‘Ancient Egyptian Temple Ritual: Performance, Pattern, and Practice’ by Katherine Eaton. It’s a great title, one which certainly caught my attention and made me go, “Oooooh!” (And to think I started out being categorically uninterested in formal ritual of any sort.) When it arrived however, I was initially a little surprised at the relatively small size of it considering the $125 pricetag. That said, I have actually spent more on egyptology books of the same size, I think I’ve just been spoiled by ones which have been both bigger and less expensive. Nonetheless, it is a very interesting read except for a bit in the middle which consistently lost out to the desire to nap.

The book does contain some information of practical use to a reconstructionist, particularly in regards to the types of holds, gestures, and movements used in handling/presenting/[verb-of-choice]ing different offerings, but the rest is largely theory and analysis. Not a manual as such. It’s no less interesting for that, but I’d say it is a more advanced read because of it. I’d recommend Cauville’s illustrated handbook to offerings and individual ritual scenes (aka ‘Offerings to the Gods in Egyptian Temples’) to people first. The two books would pair together very nicely however, along with something like Reidy’s ‘Eternal Egypt.’

Some of the more fascinating points that really caught my attention:

A god’s temple really is his home, the surrounding lands his estate, and the daily cultic practices are very much built on the concept of it being an elite household. The statues within and the temple itself can both be considered the god’s body, with the latter simultaneously being understood as the body of his mother. (Along with all the other layers of symbolism built into temple structure of course.)

It’s commonly assumed that there would have been only one statue of the god and that this was the sole focus of the daily rites. On the contrary, it seems that different forms of the god would have had their own statues! (You can imagine how much I swooned at this revelation considering that I’ve always differed a bit from other kemetics by having a pair of statues of Wepwawet, representing his Upper and Lower manifestations.)

Daily rituals weren’t linear or step-by-step, they were a lot more fluid and cyclical than that. For a start, they would have involved different teams of priests moving through the temple and conducting different rites concurrently, with them only coming together at certain high points. And some ritual actions would have been repeated as necessary and/or constantly throughout the performance even though they might only be listed once. Others were paired, meant to be conducted at the same time rather than one after the other. The innermost sanctuary also probably would have been entered more than once as the god was being fed, dressed, etc. But here’s the real kicker: Although the ritual cycles in a particular temple would have been conducted in largely the same way every day, the pattern VARIED for different gods according to their individual preferences. You know that’s awesome, right?

There’s plenty more of value in this book, including all sorts of nitty-gritty tidbits about specific offerings and how they were made. (Alas, it isn’t a dedicated study of these things, just tasters scattered throughout.) A section is also devoted to how festival occurances were woven into daily practices (and vice-versa) and why it was important to do that in order to minimize the danger inherent in moments which stood out from the normal cycle of things. As I said, quite a bit of theory. There’s a good amount of discussion about the ordering of scenes in the three dimensional space of a temple and why scenes from the two main daily rituals are sometimes mixed together, or why an individual scene might appear ‘out of order’ because the stress is on the symbolism of it rather than the place it usually occupies in a ritual sequence. All in all, I’d probably really only recommend this book to kemetics who consider themselves to be priests and who have a vested interest in temple-based ritual.