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Temple Workers

The Workers - The People

As with all of the Pharaoh’s monumental buildings in stone, there were three types of Workers needed to complete any of Pharaoh’s great building projects: Skilled Workers, Seasonal Workers and Supporting Workers. The jobs allocated, but not limited to, were as follows:

  1. Skilled Workers: employed on a formal basis by the Royals to build their monuments and usually lived on site with their families; they were usually highly skilled in their given profession
  2. Seasonal Workers: utilised to Quarry materials, move the materials, set the stones in place, or in terms of building a Pyramid the “unskilled” labourers
  3. Supporting Workers: these workers could also be employed on a seasonal basis as the workforce grew, but some would have been employed full time as the Skilled Workers needed their support. These tended to be bakers, carpenters, butchers, leather workers, cooks, water carriers, brewers, weavers for clothing and others

For more details about the Workers, click here to read about how they were drafted for the building of the Pyramids at Giza. 

Who looked after the Temples once they were built? 

The Priesthood

For the Male Deities, the Priests were all male, known in Ancient Egyptian as Hemnetjer, with a Hemnetjer Tepi in control. For the Female Deities, the Priestesses were all female, known in Ancient Egyptian as Hemet-netjer, with a Hemetnetjer Tepi in control.

They were the ones who ensured that the population followed the Pharaoh in observing the Ma’at, then this ensured that the Gods and Goddess’ could establish the Heka to maintain order in the World.

To ensure each Deity was supported physically as well as spiritually, it was invested into its own Statue which was housed in the inner sanctum of that God’s or Goddess’ Temple.

How did they serve?

Throughout most of Egypt, either the Hemnetjertepi or Hemetnetjertepi was the only person allowed in the Deity’s presence.

In the Middle Kingdom, a Hemetnetjertepi could pose as the God Amun’s Wife and become an equal to the Hemnetjertepi of Amun in Karnak Temple, Thebes.

To differentiate between the Priestly Orders, the Servants dressed differently depending on which Deity they supported within the Temple they were assigned to. Their function was only to service the Deity, not to service the followers of the Deity.

Lower Temple staff were split into 5 Phyles which was then sub-divided into 2 divisions, which were each required to work one month in ten. Women and Men could serve a God or a Goddess, but this often-followed gender roles.

The higher hierarchy of the Temple staff were usually retained on a continuing basis. What we would today refer to as full time rather than part time or seasonal workers. 

Typically, the Hemnetjertepi or Hemetnetjertepi was assigned by Pharaoh and performed the most important rituals and managed the administrative business of the Temple.

Purity

Servants had to be pure in the eyes of Ma’at in order to serve the God or Goddess

Meaning that they:

  • washed at least twice a day in the sacred pools that can still be seen at Temple sites
  • wore only the cleanest linen or leopard skin clothing and never wool or leather as animal products were considered impure
  • the Hemnetjer shaved off all of their body hair, to rid themselves of lice and to be totally pure
  • some were prohibited from eating fish

An Idea of what the Daily Rituals in a Temple were like

The Servants performed secretive daily rituals in each Temples throughout Egypt

 

Morning:        

Lighting the Fire Ritual: meet before dawn in a sacred room close to the Inner Sanctum and re-enact the Dawn by lighting a fire in a brazier.

Drawing the Bolt Ritual: door to the Inner Sanctum was unlocked and the Hemnetjertepi or Hemetnetjertepi would enter to wake the Deity by anointing the Statue with sacred oil and perfume.

