Priests and Priestesses in Ancient Egypt

[Kenemet]

So... moving the discussion over here because it's an interesting one and deserves a single topic, I think.

For those unfamiliar with the topic, there were several ranks of priests in ancient Egypt (the World History site has a good overview of priesthood in ancient Egypt: https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1026/clergy-priests--priestesses-in-ancient-egypt/ ). though I would also add 

The highest rank would be the hem-netjer-tepi - the "servant of the god" (this could apply to both priests and priestesses) and at the other end of the scale was the "wab priest."

These titles were not fixed throughout time (they didn't have the "God's Wife of Amun" in the 1st Dynasty -- at least, there's no record of any such title then) 

As to Thutmose (mentioned by Wepwauwet, as a royal "sem priest" he would have been in charge of funerals and would have presided over the  rituals performed for his father (or predecessor), and since it could only be done by this type of priest, it says something about his role or his anticipated role in life.  

Although Sem priests were the ones who mummified the corpse and recited spells at different stages of the process, I don't envision Thutmose doing this for anyone.  

So... I think in cases where the pharaoh is a "sem priest" as well as high priest, the implication is that he did the opening of the mouth and possibly even recited the spells on the walls of the tomb.  I'm not sure how early this practice started, though, and in some cases (Djoser, for example) it might be hard to figure out who did what role.

@Wepwawetposted this - which I am using as a basis for this conversation:

Quote

 I want to revist the sem and High Priest of Ptah in relation to crown prince Thutmose.

In an earlier post about the high priests in general I mentioned that quite a few of them were titled not just high priest, but also sem, and Thutmose does this as well. Having no reference at the time for why this might be so I assumed that some of them simply wanted to continue as sem as well as being high priest, therefore there being a progression from sem to high priest, but this may not be the case.

German Egyptologist Wolfram Grajetzki, in an article about a Memphis tomb for a High Priest of Ptah from the time of either Tutankhamun or Ay, discusses a scene from a wall of the tomb. The top register of the scene shows mourners in postures reminiscent of the death room scenes in TA21, and the bottom register shows a line of court officials in order of precedence. They are led by Horemeb as Hereditary Prince and General , then the two viziers followed by various overseers. The last man is the Mayor of Memphis, but just in front of him are two High Priests, the one taking precedence is the Greatest of Seers of Heliopolis, Sainheret, followed by the now reigning High Priest of Ptah, Meryptah. I need to add here that the names of these officials has to be extrapolated from other evidence, and Grajetzki does go into this evidence.

It's of interest, at least to me, that the Heliopolitan has precedence over the High Priest of Ptah, even at the funeral of the previous High Priest. Of direct relevance to crown prince Thutmose is the fact that Meryptah is not named as High Priest of Ptah, even though it is not doubted that he was, but as sem only. Grajetzi points this out with the explanation that the High Priests of Ptah were often only known by their sem title, and he references a source for this, but it's a German publication and I cannot link to an online version, except to say that it deals with the sons of Ramesess II, which is interesting.

In a previous post I went with "common knowledge" that son of Ramesess II, prince Khaemwaset, was first sem and then promoted to HPP, there seemingly being a reigning HPP while he was sem. I would like to get my hands on this publication as it seems that this was not the case, otherwise why would Grajetzi reference it as regards HPPs often only being known by their sem title.

This then suggest to me, that while further research is needed, that crown prince Thutmose was always HPP, even in the scene of him officiating as sem at the burial of Apis I, perhaps a funeral being the apt place for him as sem anyway.

Like Superman and Clarke Kent, is a HPP and sem-priest of Ptah ever seen together...

And another point. It is "common knowledge" that priests of Ptah wore a wig and a sidelock, yet I have never seen an image of any priest of Ptah other than sem or HPP so attired, and in the image below we see the HPP with wig and sidelock with a rank and file priest of Ptah who is, as should be expected with priests anyway, shaven headed. And incase anybody was wondering why we see images of lectors wearing a wig, it's because they are not part of the temple priesthood.

The image below shows a High Priest of Ptah, yet he is described as being sem-priest, the title can be seen if you look at the knees of the central figure and look left to the first column of hieroglyphs at that level, just under the "eye" sign.

 

[Kenemet]

And for reference, this is one of the early (well, 1957) books on priests in ancient Egypt.  The subject isn't revisited often (unlike, say, books on Tutankhamun or the Great Pyramid) - English version.

https://archive.org/details/priestsofancient00saun

Pinch, Geraldine. "Magic in Ancient Egypt." University of Texas (1994). also touches on it to some extent.

And a quite interesting piece here Lisle, Meg. "Preliminary Discussions on a Prosopographic Study of the Involvement of Non-Royal Women in New Kingdom Religious Practices." Australasian Egyptology Conference 4: Papers from the Fourth Australasian Egyptology Conference Dedicated to Gillian E. Bowen. Archaeopress Publishing Ltd, 2023. 
source: https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=FG-oEAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA21&ots=wfl1LFqKc-&sig=IOe6ZKRmMJtOIylgZl2E-ICllFY#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

[Windowpane]

8 hours ago, Kenemet said:

...

