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Home > Magazines > Archaeology Odyssey > September/October 1999

Architecture of Infinity

In their temples, the ancient Egyptians followed a simple plan that mirrored the creation of the universe.

By David O’Connor

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 […]

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Endnotes

1.

There is evidence concerning royal pyramid complexes, but these are funerary temples.

2.

On public access to temples, see Lanny Bell, “The New Kingdom ‘Divine’ Temple: The Example of Luxor,” in Temples of Ancient Egypt, ed. Byron E. Shafer (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), pp. 135, 163–170; see also Ragnhild Bjerre Finnestad, “Temples of the Ptolemaic and Roman Periods,” in Temples of Ancient Egypt, pp. 235–236.

3.

The first quote is from Dominic Montserrat, Sex and Society in Graeco-Roman Egypt (London and New York: Kegan Paul International, 1996), p. 165; the second quote is from Bell “The New Kingdom ‘Divine’ Temple,” p. 137.

4.

Finnestad, Temples of Ancient Egypt, p. 216.

5.

Finnestad, Image of the World (Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 1985), pp. 12–13.

6.

On the Akhet, see James P. Allen, Genesis in Egypt (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), pp. 6, 11–12, 25.