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Archaeology, religion, ritual and Ancient Egypt: some
discussions on the Amarna period (c. 1350-1330 BC)
Rennan de Souza Lemos
Universidade Federal Fluminense
Abstract:
This article presents an analysis of the ancient Egyptian
religion during
the Amarna Period as well some theoretical discussions on the
topic.
Based on theories of the Archaeology of Religion and Ritual,
Anthropol-
ogy and History of Religions, we seek to construct a holistic
approach that
encompasses the totality of the religious phenomenon during this
period.
Keywords: Archaeology of Religion and Ritual; Amarna Period;
solar
religion.
Resumo
Este artigo apresenta uma anlise da religio Egpcia antiga
durante o
perodo de Amarna, assim como algumas discusses tericas sobre o
as-
sunto. Com base em dados da Arqueologia da Religio e do Ritual,
da An-
tropologia e da Histria das Religies, nosso objectivo construir
um
modelo holstico que d conta da totalidade do fenmeno
religioso
poca.
Palavras-chave: Arqueologia da Religio e do Ritual; Reforma de
Amarna; Religio Solar.
Originally published in: Hathor - Studies of Egyptology, 1,
2012, pp. 85-113.
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Rennan de Souza Lemos 87
1) One vision of the religion of Amarna in the context of the
New Kingdom - Jan Assmann and the personal piety
The matter of religion in ancient Egypt during the New Kingdom
(c.
1550-1069 BC) was mainly marked by the new character assumed by
the
divine monarchy. It was during this period, for example, that
the associa-
tion between the figure of the pharaoh and that of the dynastic
god was
exalted, when Egypt became an empire in the ancient Near East.
Accord-
ing to Ciro Flamarion Cardoso, the New Kingdom consisted of a
period
of junction of two main tendencies: "one of a growing exaltation
of Amun
-Re of Thebes; and another that lead to a growing divinization
of the living
pharaoh."1
Until the Middle Kingdom and the end of the Second Intermediate
Pe-
riod, the characteristic plurality of the Egyptian polytheism
was the princi-
pal form of explanation of the world: in the dialectical
relation between the
one and the many, the multiplicity of gods and the dispersed
focus of the
divine cult prevailed. On the other hand, during the New Kingdom
a
result of the political process and the social changes occurred
since the
start of the imperial phase , the solar aspect of the religious
thought pre-
vailed as a form of explanation of the world2, based in the
daily cycle of
the Sun, then embedded by the Theban god Amun that turned out to
be
called Amun-Re. According to Assmann: "in Dynasty 18, the
reflection on
god (in the singular) that began in the Middle Kingdom became a
theologi-
cal explication of Amun-Re."3 1 Cf. Cardoso, C. F., De Amarna
aos Ramss" in Phonix 7 (2001): 119. 2 A long process that began in
the Old Kingdom. For example, in the representations of the temple
of Niuserre (c. 2445-2421 BC), it is possible to perceive a link
between the solar cycle and the multiform nature. For more
information, see: Cardoso, C. F., A unidade bsica das representaes
sociais relativas ao culto divino e ao culto funerrio no antigo
Egito, 46-47. 3 Assmann, J., The search for god in ancient Egypt,
189. Assmann, departing from a phenomenological perspective for the
study of religions, emphasizes the intellectual change and
discourse constructed from this change of
thinking as a determinant element of the social. Against it, we
believe that the political and social changes of the New Kingdom
stimulated the construction of a new conception of the divine,
based on the predominance of
Amun-Re as the dynastic god.
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88 Archaeology, religion, ritual and Ancient Egypt
This new form of explanation of the world is named by Assmann
the
"New Solar Theology": a theology that emphasized the mundane
aspect of
the cycle of the Sun as a form of explanation of the functioning
of the
world, cosmological and cosmogonically. In this theology, Amun,
associ-
ated to the solar divinity and cult, turned out to be the one
who ensured
the bases of the intervention of the divine in the material
world, marking a
new perception and a new experience of the divine.4
However, the New Solar Theology was not external to the context
of
the traditional Egyptian polytheism; contrariwise, as in the
course of the
Sun, for example, other gods participated, such as Seth.
Moreover, the my-
thology of Osiris was intimately linked to the nightly cycle of
the Sun as
we can see in the contents of the New Kingdom Books of the
Afterlife
that was associated to the god of the dead, momentarily, every
night, be-
coming a single god.5
The religion of Amarna, in this sense, was the result of this
"cognitive
revolution" that led to the consolidation of the New Solar
Theology. Like-
wise, at the same time, that religion signified the moment of
radicalization
of a religious tradition that emphasized the Sun as the central
aspect of the
theology, elevating the Aten to the most important position, in
an articula-
tion between positive and negative aspects, e. g. extreme
emphasis on solar
aspects (not necessarily original ones) and negations of the
traditional gods
and of a detailed mythology, principally in relation to the
transcendent as-
pects of the religious conception and the belief in the
afterlife.6
In the perspective of Assmann, thus, the Amarna Period is the
moment
of interruption in the process of changing in the conception and
experi-
ence of the divine (based on the figure of Amun-Re) that was
consolidated
in the Ramesside Period with the so-called personal piety. From
an inter-
pretation of the world guided in the creator and maintainer role
of the Sun
god, associated with the dynastic god Amun-Re that, omnipresent,
inter- 4 Cf. Assmann, J., Op. Cit., 201-208. 5 Cf. Hornung, E., The
ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife, 124. 6 This is part of one
of the research projects of the Group for Egyptological Studies
Maat - Universidade Federal Fluminense.
