The priests of ancient Egypt

200 Pages·1960·17.433 MB·English

by  Serge Sauneron

iPRIESIS OF ANCIENT EGYPT
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http://www.archive.org/details/priestsofancientOOsaun
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Translated by Monissett
The Priests of
Egypt
Ancient
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Evergreen Profile Book 12
EVERGREEN BOOKS LTD.
GROVE PRESS, INC.
LONDON
NEW YORK
First Published in This Edition 1960. All Rights Reserved.
Library ofCongress Catalog Card Number: 59-10792
EvergreenProfile Books arepublished
in the UnitedStates by GrovePress, Inc.
64 University Place, New York 3, N.Y.
in Great Britain by Evergreen Books Ltd.
17 Sackville Street, London, W. L _
Distributed in Canada by McClelland & Stewart Ltd., 25 Hollinger Road, Toronto 16
Firstpublishedin Franceby Editionsdu Seuil,Paris, as
Les pretres de Vancienne £gypte
MANUFACTURED BY MOUTON & Co., IN THE NETHERLANDS
'^ 77?^ Priests of Ancient Egypt
by Serge Sauneron
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Contents
sj 5 Introduction
4 9 Leafing Through Old Texts
29 The Priestly Function
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53 The World of the Temples
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J 77 The Sacred Activities
W 113 The Sacred Wisdom
N. 171 Fortunes and Misfortunes of the
Egyptian Clergy
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191 Chronological Tables
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i
1
4

INTRODUCTION
There are two outstanding features of ancient Egypt, both
of which are strikingly evident on the banks of the Nile. First,
its art, as the Cairo Museum reveals, is as old as history and
as beautiful and perfect in its way as all that Greece and more
recent civilizations have been able to produce in their greatest
periods. Second, one sees that Egypt's monuments are nearly all
products of religious preoccupations. From the plateau of Gizeh
to the boulders of the cataract, in the shade of the Memphis
palms and in the scorching inferno of the Valleys of Kings, in
the calm of the Elephantine and in the white feluccas,' there is
the same striking evidence at each monument, on each visit to
the pyramids, temples, tombs, that everything constructed 'for
eternity' - everything which has successfully by-passed the cen-
turies - was conceived for the worship of the gods and for the
immortality of man.
In no country, perhaps, has the desire for eternity been more
eloquent, never more effectively realized. Houses, towns, palaces,
all the architecture destined for daily life was essentially provi-
sory: crude brick was sufficient. Thus little remains of these
1. Boats.
ancient towns. But beyond this world in which the living could
express their joy in open air, beyond the created forms which
are each evening eaten by the shadows, each morning given a
new life, the domain of the unknowable remained ever percep-
tible. Outside of earthly time, in another world - in space but
not precisely located - the gods and the dead triumphed over
the dark forces predating creation, and lived forever in the joy
of ageless youth. For these divine forces and timeless beings,
there had to be houses which were as durable as the earth which
held them: pyramids and temples are as immutable as the moun-
tains from which their stone is taken, and underground tombs
become part of the eternal rock which shelters them.
One becomes accustomed to seeing, in the ancient Egyptians,
'the most scrupulously religious of all men.' But this statement
does not suffice to offer the keys to the Pharaonic civilization;
in fact it would be a great error to consider the Egyptians too
close to ourselves.
Nothing, without doubt, is more modern than these stone
heads found in the mastabas,^ than the bust of Queen Nofretete;
nothing more alive, human in a reassuring fashion, than the
scenes of daily life pictured in the tombs of Saqqara or 'of
Thebes; nothing perhaps so directly familiar as the popular
stories from the shores of the Nile. But beware of thinking that
the ancient Egyptian was a man like us, that his civilization
was basically analogous to ours, that his thinking was, in the
progress of a world still imperfectly known, the beginning of
modern thought.
To understand ancient Egypt, we must abandon the idea of
finding in it our own culture and our own trends: we must accept
this exclusion, and not delude ourselves with the apparent simi-
larities. The Egyptian lived in a world very different from ours,
astonishingly advanced in certain technical ways - in architec-
ture, stone and metal work, works of art, moral thought - but
also astonishingly primitive in the essential structure of his
mental life, in his complete inaptitude for abstract thought, in his
naive belief in a world created for man and made to his measure.
We like to talk about 'Mediterranean civilization' and include
in it all that is beautiful or great in the vicinity of this sea. But
when the Nile empties its seven mouths into the sea, it leaves
far behind it everything that is distinctively Egyptian. For
1. Structures serving as entrances to the tombs.