Household Religion and Festivals in Ancient Egypt

In pharaonic Egypt, people sought divine help at home, at shrines and in festival crowds. The examples here date from the late Old Kingdom and First Intermediate Period through the Middle and New Kingdoms. They include a woman’s letter to a dead husband, a shrine at Serabit el-Khadim, and New Kingdom settlements such as Amarna and Deir el-Medina. These household and community practices met the temple cult at public processions and sanctuaries.

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Protection in the home

A small amulet could bring a protective image close to the body. A New Kingdom faience amulet (made of a silica-based ceramic with a bright glaze) at the Brooklyn Museum is only about three centimetres long and shows Bes, a god associated with birth protection. The museum dates it to the early Eighteenth Dynasty, about 1539–1478 BC, and says Egyptian women wore amulets of birth gods during and just after childbirth. Taweret, a goddess shown as a pregnant hippopotamus, was another protector of mothers and children. A wearer could carry such an image through the dangerous hours around birth.

Household shrines brought divine images into domestic space. The Petrie Museum’s account of Deir el-Medina describes small shrines in the home and names Bes and Taweret among gods invoked to protect the household; Renenutet, a harvest goddess, could be asked for a good crop. A shrine or an image gave a family a focal place for prayer. People also prayed and recited spells, while amulets carried protective images with them.

Remembering and addressing the dead

At New Kingdom Deir el-Medina, near modern Luxor, a village of artisans who cut and decorated royal tombs, some ancestor busts were found near house entrances. The upper-body sculptures represented deceased people and could occupy a dedicated place in the house. Families also dedicated late New Kingdom stelae, carved stone slabs, showing a dead person seated and smelling a lotus flower. The image gave a family a way to keep a named relative present in the household’s religious life.

People also addressed the dead directly. Among the letters from the late Old Kingdom and First Intermediate Period (the centuries between the Old and Middle Kingdoms) is a woman’s message to her deceased husband, written on a pottery bowl at Hu in Upper Egypt. She says that she had not wronged him or consumed his property, then asks him to deal with whoever is harming their daughter. The written appeal treated the dead man as a family member able to intervene in a living household’s trouble.

The connection between home and remembrance is especially visible at Akhetaten (modern Amarna), the new capital founded in Middle Egypt by King Akhenaten around 1350 BC for worship of the Aten, the life-giving sun disk. Outside the Workmen’s Village, archaeologists identified about two dozen small chapels. Their roofed rooms had benches for gatherings; a brick bench in each sanctuary supported images. Some chapels also contained ovens and food remains, while two had tombs attached. Barry Kemp’s Amarna Project interprets their position in the village and the nearby cemetery as evidence for memorial rites that included meals with family. The chapels’ painted decoration invoked familiar deities even while Akhenaten promoted the Aten.

Leaving a dedication

A votive offering is an object dedicated at a sacred place as a prayer or in thanks. Serabit el-Khadim in the Sinai Peninsula of northeastern Egypt shows how such acts could extend beyond the home. Its temple to Hathor, “mistress of turquoise,” began with a rock-cut chamber in the Twelfth Dynasty of the Middle Kingdom, about 1985–1795 BC. In the fifteenth century BC, New Kingdom rulers Hatshepsut and Thutmose III enlarged the shrine. Because the surrounding region was mined for turquoise, workers and others came to a sanctuary tied to the mineral and its goddess. The temple site yielded thousands of votive objects, along with private and royal stelae. These durable gifts marked acts of devotion at the sacred place.

Festivals, processions and questions

At Thebes, near modern Luxor, the annual Festival of the Valley linked Amun’s temple at Karnak with temples on the Nile’s western bank, where royal tombs and the dead lay. Amun’s image left its protected temple setting in a small boat-shaped shrine carried on poles; for a longer crossing, a sacred boat could carry the shrine along the river. The festival combined the procession with banquets for the blessed dead, joining the living community to its deceased relatives.

The procession also gave people a way to put questions before a god. From the New Kingdom, a petitioner could ask a yes-or-no question in front of the shrine as attendants carried it on poles. The shrine’s forward movement was read as “yes.” Limestone flakes from the Ramesside period, when Egypt was ruled by kings named Ramesses, preserve questions written in hieratic, the cursive form of Egyptian writing used for everyday records. In this way, a public festival could bring a god close to worshippers and provide an answer in a dispute or personal decision.