Architecture of Infinity

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Most first-time visitors to Egypt will tell you that many ancient Egyptian temples have survived. But they’re wrong. It only seems that way on a two or three week tour. Although temples were once very common in Egypt, evidence of them today is surprisingly slight. For most of Egypt’s history, thousands of temples dotted the landscape, but relatively few have survived on their own or been recovered by archaeological excavations.

A number of obvious reasons account for this widespread disappearance: Most ancient Egyptian temples were quite modest in scope and design. They were often very small buildings constructed of mud brick—not an especially durable 044material. Even when they were built from stone, they were often vandalized so the stones could be reused elsewhere. In many cases, temples were also located in villages and towns on the flood plain. Their remains—now buried deep beneath alluvium and sometimes below the modern water table—are difficult to recover and are rarely excavated.

The Egyptian temples that have survived more or less intact share certain features. They are usually stone built and clustered in southern Egypt, where there has been less demand, in medieval and modern times, for reused stone.

Almost all of the surviving temples date from one of two distinct historical periods: They are either from Ptolemaic and Roman times (about 300 B.C.E. to 392 C.E., after which the temples were officially and finally closed by the Byzantine emperor Theodosius I), or they are from the New Kingdom (about 1550–1070 B.C.E.). For all other periods archaeological evidence of temples is slight and often ambiguous.¹

Naturally, there were changes in how temples were built and used from one period to the next. But the continuities far outweigh the differences. Throughout ancient Egyptian history, temples shared the same essential form and function: They provided a sacred space where the pharaoh and his representatives could participate in the process of cosmic renewal.

Instead of beginning at the beginning—the earliest Egyptian temples date back to the pre-dynastic period in the late fourth millennium B.C.E.—I am going to examine evidence from the Ptolemaic-Roman period. But much of what can be said of this period is equally true, with some modifications, of the 4,000-year history of the Egyptian temple.

In general, Egyptian temples of the Ptolemaic-Roman period followed a uniform layout. They were usually oriented east-west, with the entrance in the east and the sanctuary at the west end. At the rear of the sanctuary was a shrine with a cult image of the temple’s deity. Chapels and rooms of uniform size surrounded the sanctuary on three sides.

In front of the sanctuary was a series of roofed halls. The first two of these halls were relatively small: One hall was dedicated to divinities associated with the temple’s deity, while the other was used to display offerings required for the daily ritual. A third hall, known as the hypostyle hall, was somewhat larger with numerous columns and a higher ceiling. In Ptolemaic-Roman temples, the hypostyle hall was fronted by an additional corridor, called a pronaos. Beyond this lay a large, open court with side colonnades; this court was approached from the east via a massive, two-towered facade called the pylon. Pylons had a sharply defined batter, so the base was larger than the top. They were slotted in front for two or more tall flagpoles, each representing the hieroglyph for “divine.” Together, pylon and flagpole conveyed the idea that the temple was a sacred and restricted place.

Some temples (both from this period and earlier) 046were impressively large. The stupendous temple of Amun-Re, at Karnak in Luxor, covers more than eighty acres. Other, equally large temple complexes probably existed at places like Memphis and Heliopolis. Although they were large, these temples were not intended for communal assembly. In fact, most Egyptians were forbidden from entering temples, although sometimes selected lay people could gather in the temple court, and perhaps elsewhere, on ceremonial occasions.²

Instead, the complex architecture of the temple was designed to serve as a context for the temple’s ongoing cycle of rituals. The regular temple cult was performed three times daily: During this ritual, the sanctuary shrine was opened, and the temple’s priests, acting on the pharaoh’s behalf, would present offerings, which the deity was believed to consume or use. Although most of the temple’s daily rituals were conducted by professional priests, only the pharaoh could be depicted interacting with the deities. He appears as the sole ritual-performer in every temple program during all periods. (By “program” I mean systematically ordered scenes along with text displayed on temple walls, ceilings, columns and doorways).

The festive rituals associated with temples were very different from the rituals of the daily cult. Some occurred annually; others, more frequently. During festivals, an image of the deity was usually placed in a boat-shaped palanquin and carried with great ceremony through the temple and its court; the image was then paraded through the town, visiting other temples and the surrounding countryside, sometimes even visiting temples in distant towns. Such festivals were occasions for public participation and rejoicing, and they established an important link between the deity and its community. Food and drink were 047distributed to the populace and ordinary rules of decorum were often ignored. As one scholar has described it, the behavior of the participants was “excessive and unrestrained, be it eating, drinking, sex or all three at once.” These activities were probably associated with that “induced, ecstatic state” thought to facilitate communion between humans and the gods, or between the living and the dead.³

Both the daily cult rituals and the festivals were rooted in Egyptian religion’s overarching themes of rebirth and renewal. These themes were also embodied in the temple’s architecture. The temple itself was designed to mirror the cosmos. Its ceiling was identified as the sky, the heavenly realm of the deities. The ceiling was decorated with celestial imagery (such as stars, solar-barques and sacred birds).

The undecorated temple floor corresponded to the earth, the realm of humans and nature. From its surface “grew” gigantic plants—the temple’s columns, shaped as aquatic vegetation. These columns evoked not only the primeval waters from which the cosmos was born, but also the annual Nile inundation—a primal feature of the Egyptian landscape.

