EnglishAccording to the interpretation of Hegel, Egyptian religious buildings, and among them especially the temples, represent the beginning of the history of architecture, and so the beginning of the entire history of art. – 100 – The Egyptian religious architecture has a symbolic character, because its configuration tries to represent the spiritual content without being fully adequate to it. So the Egyptian temple alludes to the divine through its entire structure, but does not have a proper internal space, dedicated to the worship of the image of God.On this point, contemporary Egyptology corrected Hegel’s view, because broadly speaking the Egyptian temple had an interior where the image of the deity was safeguarded. However, Hegel’s thesis paradoxically remains suitable for a particular case of the Egyptian experience that he could not know at that time: in the monotheistic religion of Amarna, the temple of the sun-god Aton has no images and does not have a center, because the ...

Functions of the temple, not only religious, but also economic and cultural. Their relation with the Greek government and with local cults. Organisation of the priesthood and priestly privilege. The end of Egypitan religion.

This paper will explore the origin, development , and function of the cult- and mortuary temple, providing a core institution throughout the ancient Egyptian civilization.

The article discusses the archaeological evidence of Egyptian temples of the 3rd millennium BC against the anthropological model of Great and Little Traditions.

This article addresses ancient Near Eastern conceptions of divine presence in the realm of the temple, considering evidence from Egypt, Mesopotamia, Hittite Anatolia and Syria-Palestine. It analyzes the perceived religious function of ancient Near Eastern temples, cult images, the installation and maintenance of divine presence, as well as the complicated relationship between the deity and its cult image and between a deity’s various cult images.

the reuse of temples as churches in Egypt

In the study of Ancient Egypt, the Egyptian temples hold a prominent position; they are not only some of the best preserved monuments, but are physically dominating structures, commanding the landscape. These temples played an important role throughout the history of Egypt, functioning through to the end of the Roman period, by which point the landscape also played host to structures dedicated to the Greek and Roman pantheons. Investment in the native religious structures also continued, with reliefs pointing to ongoing decoration under the Roman Emperors. Investment though, was not limited to the Egyptian temples, and during the Roman period there is clear evidence for the construction and continued use of classical structures, including shrines, adjacent to the Egyptian temples, as part of the wider religious complex. Religious buildings such as the shrine to Imperial cult at Karnak and the temple of Augustus at Philae stand in sharp contrast to their surroundings, reflecting the developments in authority and culture brought to Egypt by the Romans, and yet also dwarfed in size and history by the physically different Egyptian temple complexes. My aim in this paper is to take a closer look at these two specific structures at Karnak and Philae, and to consider why they were constructed, who was responsible, and how they were used. The shrines themselves provide a range of information including inscriptions and surviving statue bases, allowing for a discussion as to what these structures tell us concerning the developing relationship between the Roman rulers and Egyptian population, the exertion of authority by the government, and the concept of local identity in Roman Egypt.