The concept of piety in ancient Egypt could be defined as a personal, individual expression of faith in and devotion to a deity, as opposed to institutionalized religious practice, which was traditionally the preserve of the king. The monarch was responsible for the maintenance of maat—the order of the universe, both cosmic and social, as established by the creator at creation—which included the maintenance of the relationship between the gods and humankind. This was achieved via the temple rituals conducted, in theory, by the king, but in practice by priests who acted for him. The ordinary person had no role in this activity.
Historical Developments:
Evidence for personal religion prior to the New Kingdom is limited. Some personal names, which in ancient Egyptian are often theophoric, hint at a personal relationship between the deity and the bearer of the name. These names are particularly common in the Late period: for example, Padiese, "he, whom Isis gave" (Greek, Isidore). Yet some are attested from earliest times: for example, Shed-netjer, "whom the god rescues" (from the first dynasty); from the Old Kingdom there were the names Khui-wi-Ptah (or -Re, -Horus, -Khnum, or -Sobek), "may Ptah (or Re, Horus, etc.) protect me." A few texts of the Middle Kingdom also make brief references to personal worship.
The paucity of evidence for personal religion prior to the New Kingdom can be explained by the limits set by what John Baines (1985) defined as "decorum," a set of rules regarding what could and could not be expressed in image and/or text in certain contexts. These guidelines can be illustrated in the way deities appeared on nonroyal monuments. Until the Middle Kingdom, decorum ex- cluded the possibility for nonroyal persons to depict deities on their monuments; they appeared only in texts, almost exclusively of a funerary nature, or in the form of their emblems. Not until the end of the Middle Kingdom were the first representations of nonroyal persons worshiping a deity inscribed on nonroyal stelae. Even there, a barrier usually in the form of a column of inscription and/or an offering table separated the worshiper from the deity. Not until the early New Kingdom and onward did images of deities regularly appear on nonroyal monuments.
Personal religion was encouraged by New Kingdom developments that contributed to a gradual breaking down of the barriers that separated individual and deity, such as the evolution and growth of festival processions of the deities. During the New Kingdom, evidence survives for a burgeoning of such processions, when the divine images were brought out of the seclusion of their temples and carried in a portable boat-shrine along a processional way. Although the images were hidden from view in the cabins of the boats (or barks, as they are often called), the ordinary person could approach them and seek the advice of the deity on all manner of personal issues, through an oracle.
Among the earliest literary evidence for personal piety in the New Kingdom are limestone ostraca, dated paleo-graphically to the pre-Amama period, which carry short prayers addressed to the god Amun. These ostraca may have been placed along the processional way taken by the god, and they bear some of the earliest sentiments of love and devotion to a deity: "Amun-Re, you are the beloved one, you are the only one!"
The growth of personal piety was accompanied by a diminution of the exclusive role of the king and official religion. As Jan Assmann (1984) has pointed out, one of the aims of King Akhenaten was to reverse that trend and restore to the monarch the central role in religion, as the mediator between the one god Aten and the people. His reform failed, indeed it succeeded in achieving the exact opposite—people were not prepared to abandon their old deities, and, since the official cults of the old gods were proscribed by the king, people were forced to turn to them directly. This situation probably explains the explosion of evidence for personal piety in both post-Amarna and Ramessid times, the latter dubbed by James H. Breasted in 1912 "the age of personal piety."
The trauma of the Amarna period and its aftermath doubtless also contributed to the atmosphere of uncertainty that is evident in the following historical period. That uncertainty was illustrated by theophoric names, which contain the verb sd ("rescue," "save"), names such as Shed-su-Amun ("may Amun save him"). Although sporadically met in earlier periods, such names were most frequently used in the New Kingdom (Ranke 1935. p. 330 f.). The letter of the scribe Butehamun to the captain of the bowmen Shed- su-Hor ("may Horus save him") also reflected this phenomenon (Wente 1990, p. 196), as did the emergence of the god Shed, the personification of the concept of the rescuing activity of a deity demonstrated in the study of Hellmut Brunner (1958, pp. 17-19). The inscriptions of Si-mut Kiki (Wilson 1970) provide a particularly good example of some of the perceived dangers and illustrate the concept of a chosen personal deity, to whom the devotee was particularly attached and from whom protection was sought, a well- attested phenomenon of piety that made its first appearance at that time.
