LEMOS (2012) Archaeology, Ritual, Religion and Ancient Egypt

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.

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.

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.


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.


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


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.


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..


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.


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.


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.


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.


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.


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.


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.


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.,


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.


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.


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.


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.


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.


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.


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.


Period with the social emergence of the individual, who could express his religiousness and interact with the gods in a larger way.


BIBLIOGRAPHY

ASSMANN, J., The search for god in ancient Egypt, Ithaca, Cornell Univer-

sity Press, 2001.

BAINES, J., "Egyptian letters of the New Kingdom as evidence for

religious practice" in Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 1, 1 (2001): 1-

31.

BAINES, J., "Sociedade, moralidade e prticas religiosas" in SHAFER,

B. E., (ed.), As religies no Egito antigo: deuses, mitos e rituais domsticos, So Pau-

lo, Nova Alexandria, 2002.

BELL, C., Ritual theory, ritual practice, Oxford, Oxford University Press,

1992.

BELL, C., Ritual: perspectives and dimensions, Oxford, Oxford University

Press, 1997.

BICKEL, S., "Ich spreche stndig zu Aton...": zur menschgott-

beziehung in der Amarna religion" in Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions

3 (2001): 23-45.

BOURDIEU, P. Outline of a theory of practice, Cambridge, Cambridge Uni-versity Press, 1977.

BOURDIEU, P. A economia das trocas simblicas, So Paulo, Perspectiva,

2003.

BRCK, J., "Ritual and rationality: some problems in European archae-

ology" in European Journal of Archaeology 2, 3 (1999): 313-344.


CARDOSO, C. F. A segunda morte de Osris: o fim da mitologia e o fim da transcendncia, Inedited.

CARDOSO, C. F., "De Amarna aos Ramss" in Phonix 7 (2001): 115-

141.

CARDOSO, C. F., A unidade bsica das representaes sociais relativas ao culto

divino e ao culto funerrio no antigo Egito, Niteri, Universidade Federal Flumi-

nense, 2003.

CARDOSO, C. F., "Histria das religies" in CARDOSO, C. F., Um

historiador fala de teoria e metodologia: ensaios, Bauru (So Paulo), EDUSC, 2005.

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.

FOGELIN, L., "The archaeology of religious ritual" in Annual Review of

Anthropology 36 (2007): 55-71.

GEERTZ, C., A interpretao das culturas, Rio de Janeiro, LTC, 2008.

HORNUNG, E., Conceptions of god in ancient Egypt, London, Routledge

and Kegan Paul, 1983.

HORNUNG, E., Akhenaten and the religion of light, Ithaca, Cornell Uni-

versity Press, 1995a.

HORNUNG, E., The ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife, Ithaca, Cornell

University Press, 1995b.


HUMPHREY, C.; LAIDLAW, J., The Archetypal actions of ritual: a theory of

ritual illustrated by the Jain rite of worship, Oxford, Oxford University Press,

1994.

INSOLL, T., Archaeology, ritual, religion, London, Routledge, 2004.

JOLLY, K. L., Popular religion in Late Saxon England: elf charms in context,

Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1996.

KEMP, B. J., "How religious were the ancient Egyptians?" in Cambridge

Archaeological Journal 5, 1 (1995): 24-54.

KEMP, B. J., Ancient Egypt: anatomy of a civilization, London, Routledge,

2006.

LEMOS, R. S., Uma arqueologia da paisagem urbana de Amarna: ritual e

religiosidade no Egito antigo (c. 1350-1330 a.C.), Niteri, Universidade Federal Fluminense, 2011.

LICHTHEIM, M., Ancient Egyptian Literature, Vol. III, California, Uni-

versity of California Press, 1975.

LIMA, A. C. C., TACLA, A. B., Experincias Politestas, Cadernos do

Ceia, n 1, Niteri, UFF, 2008.

LING, T., Las grandes religiones de Oriente y Occidente: desde la Prehistoria has-

ta el auge del Islam, Madrid, Istmo, 1972.

MURNANE, W. J., Texts from the Amarna Period in Egypt, Atlanta, Schol-

ars Press, 1995.


PENDLEBURY, J. D. S., The city of Akhenaten III, London, Egypt Ex-ploration Society, 1951.

PINCH, G., Votive offerings to Hathor, Oxford, Griffith Institute, 1993.

PINCH, G., Magic in Ancient Egypt, London, British Museum, 1994.

PITT-RIVERS, J. "La gracia en antropologa" in SANTAL, C. A.,

(ed.), La religiosidad popular, Barcelona, Anthropos, 117-212.

REDFORD, D. B., Akhenaten: the heretic king, Princeton, Princeton Uni-

versity Press, 1984.

RENFREW, C., The archaeology of cult: the sanctuary at Phylakopi, London,

British School at Athens/Thames and Hudson, 1985.

RENFREW, C., "The archaeology of religion" in RENFREW, C.,

ZUBROW, E., (eds.), The ancient mind: elements of cognitive archaeology, Cam-

bridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994, 47-54.

RENFREW, C., "Ritual and cult in Malta and beyond: traditions of in-

terpretation" in BARROWCLOUGH, D. A.; MALONE, C., (eds.), Cult in

context: reconsidering ritual in Archaeology, Oxford, Oxbow Books, 2006, 8-13.

RICHARDS, J., "Conceptual landscapes in the Egyptian Nile Valley" in

ASHMORE, W., KNAPP, A. B., (eds.), Archaeologies of landscape: contempo-

rary perspectives, London, Blachwell, 1999, 83-100.

SADEK, A. I., Popular religion in Egypt during the New Kingdom, Hilde-

sheim, Gerstemberg Verlag, 1987.


SCARRE, C., The meaning of death: funerary beliefs and the prehis-

torian in RENFREW, C., ZUBROW, E., (eds.), The Ancient Mind: Ele-

ments of Cognitive Archaeology, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994,

75 - 82.

SHAFER, B. E., Temples, priests and rituals: an overview in

SHAFER, B. E., (ed.), Temples of ancient Egypt, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1997, 1-30.

STEVENS, A., The material evidence for domestic religion a Amarna

and preliminary remarks on its interpretation in JEA 89 (2003): 143 - 168.

STEVENS, A., Private religion at Amarna: the material evidence, Oxford, Ar-chaeopress, 2006.

STEVENS, A., Domestic religious practices in WENDRIECH, W., DIELEMAN, J., (eds), UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology (2009), 1 - 31.

TUAN, Y.-F., Topophilia: a study of environmental perception, attitudes and val-

ues, New Jersey, Prentice-Hall, 1974.

WILKINSON, R., Reading Egyptian Art. A Hieroglyphic guide to Ancient

Egyptian Painting and Sculpture, Londom, Thames and Hudson, 1994.

ZIVIE, A., The Lost Tombs of Saqqara, Cairo, American University in

Cairo Press, 2007

Documents

LEMOS (2012) Archaeology, Ritual, Religion and Ancient Egypt