Priests In Ancient Egypt

By Marie Parsons

Priests in ancient Egypt had a role different to the role of a priest in modern society. Though the Egyptians had close associations with their gods ,they did not practice any form of organized religion, as modern times would define it.

The priests did not preach, proselytize, or care for a congregation. They were not messengers of any "divinely revealed truth." There was no single Holy Book on which the religious system of Egypt was based. In fact, the various cosmogonies developed at Heliopolis, Memphis and Hermopolis are each different and even contradictory. The various myths and legends surrounding the gods were totally incompatible with the development of one coherent system of belief. One version of how the sun traveled across the sky described how Ra was ferried in his sacred boat, the Solar barque, whose divine crew the deceased King hoped to join upon his resurrection. According to another myth, the sun was born each morning on the eastern horizon to the sky-goddess Nut and traveled across the vault of heaven, which was her body, to be swallowed by her at sunset on the western horizon. A third explanation was that a giant scarab beetle, the god Khepri, pushed the fiery ball up through the horizon at dawn and rolled it across the sky.

No preaching was required because every Egyptian accepted the validity of the traditional religious theology, i.e. the world was created, ordered and governed by the gods, through the intermediary the king, the only actual priest in Egypt. It was accepted that people tried to live good lives in the hope of earning merit for the life to come; they didn’t need to be "converted" to a way that was already considered to be theirs. The authors of religious works had no responsibility for instructing the people as a whole in the ways of the gods. The same was true for the ritual priests.

Egyptian priests did have a vital role in the religious ritual of daily and festival life. Whereas today a god may be worshipped who is believed to bestow his grace upon his followers, the Egyptian priest offered and performed material and ritually magic services to the god of his temple, to ensure that god’s presence would continue on earth, and thus maintain the harmony and order of the world as it had been created. That was why the priests were called "servants of the god," or hem-netjer, the traditional title for a priest.

A Symposium on Haremhab

Egyptology as Originally Practiced

Rob Hardy
January 28, 2012

28 January - Quick, name an Egyptologist. For me, the only name I could think of was Howard Carter, who made the sensational King Tutankhamen finds. Because of a witty and instructive current biography, though, there's now another whose name I am glad to know. Belzoni: The Giant Archeologists Love to Hate (University of Virginia Press) is by Ivor Noël Hume, who is himself an archeologist. Hume has books about his own work in more recent archeology, and was the director of Colonial Williamsburg's research program, but he has valuable insider's insights on the work of the almost-forgotten Giovanni Belzoni, who was among the first to bring back treasures from Egypt in the wild days when museums and collectors were glad to get statues and mummy cases and didn't mind that their acquisition came from some sort of smash-and-grab operation. So archeologists do "love to hate" Belzoni, although he cannot be faulted for not having a modern idea of professional propriety. And he was literally a giant, six and a half feet tall at a time when such heights were rarities. How an Italian commoner came to be digging around the Nile for Britain proves to be a lively tale.

Belzoni was born in 1778, one of fourteen children sired by his father, a barber in Padua, Italy. He and his brothers all worked in the barbershop, but Belzoni wanted something more. His father was reluctant to let him go, but at age sixteen he was off to Rome to study hydraulics, although no one knows how he got an interest in such a subject. He was bright and good with his hands, but as he wandered through Napoleonic Europe, he didn't find that there was much call for a hydraulics engineer who spoke Italian. He wound up seeking such work in London, but no one wanted his services there, either. There was no work to be found except using his height and strength in the fairs and circuses as the "Patagonian Sampson." In his act, among other feats, he would carry twelve lesser mortals around the stage. He did well enough in this role that he could call some of his own shots, expanding into conjuring and playing the musical glasses. It was also during this time that he met his wife Sarah. Sarah may have been a tightrope walker; there are many gaps in her history and in Belzoni's (his memoir made no mention of his days as a showman). She helped polish his act, and when he had his career change in Egypt, she was a resourceful helpmeet, artist, and writer. Belzoni had a short life, and Sarah had a long widowhood during which she attempted to keep up the world's fading recognition of the husband to whom she seems to have been devoted.

Revered ancient Egyptian birds were fed — even after death

Provisions suggest welfare of birds in afterlife was important to priests performing embalming

By Jennifer Viegas

Ancient Egyptians placed food in the mouths or stomachs of animal mummies, suggesting that animals were treated equally to humans in death and perhaps also in life.

In this case the mummies were sacred ibis birds. In a study, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, the findings are the first known examples of food placed directly in animal mummies. The primary organs were also removed, as was the practice for humans. It’s thought that the ancient Egyptians wished to preserve these organs for continued function in the afterlife.

“That the birds received treatment for their own continued provision in the afterlife suggests that the afterlife welfare of the birds was important to the priests performing the embalming ritual on them,” lead author Andrew Wade told Discovery News.

“Certainly, in this sense, there appears to be some degree of equality between humans and animals in death,” added Wade, a University of Western Ontario anthropologist. “If that is the case, then the birds may have been deserving of a greater respect in life.”

Wade and his team analyzed a recently excavated mummified sacred ibis. They found numerous snails in his bill. The people who prepared the body inserted the snails.

