The Priesthood in Ancient Egypt
The priesthood of Ancient Egypt was a wide-ranging collection of men and women. It also included scribes and singers. Everyone is responsible for making sure the gods are worshipped. There were numerous divinities in the Egyptian belief system, and all needed to be attended to.
The main job of the priests up and down the country was to ensure Ma’at was maintained. As well as the stability of the cosmos using Hekka (magic). They carried out each task methodically every day. Life depended on it.
In Egyptian their title was “servant of the God” (Hem netjer m / Hemet netjer f ). By the first millennium BC, the priesthood had become a hereditary caste.
Only one man could act as a mediator between the mortals and the Gods, and that was Pharaoh. Pharaoh could not be everywhere all the time. He needed to attend to the affairs of the state, attend to diplomacy, and ensure there was an heir to take over. He was a busy man.
So, to ensure the Gods were catered for and ma’at maintained, Pharaoh delegated his responsibilities to the priesthood. They acted as Pharoah’s representative; all sacrifices and praise were done by them but in Pharaoh’s name. The standard formula on monuments and temple walls starts with “Hetep d’nsu” – “an offering in the king’s name”.
The clergy in ancient Egypt had formal religious training in the temples to learn their craft. However, their clergy was not like the clergy we would recognise today. Their sole responsibility was to care for the temple’s God, not the individual’s spiritual salvation. They did not preach, interpret scripture, proselytise, or conduct weekly services for the public. The public did not enter the temple. This was because the temple was considered to be literally the house of the divine, not a meeting place for the faithful. No ordinary, unclean person could enter. Worship at the temples was more or less an exchange of favours between the Egyptian priest and the deity.
The Daily Routine
Every day in every temple in Egypt, the ceremony of daily worship was to be celebrated. These rituals needed to happen. They were to ensure the continued survival of the cosmos, life and the nation. If they were stopped or interrupted, they feared that everything would collapse.
Each morning at dawn, a priest on the temple’s terrace checked that it was the right time to begin worship by observing the sun and the stars. When it was, he would signal to some servants to prepare the food of the God. At the same time, the priests purified themselves.
In an elaborate procession with music, the high priest went to the God with an entourage, which included the top four priests of the temple and the “God’s Wife”. They were to give the offerings to the God on the offering tables, this included the God’s wife reading out the menu of the day. The High priest opened the door of the sanctuary and broke the seals of the naos- shrine which housed the God.
He then washed, dressed and perfumed the image with ointments. He fed it, burned incense and finally closed and sealed the naos again until the next day. The food that had been offered the day before was distributed among the priests.
At noon another ceremony took place. This one was for making libations with water on the statues of Pharaoh and other gods who also lived in the temple. In the afternoon, food and drinks were offered again, this time in the side chapels.
Categories of Priests
The Pharaoh, as the real high priest of all Egypt, appointed his representatives in the role of High Priest. Therefore this office and who held it had considerable political, religious, and economic power. His importance and prestige were directly proportional to that of the God he served. The number of priests in a town depended on how big it was and how important the temple or God it served was. Especially the high priest of Amun in Thebes during specific periods of Egyptian History. They became so powerful at times that they were more potent than the reigning Pharaoh. At times, some Pharaohs had to form alliances with the priesthood to gain power or extend it, like Psamstik I.
There were different categories of priests. At the pinnacle, the high priest (hem-netjer-tepi, ‘first servant of god’), and at the bottom, the wab priests.
After the high priest, there was the Hem-netjer, which means “servants of God” or “prophets”. These priests were primarily involved with temples rather than funerary cults. They did rituals, made offerings, and helped the temples make money by doing things like keeping the temple estates in good shape.
They had access to the temple’s innermost rooms and the hidden cult image, which was the God’s physical form. During the Old and Middle Kingdoms, the district governor was almost always the overseer of hem-priests (my-r mw-nr).