As Assmann pointed out (1989, p. 75 ff.), a further religious development in the New Kingdom generated a change in the role of maat. Whereas it was previously held that one's fate depended on one's behavior (if one lived a life in accordance with the principles of maat then one would perforce flourish; if one transgressed against it one would be punished—the king being the one who upheld maat and meted out punishment), instead one came to be seen as directly responsible to the deity, who personally intervened in the individual's life and punished wrongdoing. The misfortunes from which people then needed to be saved were not only those of an impersonal kind but also included divine wrath, meted out as punishment for perceived wrongdoing.
Sources:
Archaeological sources for the practice of piety have survived in the form of shrines and votive offerings, but for a proper understanding of the phenomenon we are dependent on literary sources. These are varied, including biographical inscriptions, hymns, inscriptions on scarabs. Wisdom Literature and, in particular, the prayers (often penitential) of individuals. A very good example in a hymn may be found in those to Amun in the Leiden Papyrus (Prichard 1969, p. 369). The most important Wisdom teaching is that of Amenemope (Lichtheim 1976, pp. 146- 163). The prayers of individuals, inscribed on stelae dedicated to the deity as votive offerings, are very similar to the biblical penitential psalms expressing sorrow for wrongdoing and thanks for forgiveness. The bulk of our evidence comes from the Deir el-Medina, in Western Thebes, from the village of the workmen who built the tombs of the kings. This bias is due primarily to the chance of good preservation of the site, rather than to any unique religious development that may have taken place there, although the fact that Thebes probably suffered from the excesses of the Amama period more than other places may also have been a factor. Ashraf Sadek (1987) presented the evidence from other locations, among which the Wepwawet sanctuary at Assyut (where more than six hundred small stelae were discovered) was particularly significant.
The Elements of the Prayers:
terminology are regularly encountered in the prayers, hymns, and votive offerings:
1. The introductory words of praise and appeal to the deity often include a description of the deity who is said to be "one who hears petitions (nhwt)," "who comes at the voice of the poor (nmhw) in need," "who comes at the voice of him who calls to him."
2. In the description of the transgressor, the writer claims to be a "silent one," that is, a devout person (gr); a poor, humble person (nmhw). By way of apology, the claim is made to be ignorant and senseless (iwty hyty), to be one who does not know good (nfr) from evil (bin).
3. The writer confesses to having committed an act of transgression (sp n thi), to having done what is abhorrent or "taboo" (bty or bwt), to having sworn falsely ('rk m 'dy) by the deity.
4. The deity punishes the transgression, often with sickness; very frequent is the expression "seeing darkness by day," an image for separation from the deity.
5. A promise is made to proclaim the might of the deity to all the world, to "son and daughter, the great and small, generations not yet born," to "the fish in the water and the birds in the air," to "the foolish and the wise."
6. An account is given of answer to prayer—the deity is said to respond to the pleas of the petitioner and "to come as a sweet breeze" to be "merciful" (htp) to "turn" ('n) to the petitioner "in peace" (htp).
The Deities:
There was a range of deities, from the major gods and goddesses worshiped throughout Egypt (such as Amun-Re, Ptah, Hathor, Thoth, Osiris, Wepwawet, Horakhty and Haoeris) to local deities (such as Mer-etseger, the personification of the western mountain, "the Peak," at Thebes). Also worshipped were deified kings, such as King Amenhotep I (1514-1493) and less commonly, mortals, such as Amenophis, Son of Hapu, an official of King Amenhotep III (1382-1344). Amun was popularly worshiped in his forms py rhn nfr ("the goodly ram") and smn nfr n 'Imn ("the goodly goose of Amun"). The prevalence of the former was based on his animal symbol, the ram, being the most public form of the god. It decorated the prow and stern of his portable bark, and the avenues leading to his temples in Thebes were lined with statues of rams. The god Thoth, patron of scribes, was favored by this profession, and prayers to him appear in the Ramessid schooling literature.