The highest rank would be the hem-netjer-tepi - the "servant of the god" (this could apply to both priests and priestesses) and at the other end of the scale was the "wab priest."

...

More on wab priests:

Wilson, Amy M. 2014. Pure Ones: The Wˁb and Wˁbt from the Old Kingdom to the end of the Middle Kingdom.

  

 

[Wepwawet]

1 hour ago, Windowpane said:

More on wab priests:

Wilson, Amy M. 2014. Pure Ones: The Wˁb and Wˁbt from the Old Kingdom to the end of the Middle Kingdom.

  

 

What should immediately attract the attention of anybody who reads at least the abstract is this,

Quote

During the Old Kingdom, 59% of title-holders are linked to the royal mortuary cult

 

[Coil]

The problem is that few of the pharaohs could be a servant of God and communicate with the gods and do what was needed.. even Akhenaten complained that "no one knows God except me Akhenaten" and his reforms were rejected after his death.

If man and the pharaohs fulfilled the will of the gods, we would have a permanent Golden Age. Spiritual people say that man must establish a strong connection with the gods-angels, then our society will be spiritualized.

Previously, people worshiped the gods, read prayers en masse and the gods helped people but when people stop praying and doing rituals, they lose their connection with the gods and a happy life. A stream of spiritual energy does not flow from the sky and people lose faith that God exists.

If you look at the rulers, then there used to be priests communicating with the gods, then just dynasties of kings and their children, and in our time they are just elected politicians who have nothing in common with God at all. These politicians can be businessmen like Trump (Vaishas from the point of view of the Hindu caste or military men (the Kshatriya caste), respectively, there is no talk of any prosperity of civilization, since in power there are not real Brahmins, but trade-capitalism or military-wars.

The problem of the era before Christ and the Egyptian civilization is that only people from a narrow circle of people could be initiated, and ordinary people did not have spiritual skills, so society was based only on power from above, and it is necessary for religion to enter the masses, change people and spiritualize them. The priests left the right to possess knowledge in secret, understanding that ordinary people are not ready for initiation, and a divided society cannot become godlike, it will inevitably fall into materialism like the current civilization.

Therefore, spiritual teachers began to come to people who founded religions, but humanity does not change from this, the mind is too material, vision does not see the gods and the subtle world around, does not see hundreds of subtle worlds above our layer, vision does not see that dots-stars in the sky are cosmic beings in space, therefore our picture of the universe is incorrect. Therefore, a new race should appear on earth, oriented by all humanity strongly towards God, towards the vision of the soul of Nature and not the material.

[Wistman]

16 hours ago, Kenemet said:

So... I think in cases where the pharaoh is a "sem priest" as well as high priest, the implication is that he did the opening of the mouth and possibly even recited the spells on the walls of the tomb.  I'm not sure how early this practice started, though, and in some cases (Djoser, for example) it might be hard to figure out who did what role.

How regular an occurrence was this scenario, pharaoh himself as sem...as well as HP?  Would he not abandon the roles once he was king?  Did you mean to say crown prince?

Edited December 21, 2024 by Wistman

[Kenemet]

A note of thanks to everyone for the tasty references that are popping up!  Our browsers get "tuned" to what we like, which means that things get ranked higher or lower as time goes on.  This is why it's useful to have many people searching on a topic.

[Kenemet]

1 hour ago, Wistman said:

How regular an occurrence was this scenario, pharaoh himself as sem...as well as HP?  Would he not abandon the roles once he was king?  Did you mean to say crown prince?

No, I meant to say Pharaoh...because that person was doing the "opening of the mouth" on the deceased pharaoh... and therefore he (or she) is pharaoh at the time the ceremony was being performed.  

I don't know how often they were sem priests.  It's assumed that they were The high priests of the land from the very earliest times... but I don't have any documentation at hand on that.

Edited December 21, 2024 by Kenemet

[Kenemet]

5 hours ago, Coil said:

The problem of the era before Christ and the Egyptian civilization is that only people from a narrow circle of people could be initiated, and ordinary people did not have spiritual skills, so society was based only on power from above, and it is necessary for religion to enter the masses, 

Actually, no.

In Egyptian society, EVERYONE worked in the temple (sort of "paying a tithe") for a short time every year.  Anyone could become a priest and in fact they had people who were priests for just a short time every year.  There were no religious services like we have today because their gods were with them and around them (like friendly family members) all the time.   Everyone participated and every town (and household) had its own gods who were their "family" and cared for them.  Town gods were often a set of three deities; a father, mother, and a child and there were specific deities they called on for certain things.

One of the reasons that Akhenaten's "religion" didn't last was because it took the gods away from the people and insisted that there was just one deity (I'm over-generalizing this...the details are pretty complicated) and that the only ones who could speak to this deity were the royal family...and therefore you gave offerings to the royal family so they could give it to their god.

 

[Coil]

2 hours ago, Kenemet said:

Actually, no.