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Rennan de Souza Lemos 89
acted with the world according to his designs, it moved to a
more diffused
contact with the divine, permitted to the whole population, in a
context of
a non-revealed polytheism historically organic.
The interpretation of Assmann consists of one among various
other
forms of understanding the Amarna Period and is liable to
criticism, espe-
cially when the point is the religiousness or, as he calls, the
personal piety.
To do this, the first step is to understand the religion of
Akhenaten ex-
pressed in the official texts and, after that, take into account
the various
types of sources, so it can be possible to put the religion in
its social con-
text.
2) Some considerations on the religion of Akhenaten based
mainly on the Great Hymn to the Aten7
1) The Great Hymn to the Aten as the Small Hymn is an
adoration
text, enunciated by the pharaoh and his wife Nefertiti. The god
of Akhen-
aten, the Aten, is presented with the so-called "first didactic
name", used
until the 8th year of the reign of Akhenaten: "He lives
Re-Horakhty
who rejoices in the horizon" "in his name of Shu which is in the
Aten". In
the hymn, it is possible to perceive the great influence of the
ancient solar
cult of Heliopolis. Shu, here, means light some authors
translate this part
of the text as "in his name of light which is in the Aten". It
means a form
of association of the new religion with the ancient solar
religion: the Aten
is the demiurge associated with Re-Horakhty, Akhenaten is
identified as
Shu and Nefertiti as Tefnut.8 In addition, the name of the Aten
is pre-
sented in cartouches, which clearly expresses an attempt of
strict association
between the pharaoh and the Aten: an exaggeration of the
principal
7 The Great Hymn to the Aten expresses the major points of the
religion of Akhenaten and its contents vary little in relation to
the Short Hymn, except for the fact that the second clarify some
aspects of the relation be-
tween the pharaoh and the Aten. We use here an inedited
translation of the hymns into Portuguese by Ciro
Flamarion Cardoso. A translation of the Short Hymn, however, has
already been published: Cardoso, C. F., Op.
Cit., 2001, 116-118. It is also necessary to consider the very
useful book which contains the texts of the Amarna
Period: Murnane, W. J., Texts from the Amarna Period in Egypt. 8
For example, for the representation of Akhenaten as Shu, see:
Redford, D. B., Akhenaten: the heretic king, 103.
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90 Archaeology, religion, ritual and Ancient Egypt
tendencies of the New Kingdom to emphasize the dynastic god and
di-vinize the living pharaoh during the Amarna Period.
2) The Aten created the whole life and is the responsible for
its mainte-
nance. When he rises in the Orient in the morning he fills all
the people in
every place with his perfection, i.e. with his breath of life.
The Aten is in
the sky and because of this he can illuminate and submit all the
localities to
the sovereignty of his son, Akhenaten apart from being a simple
theo-
logical text, the Great Hymn is a text of legitimacy of the
Egyptian empire.
At the same time he distant in the sky, the Aten can be near and
touch the
faces of the humans with his rays. The character of the religion
of the Aten
was immanent, i.e. from this world: the Aten could be seen in
the sky by
everyone, even distant and inaccessible. Unlike, in the
traditional religion
the transcendence was the major element for the explanation of
the world
and of the possible forms of acting materially, with the
objective of main-
taining the social and cosmic order expressed in the notion of
maat. The
religion of Akhenaten consisted of a (failed) attempt of
substitution of a
religion for another, simpler, in which the gods and the
transcendence
were eliminated, giving place to a religious conception of
emphasis in a
sole divinity and in the role of the king and his family.
3) No one knows about the Aten during the night; it is a moment
of
terror, "like death", and the Egypt can be invaded by the
chaotic forces.
People protect themselves in their homes, but even all their
things can be
robbed and they can be attacked by dangerous animals. All life
become
inert, until the Aten rises in the horizon. Even if both
temporalities, neheh
and djet, had continued being mentioned, the last one lost its
mythological
base which, in the New Kingdom, as in the past, depended
essentially on
Osiris. Before the Amarna Period, in the New Solar Theology,
during the
night, the victory of Re under the chaos in the reign of Osiris
ensured the
stability and the social order. With the reformation, in
contrast, the divine
and funerary offerings provided by the pharaoh to the Aten and
the dead
in the temples of Amarna were the ones that ensured the
stability of life
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Rennan de Souza Lemos 91
and the eternity of the dead9 which at that time without Osiris
was guar-
anteed at the same space of the living.10 Donald B. Redford
expresses this
very well: "[t]he Ennead, Apophis, and the denizens of the
underworld are
pointedly ignored in the funerary literature; and the underworld
itself is
referred to simply as the place from which the deceased comes
forth to
view the sun."11 Thus, the temporality of Amarna is that of this
world, the
cyclical time neheh, based on the daily cycle of the Sun Disc
even if dur-
ing the night nobody knows on its whereabouts , although there
are in-
consistencies between those conceptions and the social practices
of the
people.12
4) The Aten is the creator of all life, "unique", "without
equal"; all crea-
tions follow his designs, in Egypt and beyond. Every man is
placed in the
right place and his time of life is previously determined (it is
not clear,
however, what will happen after the end of the lifetime). The
Aten distin-
guishes everybody according to the language, skin colour, and
appearance,
but despite of all distinctions, he provides all the necessary
to life: in Egypt
he created the Nile, and in the other countries he makes it
rains. The Nile
became from the underworld, and it is the only reference to this
place:
there is no allusion to Osiris and the deceased. The Aten
includes everyone
in his majesty, whether in Egypt or in the foreign lands, and he
created all
the people to contemplate him in the sky.
This kind of conception makes some Egyptologists think that the
relig-
ion of Akhenaten consisted of a pure teaching that included all
the people.