At “ground level,” around the base of the temple walls, were figures emblematic of nature’s fecundity. Often these figures also represented Egypt and other regions, suggesting humanity in microcosm. In Ptolemaic temples, even the netherworld was sometimes evoked through the presence of crypts set in the walls and below floor level.⁴

Through its architecture and design, the Egyptian temple functioned as a materialized hymn of affirmation and rejoicing. Its very form celebrated the viability and effectiveness of the deity inhabiting the temple. At the same time, the anxieties of both the deity (who became vulnerable by inhabiting the statue) and of the ritualist (who invoked a tremendous and potentially catastrophic power) were assuaged. The temple’s program demonstrated to the deity that the proper cult had been established, and it reassured the ritualist that the focus of his devotion was a worthy object, a fully vitalized deity.

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But the Egyptian temple functioned not only as a microcosm of the world; it also embodied the dynamic aspects of the cosmos. The temple ritual was a daily celebration of the solar cycle, during which creation was perpetually renewed by the rebirth of the sun-god. The ritual also celebrated the eternal re-emergence of the divine ruler who maintained cosmic order. These symbolic rebirths—derived from the Egyptian concept of the divine—were fundamental to the temple’s meaning. The temple’s deity was celebrated—in both ritual utterance and in materialized form—not only as a specific god or goddess but also as the creator, the sun-god who renewed the cosmos and the divine ruler who governed it. Deity had to become effectively embodied in the cult statue; otherwise the cosmos could not be renewed and Egypt would be deprived of benefit, and even of existence.

The intensely dark sanctuary—a self-contained building with chambers surrounding it—had a three-fold significance. It represented (1) the initial formation of the cosmos out of the primeval waters by the creator; (2) the heart of the netherworld where the deceased sun-god, like Osiris, was restored to physical integrity, suggesting the potential for renewed life; and (3) the womb in which the cosmic ruler was conceived and gestated.

The temple’s halls, from rear to front, successively increased in scale to represent the growth of this conceptualized cosmos. Yet the brightly painted scenes representative of the cosmos were displayed in halls that were quite dark or dimly lit. This darkness was in itself an extension of the program of decoration, for the sky that the ceiling represented was typically a night sky.⁵ The whole architectural scheme represented the potential cosmos, which had to be vitalized and then transformed into the actual cosmos, in which the Egyptians and their deities lived.

This vitalization was effected by the sun-god. Winged sun-disks on doorway lintels and on ceilings traced an appropriate solar path through the temple. They pointed the way to the great open court, where the blank floor and light-filled space were as programmatic as the scenes and texts on the temple walls and columns: This open area represented the place where the sun-disk emerged from primeval flood, netherworld and womb.

From humanity’s viewpoint, the sun’s rise and the vitalization of a hitherto only potential cosmos were mysterious events. The processes were hidden from view by mountains rimming the world’s edge. The temple’s double-peaked pylon mirrored these 051mountains, shielding the court and temple from view and creating locales of profound mystery. Paradoxically, the temple’s very inaccessibility was its most encouraging and appropriate characteristic for the community surrounding it; the temple—in form, ritual and program—represented mysterious processes that had to take place in secret to produce hoped-for benefits.

Thus the temple and its rituals ensured that a cosmos perpetually threatened with extinction was renewed every day, guaranteeing the survival and well-being of the Egyptian people. This idea of cosmic renewal provides the basic explanation for the plan, form and decoration of the Egyptian temple.

In my view, all Egyptian temples dedicated to deities or deceased rulers of all periods involved the same interactions between ritual, architecture and decoration that are so well documented in the Roman-Ptolemaic temple. Some Egyptologists interpret New Kingdom temples as representing only the origin of the cosmos—its “coming into being.” But I believe that all Egyptian temples are structured by the same three cosmological themes typical of Ptolemaic temples: the creation of the cosmos, the daily renewal of the cosmos by the ascendant sun-god, and the rulership of the cosmos. Since the basic belief system of Egypt remained the same for over 3,000 years (from about 3000 B.C.E. to the early centuries C.E.), temples were likely to maintain a basically identical form and meaning—despite considerable variation in detail, plan, architecture and decoration. Certainly, temples differ in important ways from one period to another. But insofar as basic function and meaning are concerned, these differences are not fundamental: They are variations on a theme, different versions of the same template that endured throughout Egyptian history. Egyptians believed their deities were crucial for their own existence and for the maintenance of the cosmos. Their temples and cults represented humanity’s role in cosmic maintenance, a role as essential as that of the gods and goddesses themselves.

Perhaps the single most important indication that New Kingdom temples, like later ones, represented the cosmos and cosmic processes is the fact that in hymns and other sources the New Kingdom temple is frequently identified not only with heaven but also with the Akhet. In Egyptian cosmology, the Akhet is the transitional zone between life and death, between potential and actual cosmos.⁶ The imagery of the Akhet is applied both to the sanctuary (as a microcosm of the macrocosm represented by the temple as a whole) and to the hypostyle hall, court and pylon, all associated with the vitalizing sunrise. Taken together, these elements of the temple formed a symbolic passageway through the cosmic life cycle.

On your next visit to an Egyptian temple, then, you will literally be walking into a universe.

For further details, see David O’Connor, “The Temple in Ancient Egypt: New Ideas about Old Evidence,” in D. Ruderman, G. Beckman and T. Louis, eds., Text, Artifact and Image: Revealing Ancient Israelite Religion (New Haven: Yale University, forthcoming).

Most first-time visitors to Egypt will tell you that many ancient Egyptian temples have survived. But they’re wrong. It only seems that way on a two or three week tour. Although temples were once very common in Egypt, evidence of them today is surprisingly slight. For most of Egypt’s history, thousands of temples dotted the landscape, but relatively few have survived on their own or been recovered by archaeological excavations. A number of obvious reasons account for this widespread disappearance: Most ancient Egyptian temples were quite modest in scope and design. They were often very small buildings constructed […]