An Introduction to the Priests and Priestesses of Ancient Egypt

The blog post for this week is written by Yvonne Buskens-Frenken, from the Netherlands. She is a member of the Dutch Egyptology society Mehen and a former student of Egyptology at Manchester University (Certificate 2015 and Diploma 2017). While Yvonne has never been to the Egypt Centre before, she hopes to visit in the near future, perhaps with other Mehen members.

Introduction

Last week a new online course was launched by the Egypt Centre called In the Service of the Gods: Priests and Priestesses in Ancient Egypt, again brilliantly hosted by Dr Ken Griffin. Over the course of five weeks, the roles of priests, the priesthood of Amun, the God’s Wife of Amun, and that of Priestesses will be discussed. When starting a new course, I always ask myself what do I know about the topic and, for that matter, what I don’t. What new things will there be to learn this week? Already in this first week, I was pleasantly surprised with a newly published article that was brought to our attention; an article I will expand upon further below in this blog post. But first some sources on ancient Egyptian priests.

Sources
First of all, we do have Egyptian texts in the form of temple inscriptions, statue inscriptions, and papyri, such as the Abusir Papyri (fig. 1). The Abusir Papyri are a series of Fifth Dynasty administrative documents that give us detailed information on topics like the duty rosters for priests and how a royal mortuary temple should be run (Posener-Kriéger & de Cenival 1968). It further provides an overview about inventories of temple equipment and a list of daily offerings. They also concerned the two solar temples at Abu Gurab. Additionally, we have texts from classical authors like Herodotus, Diodorus, and Strabo. Herodotus (II, 36) describes, for example, the daily lives of priests, their cleansing rituals, religious duties, and eating habits (rules). But the majority of the textual evidence derives from the Graeco-Roman Period.

Fig. 1: Abusir Papyri. BM EA EA10735,10 (© The British Museum)

Article: Was the King of Egypt the Sole Qualified Priest of the Gods?
Dr Griffin introduced a recently published article, written by John Baines asking the question of whether the king was the sole qualified priest of the gods (Baines 2021). The contents of the article are certainly food for thought: are we perhaps mislead by images of kings in temple rituals, by texts from (classic) authors and the available objects about the topic? In his article, the author comes to the conclusion that the notion of the pharaoh being its sole fully legitimate priest is actually a modern one. The king rarely has priestly titles when carrying out rituals before the gods in temples and these activities do not signify that the king is a priest at all. In a scene depicted in the Great Hypostyle Hall at Karnak (fig. 2), you see the barque of Amun carried by numerous semi-divine figures (called the Souls of Nekhen and Pe). In the middle is a figure of the king (originally Seti I, but later usurped by Ramesses II) dressed as a priest. In this case, the king is actually identified as the High Priest, but this is a rarity according to Baines. Sometimes the king and priests are shown in the same scenes, but here the king is, as Baines states, rather playing the role of a priest in a liminal or divine world than acting as a priest.

Fig. 2: Ramesses II at the High Priest of Amun (after Baines 2021, fig. 6)

There are, of course, some well-known examples showing a king being depicted as a priest; the best-known examples are the ones from Ay in the tomb of Tutankhamun and of Herihor in the temple of Khonsu at Karnak. The one depicting Ay is actually unique and has its focus probably more on another aspect; the legitimisation of Ay as the successor of Tutankhamun rather than his role as an actual priest (fig. 3).

Fig. 3: Ay performing the Opening of the Mouth ceremony of Tutankhamun

 

Daily Temple Rituals
The Daily Temple Ritual consists of thirty-six core rituals, which are occasionally supplemented by additional acts. These cultic rituals were performed for the statue of the god by temple priests each day. They were mostly performed in the early morning and the High Priest was responsible for undertaking these rituals. The Daily Temple Rituals are attested in the temple of Seti I in Abydos, Medinet Habu, and the Great Hypostyle Hall at Karnak. They are also described in Papyrus Cairo CGC 58030 + Turin CGT 54041, and Papyrus Chester Beatty IX (Tacke 2013). John Baines refers to these rituals in his article, focussing specifically on the Abydos reliefs. According to him, the ritual spells explicitly concern priestly performances, which are adapted from models designed for priests (fig. 4). The king performing these rituals, for example, is not depicted as a priest and is also not captioned as one. Details of the design and captioning in these compositions are non-standard and cannot be taken as normal presentations of the king.

Fig. 4L Seti I burning incense before Osiris and Wepwawet

 

How to become a priest and priests appointed by the king
In ancient Egypt you could become a priest by:
• Hereditary right (from father to son);
• Ballot (a popular way);
• You could also buy your way in though purchasing the office (mainly during the Greek Period);
• Royal appointment, like Khaemwaset, son of Ramesses II.
Baines notes that in the running formula at Abydos, the text reads: “It is the king who has commanded to me to see the god” (n nswt wḏ n.i͗ mꜣꜣ nṯr). This is remarkably similar to the papyrus version (Papyrus Berlin 3055, iv, 2–3), which reads: “Now I am a priest; it is the king who has despatched me to see the god” (i͗w ḥm i͗nk ḥm-nṯr i͗n nswt wḏ wi͗ r mꜣꜣ nṯr). However, such texts are extremely rare in temple inscriptions.

Pasherienimhotep
Every week during the course, items from the Egypt Centre collection related to priests and priestesses will be highlighted. This week it is the beautiful stela of Pasherienimhotep (W1041) who was a priest of Edfu (fig. 5). In the text we find a comprehensive selection of priestly titles like Scribe of the Troops, Second Scribe of the Temple, God’s Servant of Harpakhered, God’s Servant of Amun of the Storehouse, Overseer of the Wab-priests of Sekhmet, Overseer of Magicians of Serqet, Chief Lector Priest, Scribe of the Divine Book, and Overseer of the Priests of Horus of Edfu.

Fig. 5: Front face of the stela of Pasherienimhotep (W1041)

Although Pasherienimhotep is not known from other sources, we do know from this stela that his father was the Third Priest of Horus of Edfu, called Harsiese. Interesting fact is that an owner of a stela now in the Cairo Museum (CGC 22049) bears the same name and priestly title as the father of Pasherienimhotep. The Harsiese of the Cairo stela mentions his parents. If this Harsiese is Pasherienimhotep’s father, a possible family tree can be proposed for Pasherienimhotep (fig. 6)!

Fig. 6: Proposed family tree of Pasherienimhotep

Week 2 of the course will be focused more on the role of priests.

Bibliography:

Baines, John 2021. Was the king of Egypt the sole qualified priest of the gods? In Collombert, Philippe, Laurent Coulon, Ivan Guermeur, and Christophe Thiers (eds), Questionner le sphinx: mélanges offerts à Christiane Zivie-Coche 1, 73–97. Cairo: Institut français d’archéologie orientale.

Escolano-Poveda, Marina 2020. The Egyptian priests of the Graeco-Roman period: an analysis on the basis of the Egyptian and Graeco-Roman literary and paraliterary sources. Studien zur spätägyptischen Religion 29. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.

Posener-Kriéger, Paule and Jean Louis de Cenival 1968. The Abu Sir papyri. Hieratic Papyri in the British Museum 5. London: The Trustees of the British Museum.

Sauneron, Serge 2000. The priests of ancient Egypt, New ed. Translated by David Lorton. Ithaca (NY): Cornell University Press.

Tacke, Nikolaus 2013. Das Opferritual des ägyptischen Neuen Reiches, 2 vols. Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 222. Leuven; Paris; Walpole, MA: Peeters.