In Egyptian society, EVERYONE worked in the temple (sort of "paying a tithe") for a short time every year.  Anyone could become a priest and in fact they had people who were priests for just a short time every year.  There were no religious services like we have today because their gods were with them and around them (like friendly family members) all the time.   Everyone participated and every town (and household) had its own gods who were their "family" and cared for them.  Town gods were often a set of three deities; a father, mother, and a child and there were specific deities they called on for certain things.

One of the reasons that Akhenaten's "religion" didn't last was because it took the gods away from the people and insisted that there was just one deity (I'm over-generalizing this...the details are pretty complicated) and that the only ones who could speak to this deity were the royal family...and therefore you gave offerings to the royal family so they could give it to their god.

 

 

And according to another information, people stopped seeing gods and communicating with them, so they needed faith in one God of the Sun, as Akhenaten did, but they did not understand him and continued to believe in the old gods but their time had already passed. And finally, by the time of Christ, people had completely lost their subtle vision and needed faith in a single and invisible God. But they did not understand Christ and crucified him, and only through sacrifice did faith in one God spread, although this monotheistic faith was already maturing in Egypt.

I found how the pharaoh was initiated:

Spoiler

 

Now a man may laugh when he is told that at a certain period the Pharaoh was an initiate, when he is told how the Egyptian regards the Pharaoh and his government institutions. It is very amusing to a European scholar that the Pharaoh bore the name of the son of Horus and even of Horus himself. Is it not strange that a man could be revered as a god? But one should not think anything so absurd. After all, they do not even know what the Pharaoh's initiation was in essence. Nowadays the people are seen as only a group of people that can be counted. But the people are not the same for those who stand on the point of view of occultism. As the fingers belong to the hand, so do individuals belong to the soul. But the soul of the people is real not in the physical, but in the ethereal form. It is an absolute reality and the initiate can communicate with this soul. It is much more real than modern man. The occultist takes spiritual experience into account; for him the soul of the people is something quite real. Let us consider schematically this connection of the soul of the people with individuals. If we think of separate individuals as small circles, then the separate I's are separate entities only for external physical observation. But the one who observes them spiritually sees these separate individualities included in the etheric soul. Let us now assume that an individual thinks, does, feels and wants something, and he radiates his feelings into the national soul. And therefore the national soul is permeated with the thoughts and feelings of individual people. Let us abstract ourselves from the physical man, let us observe only his astral body, and then the astral body of the whole nation, and we will see that the astral body of the nation receives shades of its coloring from the individual person. The ancient Egyptian knew this, and he knew something even more. The ancient Egyptian asked himself: "What lives in the national soul?" He saw in his national soul the reincarnation of Isis. Isis acted in the national soul. And what the Egyptian saw as Osiris acted in the individual spiritual rays. So, Osiris was not visible to the physical plane. And only after the death of a person did Osiris appear before his eyes again. Therefore, in the Egyptian Book of the Dead we read that the Egyptian, being united with Osiris, felt himself to be Osiris. Isis and Osiris acted together in the state and in man.
An individual pharaoh, before initiation, underwent training in order to understand this not only with his mind, but to take it as pure truth. He had to go so far as to be able to say to himself: "If I want to rule the people, then I must sacrifice a part of my spirituality, I must extinguish a part of my astral and etheric body. The principles of Osiris and Isis must act in me. I personally dare not want anything; when I say something, Osiris must speak, when I act with my hand, Isis and Osiris must act. I must be the son of Isis and Osiris - Horus."
Initiation is not learning. The possibility of being able to sacrifice oneself in this way is connected with initiation. The part that Pharaoh refused in the sacrifice, it was this part that gave him power. For temporal power does not consist in the person being elevated as a separate person, but in the strong spiritual power being perceived. Pharaoh perceived power in himself, and this was depicted in the serpent.

 

[Wepwawet]

4 hours ago, Wistman said:

How regular an occurrence was this scenario, pharaoh himself as sem...as well as HP?

In the OK with perhaps the exception of the wt, the embalmer, all the officiants were either members of the royal family or high ranking nobles, who were probably related to the ruling house anyway. So the son of a king can be high priest, sem and lector at the same time. I suspect that though direct evidence is lacking, the wt was also part of "the family firm", and this is because until, from memory, the 5th or 6th Dynasty it was the wt who recited the funeral liturgy/spells before it became the preserve of the lectors, whose role was becoming a non royal one. From what I see of royal funerals, the son of the deceased king, now king, is sem, as he probably was when heir. I suspect that over time this role passed to the "invisible" Iunmutef as he was Horus, [The depiction of Ay as sem is unique] with the bulk of the opening of the mouth being performed by multiple lectors and sems. Because they never name an officiant other than by title, it's confusing as to just how many officiants took part, and I would say more than one of each rank, unless they changed attire for different parts of the service. And I've leapt well forward in the progression of the thread here.

