Egypt welcomes

§ 1 Today, we look at Egyptian art primarily in museums or in books. For the Egyptians, however, the objects now regarded as art were made to serve a particular purpose, usually a religious one. For example, temples were decorated with paintings and filled with statues of gods and kings in the belief that doing this served the gods, showed devotion to the king, and maintained the order of the universe. The Egyptians wore jewelry and amulets not only as decoration, but because they believed these items protected them against harm. They buried their dead with jewelry and amulets for the same reason: to protect against the perils of the afterlife. Most Egyptians never saw the art that is now displayed in museums, because only kings and members of the ruling elite were allowed to enter temples, tombs, and palaces. But the Egyptians had in mind another audience for their art: the gods and, for the art in tombs, the spirits of people who had died.

§ 2 The most important buildings in ancient Egypt were temples, tombs, and palaces. Temples housed rituals for the worship of the gods. Tombs served as the burial locations for the king and the elite. The kings lived in the palaces, where they performed governmental and religious duties. Because many cities, towns, and villages in Egypt today occupy the sites of ancient palaces and surrounding settlements, these buildings disappeared over the years as new buildings went up. By contrast, many ancient Egyptian temples and tombs have survived because they were located in the desert, or at the edge of the desert, where few people lived and little construction occurred. The royal tombs and pyramids of ancient Egypt were elaborated as structures for important religious purposes. They were located along the Nile River, the vital waterway that runs the length of the country. For about 2,000 years, until the end of the New Kingdom in 1070 bc, royal tombs were built on the Nile’s west bank. Because the sun sets in the west, Egyptians believed that the western desert was the entrance to the underworld, where the dead dwelled and through which the sun passed at night.

§ 3 King Sneferu built the first true pyramid with smooth sides at the beginning of the 4th Dynasty (2575 bc–2467 bc), and Egyptian kings continued to use pyramids for burial through the 12th Dynasty. The best-known pyramids were built on the Giza plateau for three 4th Dynasty kings: Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure. Each pyramid is just one element in a line of structures that form a burial complex. The complex begins at the east, with a temple on a harbor at the edge of the cultivated land in the Nile Valley. From this valley temple, where the king’s body was first brought by boat, a long, covered causeway runs west into the desert to a pyramid temple. To the west of the temple is the pyramid itself, inside of which the king’s body was placed. Inside the temple, rituals performed for the king included the offering of food and drink to nourish his ka-spirit (life force).

§ 4 The Egyptian pyramids served as more than a place to put the king’s dead body. They were places of transformation that enabled the king to pass into a new stage of life. The east-west orientation of each pyramid complex paralleled the daytime course of the sun as it rises and sets. The burial chamber represented the entrance through which the sun traveled from west to east at night before rising in the eastern sky. While the king's body lay in its coffin, his ka-spirit was nourished by rituals that priests performed in the pyramid temple, and his ka-spirit (personality, or individual identity) joined the sun, triumphantly leaving the entrance through which the sun traveled from west to east at night before rising in the eastern sky. After the Middle Kingdom ended in 1640 bc, the Egyptians stopped building royal pyramids, and in the New Kingdom (1550 bc–1070 bc), kings were buried in tombs at Thebes in the Valley of the Kings, where the burial site of King Tutankhamun was found in 1922. The Valley of the Kings is a rocky desert area with high cliffs. The Egyptians cut the tombs into the cliffs. The tombs typically consisted of a series of corridors, steps, and rooms that ended in a burial chamber. The door to the tomb formed a point of transition from the world of the living to the world of the dead, so that the tomb represented the entrance.

§ 5 By the end of the New Kingdom, the Egyptians no longer built royal tombs in the desert, perhaps because of the difficulty of protecting these isolated spots from tomb robbers. Instead, tombs began to be built inside the most important temple complex in the king's capital or native city. Most New Kingdom royal tombs were smaller than those of earlier dynasties, and few of their associated buildings have survived. The Ptolemaic kings of the era following the Late Period, which ended in 332 bc, were buried in Alexandria, which was their capital city. The tombs for the elite members of Egyptian society were less elaborate than royal tombs, but they were nevertheless impressive. The preferred location for elite tombs was the west bank of the Nile, but many were built on the east bank as well. The Egyptians believed that gods were fundamentally different from human beings, and that it was dangerous for humans to interact with gods unprotected. In fact, most people never went inside a temple. For those who had been purified through special religious rituals, the temple provided a safe place for contact with the gods. The space within the temple became increasingly sacred as one went further in, and the more sacred inner parts were restricted to the king and priests. Every morning before dawn priests entered the temple. As the sun rose, the officiating priest opened the shrine doors in the sanctuary to reveal the deity. Each sunrise repeated the creation, so that every day in every temple the deity of the temple reenacted the moment when the newly created world emerged from the dark, primeval waters and was illuminated by the light of the newly born sun. The rituals that the priests performed for the god included the presentation of offerings, the burning of incense, and the recitation of ceremonial words and hymns. The Egyptians also believed that the gods occupied a different part of the universe than living human beings did. Temples were built as houses for the gods, where the gods could appear on earth. Most important deities had temples throughout Egypt, but some cities had a special association with a particular god. Among the most important gods and their cities were Ra at Heliopolis, Ptah at Memphis, Thoth at Hermopolis, Osiris at Abydos, Hathor at Dandara, Amon at Thebes, and Horus at Edfu.

§ 6 In Egyptian thought, foreign lands and their inhabitants represented the forces of chaos. Images of bound foreigners were painted on the steps leading up to the throne platform and on the platform itself. As the king ascended the platform, he walked on these images and then sat on them. The foreigners lay under his feet in subjection, symbolizing the triumph of the king over the forces of chaos. The function of most ancient Egyptian statues was to provide a physical place where a god or spirit could appear. In temples the god took up residence in the cult statue, and the divine royal ka-spirit could reside in statues of the king. Statues of the elite provided a place in the world of the living for the spirits of the dead. Such statues were the chief point of rituals. Offerings were presented to them, incense was burned, and ritual words were recited in their presence. These spirits were not restricted by time and space, but could simultaneously be present in all their statues, wherever the statues were located.