In this perspective, the Aten would be the sole god, whose
creation differs
according to his designs. It would be, in this way, as if the
entire world
worshiped a unique god, in a universalist and inclusive
religion. Contrary,
9 Cf. Chapot, G., "O senhor da ao ritual: um estudo da relao
fara-oferenda divina durante a Reforma de Amarna" in Plthos 1
(2011): 21-35. 10 Cf. Hornung, E., Akhenaten and the religion of
light, 96. 11 Redford, D. B., Op. Cit., 176. Despite the
elimination of the Osirian transcendence, the making of mummies and
funerary outfit, for example, continued to take place. 12 Beyond
the existence of funerary outfit, in theory unnecessary, for
example, there are references to the demy-thologized Duat and
intentions of "an extensive lifetime upon the beautiful West (and)
of libation(s) of wine and milk on the offering table of his tomb
(shabit of the deputy Hat). Murnane, W. J., Op. Cit., 130.
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92 Archaeology, religion, ritual and Ancient Egypt
it is necessary to take into account the totality of sources
available for the
study of the whole religion and to question the theological
contents of the
religion of the Aten and perceive the social impact of this
religion on the
practices of the common people to construct a more reliable
knowledge of
the religious phenomenon in ancient Egypt during the Amarna
Period.
5) In the theology of Amarna, as said above, the role of the
pharaoh
was a central point. Akhenaten was the only son of the Aten and
the only
that could access this god; he was the intermediary between the
god and
the common people that, in theory, could not act ritually by
themselves in
the sense of maintaining the stability of life and assuring the
post mortem
eternity. To the extent that Akhenaten was the only son of his
god and the
intermediary between the Aten and the bulk of the population, he
should
be the focus of cult.
3) The religiousness in the context of the Amarna Period
In addition to the elimination of important mythological bases
of the
Egyptian thought, it is possible to perceive, through the
analysis of the
theological texts of Amarna, that also quotidian dangerous
situations, im-
possible to be materially controlled by the people, were ignored
in the new
religion of Akhenaten. There were not, in this new religion, for
example,
mythological elements that could be the base for the resolution
of prob-
lems and for the assurance of security, in this life and in the
other: difficult
moments, like the act of giving birth or situations of deceases,
had no
place in the religion of Amarna contrary to the traditional
religion, in
which existed various personal gods that were foci of daily cult
so that
could be possible to have stability in life. In the religion of
Akhenaten, the
Aten was the sole god that could assure the order of the things,
and the
pharaoh, the only one that had direct access to the Sun Disc, as
a solar
priest, was the sole responsible for providing the necessary
offerings to the
god so that the universe and the lives of people could be
stable.13
13 Cf. Chapot, G., Op. Cit..
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Rennan de Souza Lemos 93
In this way, there was not space for individual or collective
(ritual) ac-
tions whose goal was to overcome unfavourable situations within
the relig-
ion of Amarna, or for what is called personal piety. Indeed,
this kind of
interpretation must be criticized, in that it draws conclusions
on the whole
religious phenomenon during the Amarna Period, only taking into
account
textual evidence produced within the social sector interested in
propagat-
ing this idea. It does not reflect the totality of the social
practices and con-
ceptions of world present at Amarna or, in general terms, in the
New
Kingdom Egypt.
In ancient Egypt, according to John Baines, "from the diversity
of reli-
gious actions follow that the normal religious lives of the
people could oc-
cur far from the religious centres."14 In this diversity of
actions were in-
cluded "regular" actions, related to the official cult, and
"irregular" actions,
which were related to the practices of religiousness or personal
piety.15 It
addresses to the understanding of the religiousness as a
"specific option,
within religion, with respect to values, attitudes and
behaviours"16 an ex-
ample is the magic and the use of apotropaic amulets, which were
impor-
tant elements of the practices of religiousness.17
It was not different during the Amarna Period. The religiousness
was an
important element of the life of the bulk of people, while the
religion of
Akhenaten did not provide mythological bases for ritual actions
of others
that were not the king.
In the Egyptological studies, three basic positions are taken on
the topic
of religiousness: (1) the position of Jan Assmann, which defends
that the
personal piety, i.e. the direct relation between people and
gods, was only a
structural element of the religious life during the Ramesside
Period; (2) the position of Barry Kemp, which addresses that "life
is likely to have
14 Baines, J., "Sociedade, moralidade e prticas religiosas" in
Shafer, B. E., (ed.), As religies no Egito antigo: deuses, mitos e
rituais domsticos, 185. 15 Ibidem.
16 Cardoso , C. F., Histria das Religies in Cardoso, C. F., Um
Historiador fala de teoria e metodologia: ensaios., 223.
17 The archaeological sources for the study of the religiousness
at Amarna were gathered in: Stevens, A., Private religion at
Amarna: the material evidence, 27-254.
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94 Archaeology, religion, ritual and Ancient Egypt
been a basically secular experience in which religion had a
place of util-
ity";18 and (3) the position of John Baines, that recognizes
that the religion
of the ancient Egyptians of periods prior to the New Kingdom was
more
diverse, with decentralized foci of cult.19 Baines also puts the
following
question: "[w]ere the reforms the catalyst for a transformation
of religious
life, or was the change at least partly one of decorum and the
character and
loci of religious display, while the underlying beliefs and
practices changed
less than might appear?"20
It is logical to think that, with the end of the Amarna Period,
there was
a clear reaction to such a period, as we can perceive through
the theologi-
cal and official texts such as, for example, the Book of the
Heavenly Cow
(which says, in certain passage: "words to be spoken by these
deities who
have gone off alive..."),21 or the Restoration Stele of
Tutankhamun, which
says: "(...) the good ruler who performs benefactions for his
father and all
the gods, having repaired what was ruined as a monument lasting
to the
length of continuity, and having repelled disorder throughout
the Two
Lands (...). When his Person appeared as king, the temples and
the cities of
the gods and goddesses (...) were fallen into decay and their
shrines were
fallen into ruin, having become mere mounds overgrown with
grass. (...)