[Coil]

"From Atlantis to Egypt were transferred oracular sanctuaries, which were mainly derived from the oracle of Mercury. However, there were others, such as the oracle of Venus. In what could be developed in the Egyptian people thanks to these oracular sanctuaries, the germ of a new culture was immersed. It came from a great leader who had received his spiritual training by listening to the Persian secrets of Zarathustra. (He was the reincarnation of the personality of one of the disciples of the great Zarathustra himself.) Let us call him, according to history, Hermes. Thanks to the acceptance of the secrets of Zarathustra, he was able to find the right path of leadership of the Egyptian people." "Hermes taught: since man applies his powers on earth to act on it according to the plans of spiritual powers, he makes himself capable of uniting with these powers after death. Especially those who between birth and death act most diligently in this direction unite with the high Solar Being - with Osiris. ... However, the people in many respects remained attached to the sensory. Instead of the stellar spirit, the star came to the fore, and instead of other spiritual beings - their earthly reflections. Only the leaders achieved real deep knowledge of the laws of the supersensible world and the nature of its interaction with the sensory world. More than anywhere else, the contrast between the knowledge of the initiates and the lost faith of the people was felt here .

 

"According to their inclinations, different peoples saw different things. Thus, the Egyptians saw a world in which there were beings who had prematurely stopped on the path of human development and had not become earthly people; and they saw man after his earthly life in everything where he had dealings with such beings. The Chaldean peoples saw more how, outside the Earth, spiritual beings - good and evil - entered into earthly life in order to act in it."

[Wepwawet]

3 hours ago, Kenemet said:

In Egyptian society, EVERYONE worked in the temple (sort of "paying a tithe") for a short time every year.  Anyone could become a priest and in fact they had people who were priests for just a short time every year.  There were no religious services like we have today because their gods were with them and around them (like friendly family members) all the time.   Everyone participated and every town (and household) had its own gods who were their "family" and cared for them.  Town gods were often a set of three deities; a father, mother, and a child and there were specific deities they called on for certain things.

This gets to the heart of how their religion worked in the matter of service, personal belief and worship.

Their temples were not churches, there were no services as such, no sermons either. There were no priests as we use the term, only people of various ranks who cleaned and clothed the cult statues and the building, the home of the god, it was housed in. Nobody who not not employed to work in the temple was allowed inside, the people could do no more than make requests to the "ears" painted on the outside of the temple complex, if it had them and there is only documentary evidence for, I believe, the Temple of Ptah at Memphis, though I expect it was common. Worship in a form we may recognise was held at local shrines and in the home, but with no priest and no sermons, just prayers and offerings.

Edited December 21, 2024 by Wepwawet

[Coil]

Various things about Egyptians:

Spoiler

 

"As the proto-Hindu felt his body at the end of his life connected to the Earth, as the proto-Persian felt his speech, his breathing connected to the course of the year, to the environment, so a person belonging to the ancient Egyptian, to the ancient Chaldean culture, felt how his thinking was controlled by the course of the stars. In his thinking he felt the play of divine stellar forces"

"The manuscripts of the ancient Egyptian pharaohs contain prescriptions that only resemble laws. They were prophetic predictions of what only centuries later was to appear as laws. And everything that was in those manuscripts was calculated from the course of the stars... that ancient knowledge of the stars was at the same time moral knowledge, ethics."

"In the ancient Persian culture, man cultivated the Earth, now (in the ancient Egyptian culture) he learned to divide it according to the laws of space. Man began to study the laws and something even greater. ... Ah, if you could look into the workroom of an Egyptian initiate! Science was practiced differently then than now. The initiates were then scientists."

"How did the ancient Atlantean see his neighbor during the day? He saw his forehead receding far back, teeth protruding far forward, he saw him as strongly resembling an animal. But when the man fell asleep in the evening and Atlantean clairvoyance flared up, then not only an animal-like appearance was revealed to the eye, but from it grew an ethereal human head, much more beautiful in form than today. It grew from the physical head. In night contemplation, the animal-like became indistinct and from it grew a beautiful human appearance." The memory of this is expressed plastically in the sphinx.

The Sphinx expresses "...the development of the highest human from the previous animal states. ...The cities were built in such a way that the Egyptians expressed in them the holy order prescribed to them; the Egyptian tried to create a reflection of the heavenly order. But the individual-human was not understood there.

"Not yet in full consciousness, but as if preparing for full consciousness, the peoples of Egypt were led to the worship of that which lives in the force of man's straightening. In order that they might learn to worship this, the initiates took care of this, directing the Egyptian culture so that it expressed the straightening of man in the pyramids rising from the Earth into space. Even now we are amazed how, through the influence of cosmic forces in the entire form and position of the pyramid, this force of straightening is brought to its expression. Obelisks also had to be erected so that man could begin to penetrate into the forces of straightening. The wonderful hieroglyphs in the pyramids and on the obelisks, which were supposed to point to Christ, evoked supermundane forces that had been active even in the Lemurian era. ... but the Egyptians were unable... even in a dim form to come to an understanding of the power of speech. For this they had to first pass with their souls through the correct school of sensations, in order to later comprehend the secret of how Christ lives in the human faculty of speech. This had to be perceived with holy timidity in mature human souls. The hierophants, initiated into the Egyptian culture, took wonderful care of this when they erected the mysterious Sphinx - a silent, towering above everything known at that time, resounding under the influence of the cosmos, unshakable image... it evoked that sacred tremor in the soul, thanks to which the soul was prepared to understand the speech that was to sound... as the Impulse of Christ entered into earthly development"

"The Egyptian wanted to see with his senses how the soul from the dead body ascends on its way to the higher regions; he wanted to see it built before him, and he erected these thoughts in the form of pyramids."

