‘A Temple Comes to Being’. A Few Comments on the Temple Foundation Ritual

• Authors: Janusz Karkowski
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Building a temple in Ancient Egypt began with the Foundation Ritual and ended with the consecration of the completed monument to its gods. The moment when the temple was ready for its cultic functions is by a majority of authors placed at the end of the process. The importance and complexity of the Foundation Ritual shows that directly after its completing the Egyptians might have treated extent of the future temple as a sacred space which already during the construction of the temple required some sort of cult. There seems to be no royal document referring to the official worship, but a number of ostraca from Deir el-Bahari and another longer document may be linked to this early stage unmaterialized existence of the temple. All these documents record the offerings presented in the temple by different officials of the time of Hatshepsut. At least some of them predate the completion of building operation.

Keywords

EN

Pharaonic Egypt; temple Foundation Ritual; Deir el-Bahari; temple of Hatshepsut; ostraca

• Publisher: Polska Akademia Nauk. Instytut Kultur Śródziemnomorskich i Orientalnych PAN
• Journal: Études et Travaux (Institut des Cultures Méditerranéennes et Orientales de l’Académie Polonaise des Sciences)
• Year: 2016
• Volume: 29
• Pages: 111–123

Contributors

author

Janusz Karkowski

• Instytut Kultur Śródziemnomorskich i Orientalnych Polskiej Akademii Nauk, Warszawa

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