He gave more than what had existed before, surpassing what had
been
done since the time of his ancestors (...)."22
After the Amarna Period, in respect of the everyday of the
majority of
the people, however, it does not seem that there was a response
to the ref-
ormation in the religious practices and beliefs; even during the
Amarna
Period, it does not seem that the new religion of Akhenaten
modified the
everyday and the religious practices of the people. Obviously,
there was
some impact, but not in the sense of altering the totality of
the concep- 18 Kemp, B. J., "How religious were the ancient
Egyptians?" in Cambridge Archaeological Journal 5 (1995): 50 19
Baines, J., "Sociedade, moralidade e prticas religiosas" in Op.
Cit., 2. 20 Idem, Egyptian Letters of the New Kingdom as evidence
for religious practices in Journal of Ancient Near Eastern
Religions,1,1 (2001): 2. 21 Hornung, E., The Ancient Egyptian Books
of the Afterlife, 1995b, 148. 22 Murnane, W. J., transl., Op Cit,
212-213.
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Rennan de Souza Lemos 95
tions and personal practices in religious matters. What is sure
is that, out of
Amarna, the reformation did not have a great effect.23
We defend here that the reformation of Akhenaten did not
mean
changes in the forms of religiousness; its impact on such forms
of relig-
iousness did not occur in order to modify them: the focus of the
religion
of Akhenaten was elitist, not seeking to include the majority of
the people
without access to the official cult. This elitist character can
be perceived in
the archaeological evidence and in the uses of the urban space
at Amarna.
There was appropriation, by some part of the population, of
certain as-
pects of the new religion, without taking into account the
exclusivity of
Akhenaten in accessing his god, the Aten. Both the Aten and the
tradi-
tional gods were part of the religious landscape at Amarna, and
the direct
contact with the gods functioned as a possibility of acting
ritually (and ef-
fectively, according to the Egyptian thought), individually or
collectively, in
the sense of assuring the stability of life.
So, we believe that the Amarna Period, in religiousness matters,
fol-
lowed the tendencies of the New Kingdom that was consolidated in
the
Ramesside Period not with the emergence of the personal piety as
a struc-
turing element of life but, according to Ciro Flamarion Cardoso,
with the
emergence of the individual.24 Against the perspective of
Assmann, who
agrees that the Amarna Period consisted of an interruption of
the develop-
ment of the religious experience whose heyday occurred in the
Ramesside
Period, we agree that the Amarna Period consisted of a period of
continu-
ity of the tendencies of the New Kingdom. This continuity can be
per-
ceived in the material culture and in the organization of the
urban space,
where the social practices were held and specific places were
defined in the
landscape.25 23 At Amarna, there were influences of the new
religion over the practices of the people, not structurally
how-
ever. Outside this city, in official spheres, the greater the
distance of the pharaonic court, the lesser the intensity of
penetration of the new religion. In some case, at least, there were
concessions, as in the case of the tomb of Aper-el. See,
respectively: Redford, D. B., Op. Cit., 175; Zivie, A., The Lost
Tombs of Saqqara. 24 Criticizing Jan Assman and Pascal Vernus, the
author defends that the social emergence of the individual was the
main characteristic of the Ramesside Period, and not the personal
piety, that existed in previous periods. Cardoso, C. F., Op. Cit.,
2003, 24 - 28. 25 For an archaeology of the landscape of Amarna,
see: Richards, J., "Conceptual landscapes in the Egyptian Nile
Valley" in Ashmore, W., Knapp, A. B., (eds.), Archaeologies of
landscape: contemporary perspectives. Consider also: Kemp, B. J.,
Ancient Egypt: anatomy of a civilization.
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96 Archaeology, religion, ritual and Ancient Egypt
4) Religion, religiousness, ritual and social practice
In History of Religions, establishing a definition for religion
is a very
difficult matter. Within the most varied definitions, it is
possible to find
propositions that express a clearly intention of the author or
others that
seek to be distant from religion, i.e. the object of research.
According to
Trevor Ling, for example, "the realization of the many and
varied forms in
which the man has manifested to be conscious of the existence of
a di-
mension distinct of that temporal and 'material' can be
valuable, in a epoch
increasingly threatened by secularism."26 This example does not
make
sense in History, but only in Theology, in that it starts,
without any proof,
from the assumption that there is another dimension beyond the
one we
live in.27
Another aspect that makes difficult to define religion as an
object of
historical research is the kind of approach that excludes the
religious phe-
nomenon from the more general social context. For example, Colin
Ren-
frew assumes that the religious phenomenon must be addressed in
a way
that separates it from the general sphere of human activity: "a
more serious
difficulty perhaps accompanies our very conceptualization of
'religion' it-
self, as a distinguishable, and in some cases separable, field
of human activ-
ity. (...) [F]rom the standpoint of the archaeologist, religious
activities are
potentially open to observation only when they might be
identifiable as
religions by an observer at the time in question."28 In studies
based in ma-
terial culture, it is the hypothesis that the non-utilitarian
aspect of an arte-
fact indicates its religious nature.
Trying to overcome the difficulties of the approach and
definition of
the religious phenomenon as an object of History and, for
extension, of
Archaeology , the ideal is to adopt what Ciro Flamarion Cardoso
calls
"functional definition", i.e. a definition that seeks to be
distant from the
26 Ling, T., Las grandes religiones de Oriente y Occidente:
desde la Prehistoria hasta el auge del Islam, 13. 27 Cardoso, C.