The ratio of the sum of the sides of some pyramids to their height is equal to the diameter of the circle that fits into the rectangle of the base of the pyramid; with an accuracy of many tenths. The weight of a pyramid is equal to a certain fraction of the earth's weight. One of the dimensions of the pyramid, when raised to the 18th power, gives the distance from the Earth to the Sun. The construction of pyramids came to Egypt from Iran, from Western Asia. The Egyptians learned from these peoples, who had stellar Mysteries; the Egyptians also had Christmas Mysteries.

"Some pyramids of the Egyptians were built so that their shadow disappeared at noon on the day of the spring equinox and appeared on the day of the autumn equinox. By this the Egyptians wanted to show how what shone to them from the Sun was buried in the Earth, developing the forces of the Earth from spring to autumn, so that it would be possible to obtain from the Earth the fruits necessary for people. This was the idea of the Egyptians, in which, on the one hand, they looked at the Sun, the supreme solar Being, and worshiped Him, and on the other hand, it was pointed out how this solar Being was lost in Osiris and was sought by Isis and was found, in order to then act in a different way.

"The greatest manifestations of the third, ancient Egyptian cultural epoch began to gradually fall more and more into the worst offspring of black magic... Already in the time of Moses, corruption was strong.

Rudolf Steiner on the Egyptians: excerpts from the dictionary..

 

 

 

 

[Coil]

Egyptian Initiation:

Spoiler

 

In the Egyptian initiation of Hermes, the soul outside the physical and etheric bodies was introduced into various regions of the spiritual world. Finally, it approached an experience similar to that of a man who, having been everywhere, finally came to a land surrounded on all sides by the sea, and he found himself on the shore of this sea. The disciple realized: you contemplated the world's distances, the beings and forces that build your physical and etheric bodies. "Now you have entered the holy place. Now you have entered the region where you will feel yourself united with the entities that are in you and work on what passes from incarnation to incarnation, work on your astral body." Man did not have to apply any of his previously acquired judgments to this world. And all the beings that had previously led him in the spiritual world now stood outside. The disciple felt himself connected with that being, felt himself inside that being, "who carries the soul from one incarnation to another... in him rest the powers that enlighten the soul between death and a new birth." But now, since he was penetrated by the light and warmth of this being, he could drink from Lethe, forget the power of judgment acquired in the physical world in order to develop a new one in himself. The disciple saw the being from whom the power and light emanated, and he could not help but ask him: "Who are you? For you alone can say who you are, and only then can I know what passes into the human inner being from death to a new birth. Only when you answer me can I know what constitutes the inner being of me as a man." But the being was silent, and it was necessary to experience the longing for the solution of the world riddle for a long time. Then the disciple "felt that in the spiritual being with which he was united, the force of his own longing was also flowing ... and after a while another being seemed to issue from the being, but it was not like an earthly birth ... no, an earthly birth occurs in time ... the same thing that a person now sees ... he knows: this is born from you, this was born from you in previous times. This birth takes place constantly from ancient times to the present ... only before, a person did not see it. ... Such were the experiences of the disciple of the Mysteries of Hermes, the Mysteries of Isis: on the shore of the universal distances of being, the disciple stood before the silent Goddess, from whom warmth and light emanated to the innermost of the human soul. It was Isis! the voiceless, silent Goddess, upon whose face no one dares to look with mortal eyes, but whose face can be revealed to those who ... from that shore ... can look with eyes that go from incarnation to incarnation and which are immortal. For to mortal eyes the appearance Isis is covered with an impenetrable veil!" After contemplating Isis, the disciple experienced a "birth". "He perceived this birth as the "music of the spheres" resounding throughout space and as the World Word, the creative World Word, going along with this music of the spheres. ... The World Word animates beings who are revived by the power of heat and light and pour out into those bodies that arise from the forces of Divine Beings." The World Word permeates souls with what they live with between death and birth. "Isis stands before the disciple on one side, on the other stands a newly born being, which can be called the World Sound, the World Word. Now man feels the connection between Isis and the World Word born by her. And this World Word appears as Osiris. Isis in community with Osiris - this is how they acted in direct contemplation; for it was said in the most ancient Egyptian initiation that Osiris is both the son and the husband of Isis." "The Egyptian initiate encountered the World Word and the World Sound as an interpreter of his own being in the spiritual world. But this happened only up to a certain time. ... In later times the Goddess remained silent. Osiris was not born, the world harmony did not resound. The Goddess made a sad gesture, which said that she was now powerless to give birth to the World Word.
Those who then passed through initiation and returned again to the physical world had a serious, but submissive to fate worldview. They knew her, holy Isis, but felt themselves as "children of the widow." " Moses lived in the period of time between these two periods of Egyptian initiation (when Osiris was experienced and when he was no longer experienced). When he led the people out of Egypt, he took with him a part of the Egyptian initiation, in which he added the initiation of Osiris to the sad Isis, as she later became. Such was the transition from Egyptian culture to the culture of the Old Testament. In late Egyptian times, the initiates contemplated how God left the spiritual worlds to pass into another world. They ascended into the spiritual worlds "not for bliss, but to take part in the gradual dying of God, Who dwelt there as the World Word." From here was born the myth of Osiris taken away from Isis and carried off to Asia. Thus stood on one shore the "widow's children," and let Spiritual Science be the boat that will carry us to the other shore.