Next was the wab priests or “pure priest”. They were responsible for maintaining the temple complex and performing whatever roles were assigned to them. This included assisting with festival preparations. This was the first rank a new initiate would enter, after which they would be promoted to a hem priest. Wab-priests could not go into the temple’s inner sanctuary or face the God’s image. They could, however, handle sacred objects and cult instruments. They had to follow strict rules about cleanliness, and in some pictures, you can tell who they are because their heads are shaved. In temples from the New Kingdom, wab-priests are shown carrying an image of a god. There were various types of priestly categories between the high priests and the wab.
The Reader Priests were responsible for reading the sacred texts during religious ceremonies. Their badge of office was a white band on their chest.
The lector priest was also an essential link between the temple priesthood and society in general. At a funeral, he read aloud from scrolls of funerary texts. A large portion of the priesthood passed its entire existence in the service of the dead. Priests in this group usually wore a kilt and a wide sash diagonally over the shoulder. They are often shown holding or reading from a scroll made of papyrus.
Then there were the Sem Priests. They were responsible for funerary functions and wore a leopard skin. They conducted the opening of the mouth ceremony at a funeral. In the religion of death, they played the part of Horus at funerals. In contrast, the dead person played the part of Osiris. Sem-priests used to be a high-ranking group of priests who served the Memphite death god Ptah-Sokar. Over time, they became more common.
Women in the priesthood
In the Old Kingdom, women often served as priests and had similar titles. However, this stopped over time, and they only served as singers and dancers.
One role that a woman filled was “the God’s wife”. The first of the famous ‘God’s Wives’ was Nefertari, the wife of Ahmose I. The second was Hatshepsut, the dominant mother of Tuthmosis III. She became Pharaoh during her stepson’s minority. The third was Nefertiti, the wife of Akhenaton; she is perhaps the most famous queen of all Egyptian History.
During the New Kingdom, the God’s Wife was almost always the king’s chief wife. The rank of the “god’s wife of Amun” eventually acquired the most significant political influence (in the first half of the first millennium BCE). This title was also connected to the title “the God’s Hand”, which meant masturbating the God. This referenced the act of creation, where Atum masturbated and created life. It is unsure whether she actually masturbated the statute of the God or if this was a function performed on the Pharaoh. Others argue that Theoretically, as the “god’s hand”, assisting the deity in his self-creative masturbation. By shaking the sistrum before the god to appease him and this was a sexual allusion.
Taboos and purity
To gain access to the sacred enclosures, the “upper and lower-order” clergy had to be pure physically and spiritually. To do this, they performed a purification ritual that included a series of baths in the sacred lake throughout the day. They also had to remove all body hair and even maintain good oral hygiene by chewing natron salts. Even Pharaoh was not free from this. He, too, had to take a bath (if possible, in the solitude of a palace connected to the temple) before the rites.
The oath that a priest had to take on assuming the office highlights the importance of maintaining purity. They had to stay away from unclean men. This would include foreign men who were not circumcised or even women on her period. They had not slept with a youth (similar to the injunction found at No. 32 of the Instructions of Ptahhotep), and they had not committed adultery with another men’s wife. They were not to touch the wool of a sheep.
Priests were only permitted to wear a linen tunic; no other clothes or footwear were allowed. Priests did not wear wigs, as one of their prohibitions was against body hair. The priests had shaven heads. It is not clear whether priestesses wore their heads shaved or not. They were required to bathe twice a day and again at night with cold water.
They also enjoy significant benefits. “They do not consume or spend any of their own goods, but cook sacred food and a big amount of beef and goose meat for them every day, and they also receive grape wine, despite the fact that they cannot graze on fish…” (Herodotus II, 37, pp. 2–5)
The reason why they did not eat fish was the belief that a fish had swallowed Osiris’ penis after Seth had disembodied him.
There were roughly 20 dietary taboos for each God; therefore, they differed from city to city or province to city. They could not even have sex during the month they were working as priests. There was no necessity for celibacy for clergy members in their private life outside of temple service.
Really we could describe them as spiritual bureaucrats and civil servants, the spiritual side of the machinery of government.
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