F., Histria das Religies in Cardoso, C. F., Op. Cit.., 210. 28
Renfrew, C., "The archaeology of religion" in Renfrew, C., Zubrow,
E., (eds.), The ancient mind: elements of cogni-tive archaeology,
47.
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Rennan de Souza Lemos 97
religion that is being investigated, considering it as a result
of the social
organization of a certain group.29
Based on this author, we will adopt here the functional
definition of
Angelo Brelich, who considers religion as a group of "(...)
beliefs, actions,
institutions etc. that instead of its extreme variability,
seemed to constitute
the products of a given kind of creator effort undertaken by
distinct hu-
man societies, over which it pretends to obtain the control of
what, in the
concrete experience of reality, looks to bypass the other human
means of
control."30
We choose to adopt the proposition of Brelich, followed by
Cardoso,
because this definition, emphasizing the human experience in the
material
plan, offers a base for the construction of an approach that
encompasses,
at the same time, the religious conceptions of the people and
the social
practices in the context of religion. This definition still
implies that the
contours of what could be "religious" change with time, i.e.
what is relig-
iously "controllable" by the people varies according to the
epochs.
In this way, religion, especially in the ancient Egypt, where
all aspects of
the social life were endowed with a religious sense, was the
backdrop of
the unfolding of life. Thus, within religion are enclosed all
the beliefs and
practices of the whole population, religious or everyday
ones.
In terms of seeking to elaborate a holistic model that
encompasses the
beliefs and behaviours of the people in a society whose everyday
was
closely linked to religion, the methodological discussions of
Karen Louise
Jolly can be very interesting. Departing from the analytic
categories called
"formal religion" and "popular religion", she constructs an
approach of the
beliefs and practices of the whole population of the Late Saxon
England.
According to Jolly, the formal and popular areas of the
religions compre-
hend two not totally opposed spheres: they configure two domains
in con-
stant interaction the popular religion is "the more
comprehensive and yet 29 Cardoso, C. F., Op. Cit., 2005, 210. 30
Apud, Ibidem.
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98 Archaeology, religion, ritual and Ancient Egypt
more amorphous sphere, incorporating the widest population and
prac-
tice", while the formal religion can be understood as "smaller
and tighter,
making up a self-defined dominant minority within the total
practice of the
religion."31
Even if the focus of this approach is the total religious
phenomenon,
the terms used, i.e. "formal religion" and "popular religion",
can be under-
stood as distinct things. On the contrary, according to Julian
Pitt-Rivers,
the use of the term "religiousness" is more useful,32 being
understood in
the manner of Jolly (even if the author does not use that term):
"the more
inclusive category since it is concerned with the general
religious beliefs
and practices of the whole community, not with selected
individuals or
specific institutions".33 The religiousness is considered "as
one facet of a
larger, complex culture, consists of those beliefs and practices
common to
the majority of the believers. (...) [It includes] the formal
aspects of the re-
ligion as well as the general religious experience of the daily
life. These
popular practices include rituals marking the cycles of life
(birth, marriage
and death) or combating the mysterious (illness and danger) or
assuring
spiritual security (the afterlife). Popular belief was reflected
in those rituals
and in other symbols exhibited in the society, such as
paintings, shrines
and relics."34
Thus, the religiousness is the result of a historical tradition,
of a habitus:
"(...) the system of the interiorized schemes that permits the
engendering
of all the characteristic thoughts, perceptions and actions of a
culture, and
only that. (...) [It consists of a] general disposition,
generating of particular
schemes, susceptible of being applied to different domains of
the thought
and action."35
It means to say that the practices (ritual or everyday ones) of
religious-
ness, in the general context of religion a social ideology that
works as the 31 Jolly, K. L., Popular religion in Late Saxon
England: elf charms in context, 18. 32 Pitt-Rivers, J., "La gracia
en antropologa", in Santal, C. A., (ed.), La religiosidad popular,
117. 33 Jolly, K. L., Op. Cit., 19. 34 Ibidem, 9.
35 Bourdieu, P., A economia das trocas simblicas, 349.
-
Rennan de Souza Lemos 99
backdrop of the practices consist of forms of expression of the
cognitive
framework socially shared, a structured group of collective
representations.
The habitus encompasses the predispositions of the people to
perceive,
think and act, in socially predicted ways.
Consequently, in the case of the ancient Egypt, the
religiousness was
the result of a religious thought structuring of the world, and
accompanied
its organic development; the result of the habitus, "the product
of history,
[that] produces individual and collective practices, and hence
history, in
accordance with the schemes engendered by history".36 It is
therefore nec-
essary to historicize the religiousness and to put it in
context: it is certain
that in the New Kingdom there were clear changes in the social
ideology,
whose bases were in the change of the conception and role of the
king and
dynastic god. However, it does not mean that the religiousness
was non-
existent or a less important element in previous periods;
affirming this, as
do Jan Assmann, means a bad methodological posture, based in the
silence
of the sources.37
Since the Old Kingdom, the so-called "votive religion", or
better, a
form of religiousness, can be perceived in the sources. For
example, in the
mastaba of the deified vizier Isi, in Edfu, were founded
offering tables,
steles and other votive objects offered by the local people.38
Another Old
Kingdom example is that of the cult of Hekaib, nomarch of Aswan
(6th
Dynasty). In addition, for the Middle Kingdom we have more
quantities of
sources: for example, there is evidence of a shrine in the Wadi
Hammamat
and also evidence of "'two small obelisks and one offering
table' stolen
from Wadi Hudi".39 It is possible to find references to the
religiousness
before the New Kingdom also in the texts, for example, in the
Tale of the
Shipwrecked Sailor, where we can find a common form of
religiousness: a
burnt offering of an animal to the gods.40 36 Bourdieu, P.,
Outline of a theory of practice, 82 37 Cardoso, C. F., Op. Cit.,
(2003), 183-192. 38 Sadek, A. I., Popular religion in Egypt during
the New Kingdom, 6. 39 Ibidem, 8. 40 Ibidem, 7. The text says: I
stuffed myself and put some down, because I had too much in my
arms. Then I cut a fire drill, made a fire and gave a burnt
offering to the gods. Translated by Lichtheim, M., Ancient Egyptian
Literature, Vol. III, 212.