 

 

 

[Stokke]

26 minutes ago, Coil said:

Egyptian Initiation:

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In the Egyptian initiation of Hermes, the soul outside the physical and etheric bodies was introduced into various regions of the spiritual world. Finally, it approached an experience similar to that of a man who, having been everywhere, finally came to a land surrounded on all sides by the sea, and he found himself on the shore of this sea. The disciple realized: you contemplated the world's distances, the beings and forces that build your physical and etheric bodies. "Now you have entered the holy place. Now you have entered the region where you will feel yourself united with the entities that are in you and work on what passes from incarnation to incarnation, work on your astral body." Man did not have to apply any of his previously acquired judgments to this world. And all the beings that had previously led him in the spiritual world now stood outside. The disciple felt himself connected with that being, felt himself inside that being, "who carries the soul from one incarnation to another... in him rest the powers that enlighten the soul between death and a new birth." But now, since he was penetrated by the light and warmth of this being, he could drink from Lethe, forget the power of judgment acquired in the physical world in order to develop a new one in himself. The disciple saw the being from whom the power and light emanated, and he could not help but ask him: "Who are you? For you alone can say who you are, and only then can I know what passes into the human inner being from death to a new birth. Only when you answer me can I know what constitutes the inner being of me as a man." But the being was silent, and it was necessary to experience the longing for the solution of the world riddle for a long time. Then the disciple "felt that in the spiritual being with which he was united, the force of his own longing was also flowing ... and after a while another being seemed to issue from the being, but it was not like an earthly birth ... no, an earthly birth occurs in time ... the same thing that a person now sees ... he knows: this is born from you, this was born from you in previous times. This birth takes place constantly from ancient times to the present ... only before, a person did not see it. ... Such were the experiences of the disciple of the Mysteries of Hermes, the Mysteries of Isis: on the shore of the universal distances of being, the disciple stood before the silent Goddess, from whom warmth and light emanated to the innermost of the human soul. It was Isis! the voiceless, silent Goddess, upon whose face no one dares to look with mortal eyes, but whose face can be revealed to those who ... from that shore ... can look with eyes that go from incarnation to incarnation and which are immortal. For to mortal eyes the appearance Isis is covered with an impenetrable veil!" After contemplating Isis, the disciple experienced a "birth". "He perceived this birth as the "music of the spheres" resounding throughout space and as the World Word, the creative World Word, going along with this music of the spheres. ... The World Word animates beings who are revived by the power of heat and light and pour out into those bodies that arise from the forces of Divine Beings." The World Word permeates souls with what they live with between death and birth. "Isis stands before the disciple on one side, on the other stands a newly born being, which can be called the World Sound, the World Word. Now man feels the connection between Isis and the World Word born by her. And this World Word appears as Osiris. Isis in community with Osiris - this is how they acted in direct contemplation; for it was said in the most ancient Egyptian initiation that Osiris is both the son and the husband of Isis." "The Egyptian initiate encountered the World Word and the World Sound as an interpreter of his own being in the spiritual world. But this happened only up to a certain time. ... In later times the Goddess remained silent. Osiris was not born, the world harmony did not resound. The Goddess made a sad gesture, which said that she was now powerless to give birth to the World Word.
Those who then passed through initiation and returned again to the physical world had a serious, but submissive to fate worldview. They knew her, holy Isis, but felt themselves as "children of the widow." " Moses lived in the period of time between these two periods of Egyptian initiation (when Osiris was experienced and when he was no longer experienced). When he led the people out of Egypt, he took with him a part of the Egyptian initiation, in which he added the initiation of Osiris to the sad Isis, as she later became. Such was the transition from Egyptian culture to the culture of the Old Testament. In late Egyptian times, the initiates contemplated how God left the spiritual worlds to pass into another world. They ascended into the spiritual worlds "not for bliss, but to take part in the gradual dying of God, Who dwelt there as the World Word." From here was born the myth of Osiris taken away from Isis and carried off to Asia. Thus stood on one shore the "widow's children," and let Spiritual Science be the boat that will carry us to the other shore.

