based on excavated remains, and tomb scenes, it is possible to reconstruct the general ground plan of the complex. The western part of the palace was dominated by stone-built state apartments, with a large courtyard containing statues of the royal family leading to a series of courts and halls, and a possible Window of Appearance. The eastern part was built instead largely of mud-brick, comprising a strip of buildings that included magazines; an area identified by the EES excavators as the “harem quarter,” featuring a sunken garden and painted pavements; and a set of houses and storerooms that probably served as staffing quarters. Late in the Amarna Period, a large pillared or columned hall was added to the southern end of the palace, with stamped bricks bea ring the cartouche of Ankh-kheperura lending it the name Smenkhkare Hall (or Coronation Hall). This area is badly destroyed.”

Shrines in Ancient Egypt

an ancient Egyptian shrine

Neal Spencer of the The British Museum wrote: “The focal point of most Egyptian formal religious rituals was the divine image, a physical manifestation of one or several deities, typically (but not always) in the form of a statue. Much of religious architecture served to shroud the divine image in nested layers of protection from the chaotic—and hence dangerous—outside world. It is thus unsurprising that a formal code of architectural forms was developed over the millennia to provide this protection. The present discussion addresses stand-alone shrines, whether portable or not, rather than integrated components of temple architecture such as temple sanctuaries. [Source: Neal Spencer, The British Museum, London, UK, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology 2010, escholarship.org ]

“Shrines, defined here as the architectural element immediately surrounding a sacred image, usually of a god, are attested throughout Pharaonic history, but with regional and chronological variations very evident. The architectural form of Egyptian shrines was developed from that of archaic “tent-shrines” made of timber and matting, but later examples represent a distillation of formal temple architecture. Eventually, classic shrine-forms were deployed in non-temple contexts.”

“Building inscriptions indicate that the shrines were typically sealed with wooden doors, embellished with metal or other lavish materials. The Ritual of Mut describes the priest unbolting these doors for the morning service; depictions of a similar ritual survive in the temple of Sety I at Abydos. We need to accept that many cult statues would have been stored within shrines in a disassembled state, as some were too tall for their own shrine. In Papyrus Harris I, a shrine set up at Memphis is described as containing statues of Ptah, Sakhmet, and Nefertum, flanked by “statues-of-the-lord” (kings in ritual poses?) making offerings. Furthermore, that the doors of many naoi opened inwards makes it clear that the divine image would have been housed towards the rear, often in a smaller internal niche. Other shrines, even within large formal temples, would have been made of wood, sometimes elaborately painted or inlaid with glass and precious metals; some were then covered in sheet metal or provided with elaborate openwork wooden or faience sides (as depicted in a papyrus in Turin). The caches from the Sacred Animal Necropolis temples at North Saqqara provide a glimpse of the range of sizes and qualities that would have existed. Many of these shrines were destined to house copper alloy statues, dedicated by individuals, rather than principal cult images.

“Some shrines were evidently intended to be portable, most notably for use in processional temple festivals. The extensive representational evidence relating to Theban festivals includes depictions of the large sacred bark of Amun, which supported a shrine (or even nested shrines) on its deck, also festooned with dozens of figures of officiants, royalty, and even deities in ritual poses. In some depictions the shrine seems to be quite exposed, with only a textile veil occasionally depicted to shroud the divine image. Of course, shrines for royal display are well attested for royal festivals such as the Heb-Sed, with representations of architectural forms similar to those attested for the shrines of deities.

Building Stones in Ancient Egypt

Building stones at the pyramids

James Harrell of the University of Toledo wrote: “The building stones of ancient Egypt are those relatively soft, plentiful rocks used to construct most temples, pyramids, and mastaba tombs. They were also employed for the interior passages, burialchambers, and outer casings of mud-brick pyramids and mastabas. Similarly, building stones were used in other mud-brick structures of ancient Egypt wherever extra strength was needed, such as bases for wood pillars, and lintels, thresholds, and jambs for doors. Limestone and sandstone were the principal building stones employed by the Egyptians, while anhydrite and gypsum were also used along the Red Sea coast. A total of 128 ancient quarries for building stones are known (89 for limestone, 36 for sandstone, and three for gypsum), but there are probably many others still undiscovered or destroyed by modern quarrying. [Source: James Harrell. University of Toledo, OH, Environmental Sciences, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology 2012, escholarship.org ]

“The building stones of ancient Egypt are those relatively soft, plentiful rocks used to construct most Dynastic temples, pyramids, and mastaba tombs. For the pyramids and mastabas made largely of sun-dried mud- brick, building stones were still employed for the interior passages, burial chambers, and outer casings. Similarly, building stones were used in other mud-brick structures of ancient Egypt (e.g., royal palaces, fortresses, storehouses, workshops, and common dwellings) wherever extra strength was needed, such as bases for wood pillars, and lintels, thresholds, and jambs for doors, but also occasionally for columns. Ptolemaic and Roman cities along the Mediterranean coast, Alexandria chief among them, followed the building norms of the rest of the Greco- Roman world, and so used stone not only for temples but also for palaces, villas, civic buildings, and other structures. Limestone and sandstone were the principal building stones used by the Egyptians.

Temple Workers in Ancient Egypt

The official staff of a temple consisted of comparatively few persons — at Aysut for instance of ten; “at Abydos, as it appears, of only five priests.' Each of these had his own special title; thus the collegiate assembly of the Osiris of Abydos was composed of “The great Ue'b," i.e. the high priest,' The treasurer of the god, The scribe of the god's house, The reciter-priest. [Source: Adolph Erman, “Life in Ancient Egypt”, 1894]

At some temples we find a “Superintendent of the storehouse "; a “Superintendent of the house of worship "; a “Scribe of the house of the god"; a “Scribe of the altar," and others. We see that these titles are generally derived from the business duties which the priests exercised in the administration of the temple property, but it would be a mistake to suppose that they were merely administrative officials of the sanctuary. On the contrary, they are priests par excellence: '' \ am the son of a priest like each of you," said Hapd'efan'e, the nomarch of Aysut, to the priests, in order to demonstrate unquestionably his priestly rank."

This close connection of the official staff to the temple is also borne out by the fact that the members enjoyed certain claims on the revenues of the god. The worth of the natural products that comes out to them (to retain an Egyptian expression), is certainly not much, if we may judge by what they received in the temple of Aysut. In the latter temple, the yearly salary of each member of the staff was valued at about 360 jugs of beer, 900 loaves of white bread, and 36,000 ash-baked cakes of little worth; this came to such an insignificant sum that the recipient might sell it for one daily lamp-wick, such as were used in funerary worship. In fact, a high priest of Aysut thought nothing of renouncing the rations due to himself and his heirs for twenty-seven days in each year, i.e. sacrificing a twelfth part of his priestly income in exchange for some very trifling benefits for his funerary festivals.'

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, escholarship.org ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Egypt sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Tour Egypt, Minnesota State University, Mankato, ethanholman.com; Mark Millmore, discoveringegypt.com discoveringegypt.com; Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Discover magazine, Times of London, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, BBC, Encyclopædia Britannica, Time, Newsweek, Wikipedia, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, “World Religions” edited by Geoffrey Parrinder (Facts on File Publications, New York); “History of Warfare” by John Keegan (Vintage Books); “History of Art” by H.W. Janson Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.), Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.

Last updated July 2024