The Petitioners:
One of the terms by which petitioners regularly referred to themselves in the penitential prayers was nmhw, "a poor, humble person." This does not mean that piety was a religion of the poor, since they would not have had the means to commission the monuments that provide us with our data. The people from Deir el-Medina who called themselves nmhw were relatively well-situated artisans, and most of the dedications found in the shrines around the Great Sphinx at Giza are by people of middle, lower-middle, or low rank, but even the viceroy of Nubia Huy, addressed a prayer of personal piety to his master, the king Tutankhamun. The king was also involved in this movement: Ramesses II's record of the Battle of Kadesh, inscribed on temple walls and pylons, did on a massive scale what the small votive stelae of the ordinary person did more modestly. In the prayer of Ramesses III to Amun at Karnak, sentiments and ex- pressions are found that parallel those of the nonroyal prayers.
Other terms used to designate the ideal god-fearing pious person were mfty, " a just one," comparable to the sadiq, "just," of the biblical tradition; 1fbhw, "the cool, quiet one"; and gr or gr my', "the silent one" or "the one who is justly silent." Their antithesis is sm or sm 1-3, "the hot or hot-mouthed one." The term "the silent one" is found in prayers of personal piety but is even better known from the wisdom teachings; it refers to those who do not assert themselves but who place their trust in the divine, recognize the supreme free will of a deity, and are totally submissive to that will. That attitude is succinctly summarized in chapter 25 of the Instructions of Amene-mope: "For man is clay and straw, God is his builder; he pulls down, he builds in a moment. He makes a thousand insignificant as he wishes, he makes a thousand people overseers when he is in his hour of life. Happy is he who reaches the West [i.e., the grave] being safe in the hand of god." There, worldly success—once seen as the result of correct behavior, of a life lived in accordance with maat— is held to be totally in the gift of a god; not success, then, but rather an unbroken relationship with a god, was the true mark of a successful life. The model frequently used for the relationship between the individual and a deity is that of servant (byk) and master (nb); as does a servant his master, so the devout person "follows" (sm.s) and is "loyal" to (sms hr mw/mtn) a deity.
The confessions of fault in the penitential prayers refer to "actual sin"; the reference is always to some concrete, individual act or an inner thought or personal attitude. A concept of "general sin" is not found (i.e., the concept of the existence of a barrier between humankind and the divine that is not the result of an individual deed or thought but of the general condition of humankind—the Christian concept of "original sin"). The closest to the latter would be the statement on the stela of Nebra, that "the servant is disposed to do evil" (Lichtheim 1976, p. 106).
Locations of Cults:
Ashraf Sadek (1987) has collected the evidence for the locations of cults of personal piety. They include nonofficial shrines (such as the small chapels erected by groups of individuals at Deir el-Medina or the tiny shrines set up along the path from Deir el-Medina to the Valley of the Kings), as well as places provided at official cult centers (such as the eastern temple at Karnak, dedicated to Amun and "Ramesses who hears petitions," or the monumental eastern gateway at Deir el-Medina, with its relief of "Ptah who hears petitions"). At the Tenth Pylon at Karnak, two individuals—Amenhotep, son of Hapu, and Piramesse—set up statues of themselves to act as mediators between the great god Amun and petitioners. The regular festival processions of the deities were also important occasions for the practice of personal religion; the promise in many of the penitential prayers—to make a public proclamation of the experienced greatness and mercy of the deity—was most probably fulfilled at such processions. The stela of Pataweret (Brunner 1958, pp. 6-12) from the Wepwawet sanctuary at Asyut provides valuable data on this aspect of personal religion. Divided into three registers, the bottom one depicts Pataweret's experience of the saving intervention of Wepwawet, called "the savior," who rescued him from being taken by a crocodile. The other two registers show where he expressed his thanks to the god. In the middle one he is shown alone, praying before an image of the god at a shrine. In the top register he is shown publicly praising the god during a procession.
Although compositions comparable to those of personal piety in the Ramessid era are not known from later periods, many of the sentiments found in them appear in later biographical texts, and their formulas of piety live on in some of the Greco-Roman temple inscriptions.
