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The Ancient Egyptians regarded their temples as the "homes" of their respective god or deity. Temples could be single buildings or great complexes, but the most essential component for any temple was the innermost "cult chamber" or shrine, where the image of the god or deity was kept. The activities of the temple revolved around the worship and celebration of the god or deity's "cult" via the image or statue of that god which was placed in the temple's shrine. Temples were also used for religious festivals, which usually involved priestly processions with the god or deity transported on a barque (a scale model of a boat carried aloft on poles).
Temples were also considered to be architectural metaphors for the universe and the process of creation itself. The floor of the temple would gradually rise, passing through "forests" of plant-form columns and roofed by images of the constellations or the body of Nut. This would allow priests to ascend from the outermost edge of the universe, in towards the sanctuary, which symbolised creation and the "Primeval Mound" upon which the creator-god first brought the world into being.
Temples were also important elements of Egyptian economic infrastructure, employing large workforces and earning income from agricultural land and gold mines. Temples were surrounded by ancillary buildings such as granaries and slaughter-houses, in which daily offerings were stored and processed. Temple administration is documented both in temple reliefs and in certain surviving archives of papyri - the best discovered so far is from the Old Kingdom mortuary temples of Neferirkara and Raneferef at the pyramid complex of Abusir.
The funerary texts of the Ancient Egyptians >>
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