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100 Archaeology, religion, ritual and Ancient Egypt
For these periods, it is known much more about the religious
everyday
of the temples than about the everyday of the people in
religious matters,
without access to the ritual fulfilled in those institutions.
The temples
worked as the materialization of the orderly cosmos, in which
the pharaoh
(who delegated functions to the priests around Egypt) presided
the cult,
acting ritually to maintain maat.41
Excluded of the official cult, thus, in religious matters the
experience
of most part of the people was very different of the ideal of
the elite,42 as
the material conditions of that elite in relation to the
illiterate majority of
the population what, probably, resulted in variations on the
forms of
understanding the world and in the constitution of a different
habitus, ac-
cording to the social variation. Therefore, the experience of
the people on
religiousness, taking into account the conceptions of John
Baines, hap-
pened outside the temples and their cult43 at home, for
example.
The New Kingdom is the most documented epoch in religious and
re-
ligiousness matters. We have, for example, varied sources of
votive prac-
tices, magic44 and personal piety in general. Even in textual
evidence it is
possible to identify elements of religiousness.45
Instead of this, the apprehension of the religiousness of the
ancient
Egyptians of the New Kingdom and, specifically, of the
inhabitants of
Amarna, by the researcher depends mostly of Archaeology. The
artefacts
excavated in the ancient city show us the great intersection
between what
was ritual and what was everyday practice. The interpretation of
some ob-
jects, as amulets and jewels, is somewhat problematic for the
researcher, in
that it can be associated at the same time to rituals of daily
life practice.46
41 Cf. Shafer, B. E., Temples, priests and rituals: an overview
in Shafer, B. E., (ed.), Temples of ancient Egypt . 42 Baines, J.,
Op. Cit., 2002, 166. 43 Ibidem.
44 See, for example: Pinch, G. Votive offerings to Hathor; Magic
in Ancient Egypt. 45 Cf. Baines, J., Op. Cit, 2001, 1-31. 46
Stevens, A., Op. Cit.,
-
Rennan de Souza Lemos 101
In Archaeology, there are two major approaches to ritual: (1)
emphasis
in the sacred and symbolic, and in the sense of the religious
ritual; and (2)
emphasis in the ritual practices and in the forms of
ritualization of those
practices the starting point for the posterior identification of
sacred ele-
ments in the archaeological records. Archaeologists of both
sides, how-
ever, are using the concept of ritual agreeing that it consists
in a "form of
behaviour";47 indeed, as Brck alerts, not always such a concept
was ap-
plied with the necessary theoretical rigor: until the 1990's,
everything that
was not well understood by the archaeologist was classified as
ritual.48
The point that generates the major debates in the approaches of
relig-
ion and ritual in Archaeology is just the relation between
religion and rit-
ual, symbolism and practice. In structuralist terms, the
approaches of relig-
ion tend to emphasize the socially shared system of symbols as
the pre-
dominant factor in the interpretation of the evidence. Religion
is consid-
ered, for example, as: "(1) a system of symbols that act for (2)
establishing
powerful, penetrating and durable dispositions and motivations
in the men
through the (3) formulation of concepts of an order of general
existing and (4) dressing these conceptions with such an aura of
factuality which (5) the
dispositions of motivations seem to be singularly realistic. A
system of
symbols that act for...".49
In this way, religion is a mere means of communication of
symbols and
beliefs, understood through the material remains, and ritual is
the form by
which such symbols are communicated: "ritual is a form of human
action
determined or shaped by underlying religious views.50
In this sense, rituals are purely sacred; materially identified,
transmit
conceptions of the world and myths, religious symbols. The
ritual becomes
an anachronistic category of analysis which expresses religion,
understood 47 Fogelin, L., "The archaeology of religious ritual" in
Annual Review of Anthropology 36 (2007): 56. 48 Brck, J., "Ritual
and rationality: some problems in European archaeology" in European
Journal of Archaeology 2, 3 (1999): 314. 49 Geertz, C., A
interpretao das culturas, 67. 50 Fogelin, L., Op. Cit., 57.
-
102 Archaeology, religion, ritual and Ancient Egypt
many times as something separated from the social life, as
Renfrew af-
firmed. Even if, according to this author, the archaeologist
cannot take
account of beliefs in the past,51 the ritual, materially
identified, necessarily
comes from a religious context what would be made, thus, is an
archae-
ology of the religious cult.52
For identifying (religious) ritual, Renfrew proposes to follow a
checklist
of archaeological indicators of ritual that take into account,
basically, these
points: (1) focusing attention; (2) boundary zone between this
world and
the next; (3) presence of a deity; and (4) participation and
offerings.53
Although generalizing and inclusive, the list proposed by
Renfrew is
only valid for the context studied during its elaboration,
encompassing the
aspects of the religious rituals undertaken at the Bronze Age
sanctuary of
Phylakopi, in the island of Melos. Recently, Renfrew has
discussed his own
theoretical postures of emphasis in the religious ritual as the
materializa-
tion of religion, considered as a separated sphere of human
activity. As in
his initial work on the theme, Renfrew admits that the checklist
does not
include all aspects of ritual activity that are not developed
into temples, for
example, domestic rituals: "[t]here is, after all, little to
distinguish a collec-
tion of rather solemn dolls from a series of small-scale
representations of
deities made for serious cult purpose other than the underlying
intention.