Recent Pages:
· Pepinakht Heqaib
· Personal Hygiene in Ancient Egypt
· Perfumes and Unguents in Ancient Egypt
· Petamenophis
· Petosiris
· Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie
· Petuabastis
· Philae
Historical Developments:
Evidence for personal religion prior to the New Kingdom is limited. Some personal names, which in ancient Egyptian are often theophoric, hint at a personal relationship between the deity and the bearer of the name. These names are particularly common in the Late period: for example, Padiese, "he, whom Isis gave" (Greek, Isidore). Yet some are attested from earliest times: for example, Shed-netjer, "whom the god rescues" (from the first dynasty); from the Old Kingdom there were the names Khui-wi-Ptah (or -Re, -Horus, -Khnum, or -Sobek), "may Ptah (or Re, Horus, etc.) protect me." A few texts of the Middle Kingdom also make brief references to personal worship.
The paucity of evidence for personal religion prior to the New Kingdom can be explained by the limits set by what John Baines (1985) defined as "decorum," a set of rules regarding what could and could not be expressed in image and/or text in certain contexts. These guidelines can be illustrated in the way deities appeared on nonroyal monuments. Until the Middle Kingdom, decorum ex- cluded the possibility for nonroyal persons to depict deities on their monuments; they appeared only in texts, almost exclusively of a funerary nature, or in the form of their emblems. Not until the end of the Middle Kingdom were the first representations of nonroyal persons worshiping a deity inscribed on nonroyal stelae. Even there, a barrier usually in the form of a column of inscription and/or an offering table separated the worshiper from the deity. Not until the early New Kingdom and onward did images of deities regularly appear on nonroyal monuments.
Personal religion was encouraged by New Kingdom developments that contributed to a gradual breaking down of the barriers that separated individual and deity, such as the evolution and growth of festival processions of the deities. During the New Kingdom, evidence survives for a burgeoning of such processions, when the divine images were brought out of the seclusion of their temples and carried in a portable boat-shrine along a processional way. Although the images were hidden from view in the cabins of the boats (or barks, as they are often called), the ordinary person could approach them and seek the advice of the deity on all manner of personal issues, through an oracle.
Among the earliest literary evidence for personal piety in the New Kingdom are limestone ostraca, dated paleo-graphically to the pre-Amama period, which carry short prayers addressed to the god Amun. These ostraca may have been placed along the processional way taken by the god, and they bear some of the earliest sentiments of love and devotion to a deity: "Amun-Re, you are the beloved one, you are the only one!"
The growth of personal piety was accompanied by a diminution of the exclusive role of the king and official religion. As Jan Assmann (1984) has pointed out, one of the aims of King Akhenaten was to reverse that trend and restore to the monarch the central role in religion, as the mediator between the one god Aten and the people. His reform failed, indeed it succeeded in achieving the exact opposite—people were not prepared to abandon their old deities, and, since the official cults of the old gods were proscribed by the king, people were forced to turn to them directly. This situation probably explains the explosion of evidence for personal piety in both post-Amarna and Ramessid times, the latter dubbed by James H. Breasted in 1912 "the age of personal piety."
The trauma of the Amarna period and its aftermath doubtless also contributed to the atmosphere of uncertainty that is evident in the following historical period. That uncertainty was illustrated by theophoric names, which contain the verb sd ("rescue," "save"), names such as Shed-su-Amun ("may Amun save him"). Although sporadically met in earlier periods, such names were most frequently used in the New Kingdom (Ranke 1935. p. 330 f.). The letter of the scribe Butehamun to the captain of the bowmen Shed- su-Hor ("may Horus save him") also reflected this phenomenon (Wente 1990, p. 196), as did the emergence of the god Shed, the personification of the concept of the rescuing activity of a deity demonstrated in the study of Hellmut Brunner (1958, pp. 17-19). The inscriptions of Si-mut Kiki (Wilson 1970) provide a particularly good example of some of the perceived dangers and illustrate the concept of a chosen personal deity, to whom the devotee was particularly attached and from whom protection was sought, a well- attested phenomenon of piety that made its first appearance at that time.
