god. There followed a series of prostrations and adorations, culminating in the offering of a small image of Maat, the goddess of Truth. This seems to have been the psychological moment of the entire service: hitherto the statue had been at best a god in posse; now the symbolical act placed him in possession of all his faculties, he was a god in truth, and could participate like any mortal in the food and luxuries that his servants put before him. The daily ceremony closed with ablutions, anointings and a bountiful feast of bread, geese, beer and oxen; having taken his fill of these, the god returned to his shrine until the next morning, when the ritual was renewed. The words that accompanied the manual gestures are, in the rituals that have come down to us, wholly dominated by the myth of Osiris: it is often hard to discern much connexion between the acts and the formulae recited, but the main thought is clearly that the priest represents Horus, the pious son of the dead divinity Osiris. That this conception is very old is proved by the fact that even in the Pyramid texts “the eye of Horus” is a synonym for all offerings: an ancient tale of which only shreds have reached us related how Seth had torn the eye of Horus from him, though not before he himself had suffered a still more serious mutilation; and by some means, we know not how, the restoration of the eye was instrumental in bringing about the vindication of Osiris. As to the manual rites of the daily cult, all that can here be said is that incense, purifications and anointings with various oils played a large part; the sacrifices consisted chiefly of slaughtered oxen and geese; burnt offerings were a very late innovation.
At an early date the rites practised in the various temples were conformed to a common pattern. This holds good not only for the daily ritual, but also for many festivals that were celebrated on the same day throughout the whole length of the land. Such were the calendrical feasts, called “the beginnings of the seasons,” and including, for example, the monthly and half-monthly festivals, that of the New Year and that of the rising of Sirius (Sothis). But there were also local feast days like that of Neith in Sais (Hdt. ii. 62) or that of Ammon in southern Opi (Luxor). These doubtless had a more individual character, and often celebrated some incident supposed to have occurred in the lifetime of the god. Sometimes, as in the case of the feast of Osiris in Abydos, a veritable drama would be enacted, in which the whole history of the god, his sufferings and final triumph were represented in mimic form. At other times the ceremonial was more mysterious and symbolical, as in the feast of the raising of the Ded-column
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when a column of the kind was drawn by cords into an upright position. But the most common feature of these holy days was the procession of the god, when he was carried on the shoulders of the priests in his divine boat far beyond the precincts of his temple; sometimes, indeed, even to another town, where he paid a visit to the god of the place. These occasions were public holidays, and passed amid great rejoicings. The climax was reached when at a given moment the curtains of the shrine placed on the boat were withdrawn, and the god was revealed to the eyes of the awe-struck multitude. Music and dancing formed part of the festival rites.
As with the rites and ceremonies, so also the temples were early modelled upon a common type. Lofty enclosure walls, adorned with scenes from the victorious campaigns of the Pharaoh, shut off the sacred buildings from the surrounding streets. A small gateway between two massive Temples. towers or pylons gave admittance to a spacious forecourt open to the sky, into which the people were allowed to enter at least on feast days. Farther on, separated from the forecourt by smaller though still massive pylons, lay a hypostyle hall, so called from its covered colonnades; this hall was used for all kinds of processions. Behind the hypostyle hall, to which a second similar one might or might not be added, came the holy of holies, a dark narrow chamber where the god dwelt; none but the priests were admitted to it. All around lay the storehouses that contained the treasures of the god and the appurtenances of the divine ritual. The temples of the earliest times were of course far more primitive than this: from the pictures that are all that is now left to indicate their nature, they seem to have been little more than huts or sheds in which the image of the god was kept. One temple of a type different from that above described has survived at Abusir, where it has been excavated by German explorers. It was a splendid edifice dedicated to the sun-god Re by a king of the Vth Dynasty, and was probably a close copy of the famous temple of Heliopolis. The most conspicuous feature was a huge obelisk on a broad superstructure
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the obelisk always remained closely connected with the solar worship, and probably took the place of the innermost shrine and statue of other temples. The greater part of the sanctuary was left uncovered, as best befitted a dwelling-place of the sun. Outside its walls there was a huge brick model of the solar bark in which the god daily traversed the heavens.
As the power of the Pharaohs increased, the maintenance of the cult became one of the most important affairs of state. The most illustrious monarchs prided themselves no less on the buildings they raised in honour of the gods than on the successful wars they waged: indeed the wars won a religious significance through the gradual elevation of the god of the capital to god of the nation, and a large part of the spoils was considered the rightful perquisite of the latter. Countless were the riches that the kings heaped upon the gods in the hope of being requited with long life and prosperity on the throne of the living. It became the theory that the temples were the gifts of the Pharaoh to his fathers the gods, and therefore in the scenes of the cult that adorn the inner walls it is always he who is depicted as performing the ceremonies. As a matter of fact the priesthoods Power of the priests. were much more independent than was allowed to appear. Successive grants of land placed no small portion of the entire country in their hands, and the administration of the temple estates gave employment to a large number of officials and serfs. In the New Kingdom the might of the Theban god Ammon gradually became a serious menace to the throne: in the reign of Rameses III. he could boast of more than 80,000 dependants, and more than 400,000 cattle. It is not surprising that a few generations later the high priests of Ammon supplanted the Pharaohs altogether and founded a dynasty of their own.
At no period did the priests form a caste that was quite distinctly separated from the laity. In early times the feudal lords were themselves the chief priests of the local temples. Under them stood a number of subordinate priests, both professional and lay. Among the former were the kher-heb, a learned man entrusted with the conduct of the ceremonies, and the “divine fathers,” whose functions are obscure. The lay priests were divided into four classes that undertook the management of the temple in alternate months; their collective name was the “hour-priesthood.” Perhaps it was to them that the often recurring title oueb, “the pure,” should properly be restricted, though strict rules as to personal purity, dress and diet were demanded of all priests. The personnel of the temple was completed by various subordinate officials, doorkeepers, attendants and slaves. In the New Kingdom the leading priests were more frequently mere clerics than theretofore, though for instance the high priest of Ammon was often at the same time the vizier of southern Egypt. In some places the highest priests bore special names, such as the Ouer maa, “the Great Seer,” of Re in Heliopolis, or the Khorp himet, “chief artificer,” of the Memphite Ptah. Women could also hold priestly rank, though apparently in early times only in the service of goddesses; “priestess of Hathor” is a frequent title of well-born ladies in the Old Kingdom. At a later date many wealthy dames held the office of “musicians” (shemat) in the various temples. In the service of the Theban Ammon two priestesses called “the Adorer of the God” and the “Wife of the God” occupied very influential positions, and towards the Saite period it was by no means unusual for the king to secure these offices for his daughters and so to strengthen his own royal title.
5. The Dead and their Cult.—While the worship of the gods