The researchers also used non-invasive computed tomography to look inside ibis mummies housed at Yale University’s Peabody Museum. One of these mummies was found to contain wheat. Wade said that temple-raised birds were likely fed grain, so again the bird was probably sent off into the afterlife with food for its spiritual journey.

Life was a mixed bag for animals in the ancient world, however. Wade said all of the birds from the study had broken necks and were likely deliberately killed, probably as a sacrifice to the god Thoth.

From Ptolemaic and Roman rule to the Arab Conquest (332 BC - 646 AD)

Ptolemaic Egypt began when a follower of Alexander the Great Ptolemy I Soter declared himself Pharaoh of Egypt in 305 BC and ended with the death of Queen Cleopatra VII and the Roman conquest in 30 BC. The Ptolemaic Kingdom was a powerful Hellenistic state, extending from southern Syria in the east, to Cyrene to the west, and south to the frontier with Nubia. Alexandria became the capital city and a center of Greek culture and trade.

To gain recognition by the native Egyptian populace, they referred to themselves as successors to the Pharaohs. The later Ptolemies took on Egyptian traditions, had themselves portrayed on public monuments in Egyptian style and dress, and participated in Egyptian religious life. Hellenistic culture continued to thrive in Egypt well after the Muslim conquest.

Eventually the Ptolemies faced rebellions of native Egyptians often caused by an unwanted regime and were involved in foreign and civil wars that led to the decline of the kingdom and its annexation by Rome.
       

Egyptologists still digging up past, even with uncertain future

by David B. Nelson
Jan 19, 2012

The Egyptian Revolution that began a year ago continues to create instability in a country rich with antiquity. But most Egyptologists say it’s business as usual, even with the recent return of protestors to Tahrir Square in Cairo.

“The impact has been very minor,” said Emily Teeter, an Egyptologist and research associate at the Oriental Institute, a research center and archaeology museum at the University of Chicago. Teeter, also a representative to the Chicago chapter of the American Research Center in Egypt, was in Egypt as recently as last November. “The biggest disruption has been bureaucratic. Permissions were disrupted because committees weren’t meeting. Basically trying to do advanced planning was very hard,” she said.

Kathleen Scott, director of publications at the San Antonio chapter of the American Research Center, also reported only minor issues unrelated to safety.

“At first some expedition seasons were delayed or held off,” Scott said. “But for the most part our organization, which does a lot of the interface between expeditions and government, has found it to be going reasonably well.”

With anywhere from 10 to 15 expeditions in Egypt at a time, depending on schedules and seasons, the organization also maintains an office in Cairo.

“Obviously the political turmoil is happening, and you don’t know exactly what’s going to happen,” Scott said. “But at the moment we feel fairly confident.”

Most archaeological work occurs not in the major cities, but in less populated places such as Luxor, the site of former Egyptian capital Thebes, where the University of Chicago has a permanent headquarters. Although Luxor was undisrupted, various institutions did send home students as a precaution.

Egyptian tomb holds singer Nehmes Bastet’s remains

Archaeologists working in Egypt have discovered the tomb of a female singer in the Valley of the Kings.

The tomb was found by a team from the University of Basel in Switzerland who came across it by chance.

The woman, Nehmes Bastet, was a temple singer during Egypt's 22nd Dynasty (approximately 945 - 712BC), according to an inscription in the tomb.

The coffin found in the tomb contains an intact mummy from almost 3,000 years ago.

Professor Susanne Bickel of the University of Basel told the BBC that the coffin was opened on Monday and she was able to see the "nicely wrapped" mummy of the woman who was buried in the tomb.

The opening of the coffin was carried out by Prof Bickel and her Basel colleague, field director Elina Paulin-Grothe, together with the Chief Inspector of Antiquities of Upper Egypt, Dr Mohammed el-Bialy and inspector Ali Reda.

Prof Bickel said that the upper edge of the tomb was found on the first day of Egypt's revolution, on 25 January 2011. The opening was sealed with an iron cover and the discovery was kept quiet.

Last week, after the start of this year's field season, the feature was identified as a tomb - and one of the very few tombs in the Valley of the Kings which have not been looted.

'Painted black'

Elina Paulin-Grothe said that the tomb was not built for the female singer, but was re-used for her 400 years after the original burial, according to AP.

There are other non-royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings, Prof Bickel said, which mostly date from the 18th Dynasty (1500 - 1400BC).

The woman in the coffin was the daughter of the high priest of Amon, Egypt's Antiquities Minister Mohammed Ibrahim told AFP.

The discovery was important because "it shows that the Valley of the Kings was also used for the burial of ordinary individuals and priests of the 22nd Dynasty", he added.

Egyptian news site Ahram reports that the wooden sarcophagus was painted black and decorated with hieroglyphic texts.

This tomb is only the second found in the Valley of the Kings since the discovery of Tutankhamun in 1922, and is referred to as KV64 in the naming system used to label tombs in the valley. It is one of a cluster of tombs without any wall decoration found near the royal tomb of Thutmoses III.

A tomb found in 2006, known as KV63, had seven coffins in it but none of them contained any mummies - it seems to have been used as a burial cache.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-16576265