As Assmann pointed out (1989, p. 75 ff.), a further religious development in the New Kingdom generated a change in the role of maat. Whereas it was previously held that one's fate depended on one's behavior (if one lived a life in accordance with the principles of maat then one would perforce flourish; if one transgressed against it one would be punished—the king being the one who upheld maat and meted out punishment), instead one came to be seen as directly responsible to the deity, who personally intervened in the individual's life and punished wrongdoing. The misfortunes from which people then needed to be saved were not only those of an impersonal kind but also included divine wrath, meted out as punishment for perceived wrongdoing.
Sources:
Archaeological sources for the practice of piety have survived in the form of shrines and votive offerings, but for a proper understanding of the phenomenon we are dependent on literary sources. These are varied, including biographical inscriptions, hymns, inscriptions on scarabs. Wisdom Literature and, in particular, the prayers (often penitential) of individuals. A very good example in a hymn may be found in those to Amun in the Leiden Papyrus (Prichard 1969, p. 369). The most important Wisdom teaching is that of Amenemope (Lichtheim 1976, pp. 146- 163). The prayers of individuals, inscribed on stelae dedicated to the deity as votive offerings, are very similar to the biblical penitential psalms expressing sorrow for wrongdoing and thanks for forgiveness. The bulk of our evidence comes from the Deir el-Medina, in Western Thebes, from the village of the workmen who built the tombs of the kings. This bias is due primarily to the chance of good preservation of the site, rather than to any unique religious development that may have taken place there, although the fact that Thebes probably suffered from the excesses of the Amama period more than other places may also have been a factor. Ashraf Sadek (1987) presented the evidence from other locations, among which the Wepwawet sanctuary at Assyut (where more than six hundred small stelae were discovered) was particularly significant.
The Elements of the Prayers:
terminology are regularly encountered in the prayers, hymns, and votive offerings:
1. The introductory words of praise and appeal to the deity often include a description of the deity who is said to be "one who hears petitions (nhwt)," "who comes at the voice of the poor (nmhw) in need," "who comes at the voice of him who calls to him."
2. In the description of the transgressor, the writer claims to be a "silent one," that is, a devout person (gr); a poor, humble person (nmhw). By way of apology, the claim is made to be ignorant and senseless (iwty hyty), to be one who does not know good (nfr) from evil (bin).
3. The writer confesses to having committed an act of transgression (sp n thi), to having done what is abhorrent or "taboo" (bty or bwt), to having sworn falsely ('rk m 'dy) by the deity.
4. The deity punishes the transgression, often with sickness; very frequent is the expression "seeing darkness by day," an image for separation from the deity.
5. A promise is made to proclaim the might of the deity to all the world, to "son and daughter, the great and small, generations not yet born," to "the fish in the water and the birds in the air," to "the foolish and the wise."
6. An account is given of answer to prayer—the deity is said to respond to the pleas of the petitioner and "to come as a sweet breeze" to be "merciful" (htp) to "turn" ('n) to the petitioner "in peace" (htp).
The Deities:
There was a range of deities, from the major gods and goddesses worshiped throughout Egypt (such as Amun-Re, Ptah, Hathor, Thoth, Osiris, Wepwawet, Horakhty and Haoeris) to local deities (such as Mer-etseger, the personification of the western mountain, "the Peak," at Thebes). Also worshipped were deified kings, such as King Amenhotep I (1514-1493) and less commonly, mortals, such as Amenophis, Son of Hapu, an official of King Amenhotep III (1382-1344). Amun was popularly worshiped in his forms py rhn nfr ("the goodly ram") and smn nfr n 'Imn ("the goodly goose of Amun"). The prevalence of the former was based on his animal symbol, the ram, being the most public form of the god. It decorated the prow and stern of his portable bark, and the avenues leading to his temples in Thebes were lined with statues of rams. The god Thoth, patron of scribes, was favored by this profession, and prayers to him appear in the Ramessid schooling literature.