Indeed in the pueblo villages of the American southwest the
paradox is
complete. For Kachina dolls are there made, depicting
supernatural beings,
for the use of children, to instruct them about the relevant
religious con-
cepts."54
In a contrary perspective, it is defended that "it is needed to
be aware of
the notion of irrationality, attributed for many times to ritual
and religion
and that, based in the dualism sacred/profane, presupposes that
the ritual
51 Especially for prehistorical contexts. The situation improves
when there is another kind of documentation besides the
archeological available. On this see: Scarre, C., The meaning of
death: funerary beliefs and the prehistorian in The Ancient Mind:
Elements of Cognitive Archaeology. 52 Cf. Renfrew, C., The
archaeology of cult: the sanctuary at Phylakopi. 53 Ibidem, Op.
Cit., 1994, 51-52. 54 Ibidem, Op. Cit., 1985, 21.
-
Rennan de Souza Lemos 103
is only linked to the symbolic, mystic and supernatural."55 This
is because,
in this view, it is defended that the ritual has its own
rationality and effi-
cacy in past contexts (as in the case of the ancient Egypt, for
example,
whose worldview considered "human world (individual and social),
divine
world, natural world [as] aspects of a whole saw as such, devoid
of insur-
mountable barriers.")56 At the same time it is defended
correctly such
a theoretical position, the previous approaches are accused of
considering
the notion of ritual as opposed to science: ritual was
considered as emo-
tive, supernatural, without practical aspects of intervention in
the world.57
In this approach, ritual is not simply an expression of
religion, it is also
practice, which creates social relations and religious
beliefs.58 The focus
turned from the symbolic to the practice; ritual is seen as a
process, more
than an isolated event.59
According to Catherine Bell, the ritual activity (or likewise)
has some
general characteristics: (1) formalism associated to the
formulaic actions,
related to what to say, act etc.; (2) traditionalism the search
for the legiti-
mating antiquity of the ritual makes the historical changes in
the practices
not explicit; (3) invariance the things must always be done in
the same
way or, at least, people must believe that; (4) rule-governance
the ritual
has its own rules; (5) symbolism the ritual is frequently
associated to
symbols socially recognized; and (6) performance the ritual must
be
played and the actions must follow the ritual rules.60
Ritual can be interpreted as present in all quotidian actions:
it is the
"routinization" of ritual, the pan-ritualism, which considers
any kind of
action that involves such characteristics as a ritual one.61
55 Lima, A. C. C., Tacla, A. B., Experincias Politestas, 6. 56
Cardoso, C. F., Op. Cit., 2003, 7. 57 Brck, J., Op. Cit., 336. 58
Fogelin, L., Op. Cit., 58.
59 Bell, C., Ritual theory, ritual practice; Humphrey, C.,
Laidlaw, J., The Archetypal actions of ritual.
60 Bell, C., Ritual: perspectives and dimensions, Chapter 5.
61 Bell, C., Ritual theory, ritual practice, 70.
-
104 Archaeology, religion, ritual and Ancient Egypt
Contrarily, according to a certain theory of practices that
includes the
ritual in the context of the totality of social practices,
ritual is not consid-
ered a practice like the others: it is what is strategically
distinguished in re-
lation to the other quotidian practices. In other words, ritual
is the product
of the process of ritualization: "a matter of various culturally
specific
strategies for setting some activities off from others, for
creating and privi-
leging a qualitative distinction between the 'sacred' and the
'profane', and
for ascribing such distinctions to realities thought to
transcend the powers
of human actors."62
Considering ritual as practice means to overcome the idea of
irrational-
ity and of the non-efficacy of this kind of practice in terms of
concrete ac-
tion, and to take into account the ancient thought which does
not mean
that the researcher believes in the ancient values. For the
Egyptians, acting
ritually, in the context of the social ideology that was the
religion, was a
concrete form of maintaining the social and cosmic order and to
be pro-
tected of what escaped the material means of control.
The ritual is, thus, different in the context of the general
practices, due
to its "communicative functions", culturally specific, i.e. the
ritual is given
by the ritualization, which consists in "a way of acting that
specifically es-
tablishes a privileged contrast [in relation to the practices
socially pro-
grammed], differentiating itself as more important or
powerful",63 and
takes place in a determined space/time.64 Therefore, "from the
perspective
of ritualization the categories of sacred and profane appear in
a different
light [differently of that simplistic one, which opposes the
ritual to the so-
cial]. Ritualization appreciates how sacred and profane
activities are differ-
entiated in the performing of them, and thus how ritualization
gives rise to
(or creates) the sacred as such by virtue of its sheer
differentiation from
the profane."65
62 Ibidem, 74. 63 Ibidem, 90. 64 Ibidem, 93. 65 Ibidem, 91.
-
Rennan de Souza Lemos 105
In this way, it is necessary, in the context of religiousness,
which in-
cludes both religious rituals and quotidian practices influenced
by religion,
to distinguish the strategically differentiated practices
(ritual ones) of the
quotidian ones. The distinction between "religious conduct" and
"religious
action" can be interesting in this way: "[i]n religious conduct,
although a
divinity or transcendental force may be understood to act, the
physical or
conscious effort of the human participant is not necessary. An
example is
the wearing of amuletic jewellery. In some respects, religious
conduct will
be less restricted to a specific physical zone, allowing its
human participant
greater scope to participate physically and consciously in other
activities,
either simultaneously or exclusively. In religious action,
however, the hu-
man participant can play a highly physically active and
conscious role. Ex-
amples of religious action include the undertaking of rites or
the offering
of votive material, both of which demand a degree of physical
participa-
tion. Religious ritual can be viewed as a key component of
religious ac-
tion."66
Thus, in the totality of the social practices, ritual can be
addressed as a
kind of religious action, while the religious conduct consists
of the other
practices everyday ones that can be influenced by religion,
which in
Egypt was the backdrop of the habitus.
