Relations Between State and Clergy April 20, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Hotels, Memorial, Museum, Travellers Cheque , add a commentWe have been aware that the temples and religious monuments ofancient Egypt were all the exclusive works of the pharaohs. There isa precise reason for this. Actually, there was only one true priest, one depositary of the divine will, one guarantor of the well-being of the god’s land, the nation: this was the pharaoh. Thus it was that all those connected with worship practices were really subalterns. Even the high priest, the only person who could enter the god’s sanctuary, was merely the pharaoh’s substitute. And just as the state functionary class grew up because the king alone found it impossible to govern a nation with such complex administrative structures, so the priesthood developed because the pharaoh could not attend to the ceremonies of all the nation’s temples. (more…)
Egypt Temple of Karnak April 17, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Air Tickets, Cairo, Credit Card, Egypt , 5commentsIn fact, Karnak is not a temple; it is a complex of temples. Today’s visitor arrives there easily from Luxor, only a couple of miles away. We have already referred to Luxor as the modern town that grew up where Thebes was; in reality the true ancient center, the heart of the New Kingdom’s political and religious life, must have been Karnak. The first impression one has when crossing the threshold of the first pylon (there are many pylons at Karnak), and finding himself amid the ruins of what was the greatest ancient Egyptian sanctuary, is that he will not be able to make any sense out of it. Even the Giza pyramids, although mysterious looking, have an internal logic; they are closed up in themselves and one intuitively experiences them, even when we don’t understand them. Karnak does not offer this possibility. Walking along the courtyards, rooms, columns, obelisks, statues, and miles of hieroglyphic inscriptions, the visitor soon loses any capacity to link one element or monument with another. Therefore one must return to Karnak again and again. Even then, as we have warned, he must avoid searching among the monuments with aesthetic or rational criteria — in short, modern, Western standards. And we have also said that the true temple of Amon was always the sanctuary that formed the central nucleus. All the various additions made over the course of centuries have their own value per se; they are separate nuclei whose presence is independently justified by ceremonial needs, by new ideological lines, or by new links between the various divinities. (more…)
The Roots of the Nineteenth Dynasty April 14, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Destination, Egypt, Memorial, Museum, Round The World , add a commentWe must conclude our exploration of the monuments of the first of the New Kingdom’s dynasties, the Eighteenth, as well as our interpretation of how the policies of that dynasty’s rulers are embodied in those monuments. But before we move on to the monuments of the Nineteenth Dynasty, we must review one other phenomenon that will help to explain how the Nineteenth Dynasty evolved from its predecessors. This phenomenon was the presence of commoners who reached the top of the administrative hierarchy, and found themselves at the king’s side as ministers, counselors, or in some such invaluable role. We have discussed Senmut, who held such a position with Queen Hatshepsut, and we related him to his counterpart, Imhotep, King Djoser’s chief assistant back in the Third Dynasty. There were others during the Eighteenth Dynasty, perhaps none more important than the commoner Amenhotep, Son of Hapu, who held the same position in relation to Amenhotep III. (more…)