The Petitioners:
One of the terms by which petitioners regularly referred to themselves in the penitential prayers was nmhw, "a poor, humble person." This does not mean that piety was a religion of the poor, since they would not have had the means to commission the monuments that provide us with our data. The people from Deir el-Medina who called themselves nmhw were relatively well-situated artisans, and most of the dedications found in the shrines around the Great Sphinx at Giza are by people of middle, lower-middle, or low rank, but even the viceroy of Nubia Huy, addressed a prayer of personal piety to his master, the king Tutankhamun. The king was also involved in this movement: Ramesses II's record of the Battle of Kadesh, inscribed on temple walls and pylons, did on a massive scale what the small votive stelae of the ordinary person did more modestly. In the prayer of Ramesses III to Amun at Karnak, sentiments and ex- pressions are found that parallel those of the nonroyal prayers.
Other terms used to designate the ideal god-fearing pious person were mfty, " a just one," comparable to the sadiq, "just," of the biblical tradition; 1fbhw, "the cool, quiet one"; and gr or gr my', "the silent one" or "the one who is justly silent." Their antithesis is sm or sm 1-3, "the hot or hot-mouthed one." The term "the silent one" is found in prayers of personal piety but is even better known from the wisdom teachings; it refers to those who do not assert themselves but who place their trust in the divine, recognize the supreme free will of a deity, and are totally submissive to that will. That attitude is succinctly summarized in chapter 25 of the Instructions of Amene-mope: "For man is clay and straw, God is his builder; he pulls down, he builds in a moment. He makes a thousand insignificant as he wishes, he makes a thousand people overseers when he is in his hour of life. Happy is he who reaches the West [i.e., the grave] being safe in the hand of god." There, worldly success—once seen as the result of correct behavior, of a life lived in accordance with maat— is held to be totally in the gift of a god; not success, then, but rather an unbroken relationship with a god, was the true mark of a successful life. The model frequently used for the relationship between the individual and a deity is that of servant (byk) and master (nb); as does a servant his master, so the devout person "follows" (sm.s) and is "loyal" to (sms hr mw/mtn) a deity.
The confessions of fault in the penitential prayers refer to "actual sin"; the reference is always to some concrete, individual act or an inner thought or personal attitude. A concept of "general sin" is not found (i.e., the concept of the existence of a barrier between humankind and the divine that is not the result of an individual deed or thought but of the general condition of humankind—the Christian concept of "original sin"). The closest to the latter would be the statement on the stela of Nebra, that "the servant is disposed to do evil" (Lichtheim 1976, p. 106).
Locations of Cults:
Ashraf Sadek (1987) has collected the evidence for the locations of cults of personal piety. They include nonofficial shrines (such as the small chapels erected by groups of individuals at Deir el-Medina or the tiny shrines set up along the path from Deir el-Medina to the Valley of the Kings), as well as places provided at official cult centers (such as the eastern temple at Karnak, dedicated to Amun and "Ramesses who hears petitions," or the monumental eastern gateway at Deir el-Medina, with its relief of "Ptah who hears petitions"). At the Tenth Pylon at Karnak, two individuals—Amenhotep, son of Hapu, and Piramesse—set up statues of themselves to act as mediators between the great god Amun and petitioners. The regular festival processions of the deities were also important occasions for the practice of personal religion; the promise in many of the penitential prayers—to make a public proclamation of the experienced greatness and mercy of the deity—was most probably fulfilled at such processions. The stela of Pataweret (Brunner 1958, pp. 6-12) from the Wepwawet sanctuary at Asyut provides valuable data on this aspect of personal religion. Divided into three registers, the bottom one depicts Pataweret's experience of the saving intervention of Wepwawet, called "the savior," who rescued him from being taken by a crocodile. The other two registers show where he expressed his thanks to the god. In the middle one he is shown alone, praying before an image of the god at a shrine. In the top register he is shown publicly praising the god during a procession.
Although compositions comparable to those of personal piety in the Ramessid era are not known from later periods, many of the sentiments found in them appear in later biographical texts, and their formulas of piety live on in some of the Greco-Roman temple inscriptions.
Recent Pages:
· Pepinakht Heqaib
· Personal Hygiene in Ancient Egypt
· Perfumes and Unguents in Ancient Egypt
· Petamenophis
· Petosiris
· Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie
· Petuabastis
· Philae