This theory of emphasis in the ritual as practice was the
responsible for
the overcoming of the simplistic dichotomy that opposed religion
to the
society, and associated ritual to the ineffective, irrational.
Notwithstanding,
this approach presents some failures that should be addressed.
For exam-
ple, it is necessary to put ritual in the context of religion,
as emphasizes
Timothy Insoll. According to this archaeologist, "[t]he more we
look, the
more we can see religion as a critical element in many areas of
life above
and beyond those usually considered technology, diet, refuse
patterning,
housing. All can be influenced by religion; they are today, why
not in the
past? Religion can be of primary importance in structuring life
into which
secular concerns are fitted, the reverse of the often-posited
framework."67 66 Stevens, A., Op. Cit., 21. 67 Insoll, T.,
Archaeology, ritual, religion, 22.
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106 Archaeology, religion, ritual and Ancient Egypt
It is needed, then, to make an archaeology of religion that
encompasses
all the sensorial and practical aspects that constituted the
experience of the
people in the past. An archaeology that recognizes "that many
elements of
life can be structured by religion, and can be archaeologically
recognizable
as such, above and beyond the usually considered domains of
sacred sites
and burial."68
Considering religion like this, as influencing all the aspects
of life, is
very useful in the case of the ancient Egypt, in which religion
worked as
the backdrop of the social practices (ritual and everyday ones).
However,
theoretically, in a more generalizing way, we do not know if it
is applicable
to any epoch and context studied.
The distinguished ritual practices in the context of the
socially pro-
grammed practices, i.e. in the context of the habitus, are
identifiable due to
the specific strategies applied which, in the ancient Egypt, can
be recogniz-
able more easily, because of the variety of sources, texts,
images or mate-
rial culture. The recognition of ritual is based in the
archaeological context;
in Egypt, for example, the symbolism of the art works as an
indicator of
ritual or likewise activities.69 The Egyptological knowledge on
religion
turns easier the recognition of the socially shared symbols
present in the
material remains; it must be taken into account the context and
the indica-
tors of ritual activity present in it.
5) Conclusions
The organization of the spaces and the definition of places in
the urban
landscape consist of forms of expression of the quotidian
experience of
the people and in their forms of acting and conceiving the world
they lived
in.70 A space previously profane could, in this sense, become
sacred, after
human intervention: "not only the construction of a sanctuary,
but also of 68 Ibidem, 13.
69 For the symbolism of the Egyptian art, see: Wilkinson, R.,
Reading Egyptian Art, Hieroglyphic Guide to Ancient Egyptian
Painting and Sculpture.
70 On the urban planning of Amarna, see: Kemp, B. J., Ancient
Egypt: anatomy of a Civilization.
-
Rennan de Souza Lemos 107
a house or a city traditionally remits to the ritual of
transformation of the
profane space."71 In these defined places, people expressed
their religious-
ness by ritual practices of effective intervention in the living
world. The
spaces of the temple, neighbourhood and house consisted of the
three
more basic levels of expression of the religiousness.72
In the context of Amarna, of an attempt of substitution of a
religion by
another one, radically simplified, it is needed to take into
account these
different levels of expression of religiousness. People did not
have access
to the temples of the Aten: it was only the pharaoh that
presided the cult
and offered to the god and the dead (it was possible, however,
to make
votive offerings to the Aten);73 in the public spaces it was
possible to wear
amulets and jewels with representations of the gods; and, at
home or in the
chapels, it was possible to undertake rituals to the gods or
even to the
Aten.74
The ancient Egyptian religion worked as an ideology that
permeated all
the spheres of daily life; however, the religion of Akhenaten,
even if it in-
fluenced some practices, it was not able to change those
practices at all.
The new religion of the Aten did not have mythological bases
and, because
of this, it could not penetrate in the capillarity of the social
habitus; in addi-
tion, the character of this religion was elitist it did not have
the objective
of including the whole population.
The habitus of the general people at Amarna had the same
mythological
bases of the traditional religion; therefore, the quotidian
practices and the
experience of the religion did not change. In certain locations,
as houses
and private chapels, it would be possible to express the
traditional relig-
iousness freely thus, the indication that the Amarna Period
consisted of a
period of continuity of tendencies that was consolidated in the
Ramesside
71 Tuan, Y.-F., Topophilia: a study of environmental perception,
attitudes and values, 146. 72 Stevens, A., Op. Cit., 297. 73
Pendlebury, J. D. S. , The city of Akhenaten III, 93. 74 For the
direct relation between the Aten and the people, see: Bickel, S.,
"Ich spreche stndig zu Aton...": zur menschgott-beziehung in der
Amarna religion" in Journal of Ancietn Near Eastern Religions 3
(2001): 23-45.
-
108 Archaeology, religion, ritual and Ancient Egypt
Period with the social emergence of the individual, who could
express his religiousness and interact with the gods in a larger
way.
-
Rennan de Souza Lemos 109
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