Friendly advice:

 

Space your content in bit-sized portions. No-one is going to read through a massive block of text. 

 

I have no idea of what you are trying to communicate here (hence - keep it bit-sized). Slow down, and keep in mind that your audience is not as engaged as yourself.

Good luck ✅

 

 

 

[Kenemet]

1 hour ago, Wepwawet said:

Their temples were not churches, there were no services as such, no sermons either. There were no priests as we use the term, only people of various ranks who cleaned and clothed the cult statues and the building, the home of the god, it was housed in. Nobody who not not employed to work in the temple was allowed inside, the people could do no more than make requests to the "ears" painted on the outside of the temple complex, if it had them and there is only documentary evidence for, I believe, the Temple of Ptah at Memphis, though I expect it was common. 

There's several examples of "ears" where petitions may be heard.

From Digital Karnak:

Contra temples, usually appended to the rear wall of a temple and opening outward, provided a location for those not allowed to enter the temple proper to interact with the divinities. This example, standing against the eastern wall of the temple built by Thutmose III, offered one such place on the eastern side of Karnak. Known as the “chapel of the hearing ear,” the shrine allowed the populace of Thebes to petition a statue of the king with Amun-Ra

Digital Karnak

"Ear tablets" are also found in many places, in association with temples.  They were originally thought to represent the kind of substitution image (as you may see in some churches where an image of the afflicted part appears and the petitioner is asking for healing for that part) but further evidence suggests that these operated as the "ears" of the deity : https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co84656/votive-ears

And, really, that would make more sense in light of how the statues of the deities were treated. 

Here's a nice one with the owner's name: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/549526

I *know* there's a monumental temple in Egypt with ears carved on the walls, but my google-fu is failing me and I can't find the name of the temple.

Also, in terms of worship, don't forget the festivals!!  (sending cats to everyone for the new year!)

 

 

[Wistman]

So a pharaoh's only act as sem would be to perform the closing of the mouth ritual on his father/deceased king?  How soon after the death of pharaoh would a new king be ritually crowned, anybody know?  Would pharaoh proceed to the funeral ritual as pharaoh, then change his attire at the tomb site into sem I wonder.

[Kenemet]

2 minutes ago, Wistman said:

So a pharaoh's only act as sem would be to perform the closing of the mouth ritual on his father/deceased king?  How soon after the death of pharaoh would a new king be ritually crowned, anybody know?  Would pharaoh proceed to the funeral ritual as pharaoh, then change his attire at the tomb site into sem I wonder.

I don't think we know, and it probably varied from king to king.  However proper mummification took 70 days, so there's plenty of time.

The sem's "ritual attire" generally was a leopard pelt draped over one shoulder.  Whoever was doing this would have been purified first (bath, shaving, prayers) -- as far as we can tell from documentary evidence and art, there was nothing particularly unusual in his attire other than that.

@Wepwawet or @Windowpane may have some primary/secondary sources here.

[Wepwawet]

13 hours ago, Wistman said:

So a pharaoh's only act as sem would be to perform the closing of the mouth ritual on his father/deceased king?

Probably, but that can only be based on the scene in KV62. The PT do not state who carries out any of this rite except the dead king himself, how?. The entire MK is a total blank on this as far as the funeral of a king is concerned. To the best of my knowledge no king is depicted as a mummy except Tutankhamun, and no king is depicted as a sem except Ay. What is interesting is that when this rite is depicted in the tomb of a king, it is perfomed not on his mummy but on a statue of him. Why this is so is another matter, but the rite would have been performed on his actual mummy prior to internment, and in that KV62, while unique in just who is depicted and how, is perfectly normal as it follows the same pattern as countless other depictions of this rite in the tombs and BoD of those who could afford it. However, the scene showing the funeral procession does shows only those dragging the bier and mummy on it's sled, not the officials that would have followed it. Tutankhamun is not wholly a mummy when Ay performs the rite, and Tutankhamun is not fully a mummy in the following scene when he is Osiris. In both cases his actual face is exposed, in the first instance as still living. This is at odds with all other depictions of the rite when the deceased is fully a mummy and wearing the mask. Just how much can we take from KV62 as being the norm for the burial of a king ?

Looking at opening of the mouth rituals when depicted in the tomb of other kings, when he is shown only as a statue, it is  not possible to determine who a single officiant is other than by the office they hold. While, for instance, in the tomb of Seti I this rite is depicted along the walls of corridor G in great detail, the statue of the king is the same statue in each scene, it does not look as if all the officiants are the same men. I'm sure there would have been a small core group, but unless, as I mentioned in a previous post they changed attire, including wigs, stubby beards and different length kilts during the ceremony, there do seem to be quite a few of them. Not one of them would appear to be Ramesess II as sem, and I am 100% certain that if he had appeared in this function it would never have been without his cartouche near him.

