21 januari 2025 | The Temple of the Whole World?

The Temple of the Whole World? | Continuity, Construction and Meaning in Egyptian Temples

“Do you not know, Asclepius, that Egypt is an image of heaven…that everything governed and moved in heaven came down to Egypt and was transferred there? If truth were told, our land is the temple of the whole world.” Or so writes the Hermetic Asclepius. Egyptian temples and their cult are perhaps the most enigmatic and iconic images of Orientalist Egypt, from the Greeks to the early 19th century European Bourgeoisie. But what did the Egyptians themselves think constituted a temple? How was everyday land transformed into a sacred enclosure in which a cult image filled buildings with an emanation of divine presence, while at the same time, the entire cosmos with the radiance of divine manifestation?

In his research Chris explores the image of the ideal cultic enclosure and system of worship presented in the Book of the Temple, a textual manual dating linguistically to the Middle Kingdom (2040 BC to 1782 BC) but preserved fragmentally on approximately 40 Ptolemaic and Roman period (332 BC – AD 64) papyri. He examines the architectural details espoused and what this can tell us about construction methods, implicit reasoning and religious assumptions of the ‘model’ temple, as well as the broader question of priestly training and initiation, questioning how knowledge of the divine is transmitted and maintained.

After introducing some of the basic structure of the Book of the Temple and the essential symbolism of cultic enclosures, Chris will shift to discussing the miniaturisation and transformation of temple culture in the Late Ptolemaic and Roman Period that ensued following the reforms of Augustus and Septimius Severus and the economic decline of the Empire, leading to a proliferation of magical manuscripts and ritual manuals being disseminated across the Eastern Mediterranean.