The Deity is then dressed in ceremonial clothing and painted. Offerings of food and drinks were then served by lesser Hemnetjer

 

Midday:         

Ritual to purify Water and Incense

 

Afternoon:     

Ritualised offerings would be made in outer Shrines in the Temple. These were often in the form of music, dance and the recital of hymns for the Deity to listen to

 

Evening:         

Closing the Bolt Ritual: door to the Inner Sanctum was completed once the Deity had been returned and dressed for the night period

An Idea of Temple Hierarchy

Hemnetjer & Hemetjertepi – Inner Sanctum role directly with the Deity

Sem priests – Embalmed the deceased, officiated Mortuary Rituals and conducted Funeral services

Hour Priests – Astronomers who kept the diary and worked out the lucky and unlucky days for the Deity and the Pharaoh. They may be asked to interpret the dreams of the Pharaoh, under which wars were started as these were seen to be undertaken at a fortuitus time for the Gods

Heryheb or Cheriheb – Scribed religious texts, instructed clergy, and recited the Heka

Scribes – Writing magical texts, issuing royal decrees, keeping and recording the funerary rites

Swnw – Physical Medicine Doctor    &     

Sau – Magical Doctor

Cult singers Musicians & Dancers – Perform the Rituals for the Deities in the main Temple arenas

Ka-priest – Performs daily offerings at a tomb of the deceased on behalf of the family

Kitchen staff and Janitors – Prepared and delivered food and drink for the Deity and the Temple community

Lay Magicians – Community Role: counselling, magical arts and healing    &    

Wab Priests – Essential but mundane tasks of taking care of the Temple complex

How did the general populace use the Temple?

Significant numbers took gifts to Temples to request intervention on their behalf or to thank the Deity for such an intervention already performed. Gifts were in many forms. From food and drink, amulets, monetary gifts to parcels of land. They would not be allowed to enter in too much of the Temple as this was forbidden. Although some Servants served as Judges for the local people and they may bring them in to the first courtyard in order to assess their case.

Temple Festivals

Temples would celebrate their Deity with Festivals throughout the year. This was when the local population were involved on a personal level with the Deity’s statue directly.

Unlike today’s major religions, Temples were not for use by the population and they could not enter them past the first Courtyard, and even then, they were only allowed inside to give offerings, offer sacrifices and receive aid. There were no religious services of worship and the Priests or Priestesses served the Gods. Not the Populace. The only connection was that the Priests undertook the religious ceremonies that made sure that royalty and the people were seen favourably in the eyes of the Gods.

The populace often had statues of deities within their house, but a Festival allowed them to see the real Gods and Goddesses rather than just a copy of them.

The Priesthood understood that the ritualised “seeing” of the deities by the public at these festivals reaffirmed the strength of the religious culture.

It was also the opportunity for the population to give their thanks for any boons that they had been allowed throughout the year, and to ask for any sacred favours.

Many of the larger and more well-established Festivals involved large processions where one Deity would be taken to visit the Temple of another.

For more information about Festivals, click here.

Temple Economics

The larger Temples were major economic hubs and employed thousands of workers to supply food, clothing and jewellery for offerings to the Gods as well as the many priests.

Most Temples owned land which they farmed and then collected the grain. On the positive side, grain surpluses were held by the Temples which then went to feed the people during times of famine.

Looking at the negative, the land-wealth of the Temples of Amun-Ra, Ptah and some smaller Temples covered a total of 1,071,780 arouras, by the New Kingdom, which comprised to roughly 18% of all of Egypt’s arable land. 

A factor of the collapse of the central government at the end of the Old Kingdom was the exemption of the Temples from paying taxes, as ordered by the Pharaoh; the subsequent loss of the income for the Royal Treasury left the country cash poor.

This continued through the Dynasties until the reign of Pharaoh Akhenaten who saw that the Cult of Amun, especially at Karnak in Thebes, was so wealthy and politically powerful that they rivalled the throne of the Pharaoh.

Egyptologist have voiced that Akhenaten realised the danger of the Amun Priesthood and looked to prevent this through the establishment of monotheism in the form of the God Aten.

But attempting to overturn over 2,000 years of religious tradition and the livelihoods of many of the general populace would prove too much in too short a time, and his son, Pharaoh Tutankhamun quickly abolished his father’s religion and returned to Amun.

The priesthood flourished once more in Thebes and the manipulations of the Servants of the Deity evolved and have been scribed as crimes of bribery, usurpation of property, destruction of evidence and the support for powerful patrons over those with a lower political standing.

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