My opinion is that the new king did officiate as sem at the internment of the actual mummy of his predecessor, but other than KV62, probably for magical legitimization purposes, they did not want to depict this for whatever reason, and that the ceremony performed on a statue of the king is something different, and I'm not sure what and why. certainly they did preform the rite on images of the king, but to exclusively and in great detail only show this aspect in the tomb is a question I have no answer to. But it does seem clear that while the actual mummy of the king needed his sucessor to perform the ritual, his statue did not, and we see ordinary sems and lectors at work.

In the images are first a conventional opening of the mouth scene, note the sem at the far left, and then two lectors wearing sashes, and note the mummy with it's mask. Then the totally unique KV62 scene, then a few scenes from the tomb of Seti I. The first one shows the statue of the king with, at the right side of the scene, a sem wearing a leopard skin, with a lector behind him. On the left of the scene, it's actually part of another scene, is a sem without a leopard skin followed by a lector. The second scene shows the same statue of the king, but this time there are two sems, with their titles above them, but dressed as lectors, note the sashes. There are other scenes which show sems wearing a sort of short tunic, perhaps I'll post more of these in a later post because what we see in this tomb does not reflect what we view as a conventional scene of this ceremony as regards what the officiants are wearing.

The sem/s and their title are outlined in red. The lector/s and title are outlined in blue. Interestingly, the lectors are just at the basic level, a "kheri-hebet", and I don't see in any of the scenes a chief lector "kheri-heb-heri-tep", as you might expect for the funeral of a king. Milage on how the title is transliterated varies...

 

 

Edited December 22, 2024 by Wepwawet

[Wepwawet]

12 hours ago, Wistman said:

How soon after the death of pharaoh would a new king be ritually crowned, anybody know?

I don't know. The KV62 scene does show Ay with a crown, but can we take this scene as being representative, and has Ay had an actual coronation by the burial of his predecessor, or does that come later. He's still entitled to wear the crown the moment the old king dies I would have thought.

12 hours ago, Wistman said:

Would pharaoh proceed to the funeral ritual as pharaoh, then change his attire at the tomb site into sem I wonder.

No eveidence either way, and it's a pity the KV62 scene did not include at least the chief mourner, who would have been Ay, to see if he was already dressed as a sem. My gut feeeling is that he would have been dressed as sem for the entire funeral.

 

[Wepwawet]

More sem-priests from the tomb of Seti I. In the second image down the post two sems can be seen in adjoining scenes, and presumably this is the same sem in both scenes. Note how he is dressed in a sort of vest that I don't recall seeing anywhere else. In the bottom image we again see a sem in two adjoining scenes, and I'm certain this is two instances of the same sem. @Stokke will immediately recognise the strange un-sem like garb and pose. Is this one that West missed ?, and the only royal example ?. For everybody else, this figure named as a sem is just like other odd figures that can appear in non royal tombs at the opening of the mouth ceremony, and is part of the tekenu mystery.

Edit: Note that in all the scenes of Seti I that his statue has exactly the same pose as the two "guardian statues" found at the entrance to Tutankhamun's burial chamber, which I shoehorned in directly below, though how the statues are dressed varies.

 

Edited December 22, 2024 by Wepwawet

[Stokke]

3 hours ago, Wepwawet said:

More sem-priests from the tomb of Seti I. In the second image down the post two sems can be seen in adjoining scenes, and presumably this is the same sem in both scenes. Note how he is dressed in a sort of vest that I don't recall seeing anywhere else. In the bottom image we again see a sem in two adjoining scenes, and I'm certain this is two instances of the same sem. @Stokke will immediately recognise the strange un-sem like garb and pose. Is this one that West missed ?, and the only royal example ?. For everybody else, this figure named as a sem is just like other odd figures that can appear in non royal tombs at the opening of the mouth ceremony, and is part of the tekenu mystery.

Edit: Note that in all the scenes of Seti I that his statue has exactly the same pose as the two "guardian statues" found at the entrance to Tutankhamun's burial chamber, which I shoehorned in directly below, though how the statues are dressed varies.

 

Well done. It was the first thing I noticed when I saw the picture.

Same pose, same table. There can be no doubt that this is the Sem acting as the Tekenu.

I shall check if West mentions these when I get home.

[Wepwawet]

1 hour ago, Stokke said:

Well done. It was the first thing I noticed when I saw the picture.

Same pose, same table. There can be no doubt that this is the Sem acting as the Tekenu.

I shall check if West mentions these when I get home.

Precise location in the tomb is KV17 Corridor G scenes 8-10, and in Hornung's 1991 book "The Tomb of Pharaoh Seti I" on page 165.

This 3D virtual map by Factum Arte will be of interest to all. To find the relevant scene you have to click on the small icons spread out along the center of the stairs and corridors and navigate down, and after a while move to the left and down again, the scenes are on the left in a descending corridor, expect to get lost first time.... KV17

Edited December 22, 2024 by Wepwawet

[Wepwawet]

1 hour ago, Wepwawet said:

expect to get lost first time

On the left of the main page is a minimap with fast travel points, click on the 7th marker up from the bottom, then pan left.