Egyptian Religion, Materiality, Memory and Change

Willeke Wendrich

Chapter 1 The Materiality of Ritual, Healing and Magic.

This is a chapter introducing Egyptian religion, that does not have the word “religion” in its title.
There is a good reason for that: there is no word for “religion” in the ancient Egyptian language.
There are terms for gods, or the divine, for the powers of the gods and for the healing that took
place making use of these. There are terms for temples, rituals, and festivals in honor of the gods,
but no word for religion.
If there is no term for "religion", does that mean the concept did not exist in ancient Egypt?
This is the core of a debate among scholars of religion and historians of religion and the answer
to this question can be argued to be both "Yes, religion did exist in ancient Egypt" and "No,
religion did not exist in ancient Egypt". Let me explain the different approaches:

As scholars we study aspects of the world and we do so based on our own understanding,
determined by social, cultural and personal experiences, as well as professional theories and
communities of practice. When we see ancient Egyptian temples, priests, rituals, gods, we can
consider these as evidence of something that we would consider "religion". We use "religion" as a
descriptive term for how we understand these ancient phenomena, often in comparison to present
day aspects we are more familiar with (church, priest, rites, god; or mosque, imam, arkaan al-
Islam, Allah). At all times we should be aware, however, that this is our understanding and our
label, on aspects societies that do not have a corresponding term in the language and if they do,
they may not be equivalents. A priest and an imam are both religious leaders, but have a different
function in the community of believers. A catholic priest in Norway has a different social position
than a catholic priest in Brazil. How then do we speak about correspondences and differences, if
the structure of thinking about the world is for a large part determined by language and context?
In the vast literature on the topic of the concept of religion several authors have argued that
"religion" is a term that indicates a deep-felt, but not pronounced religiosity as experienced by
societies (ancient or modern) under study. The search for the religious core that unites all world
religions throughout time is often couched as a deep spiritual truth, or the mediation of human
fears and concerns. Among the latter are: protection during the transitions in life (being born,
transition to adulthood, marriage, giving birth, illness, death) as well as fear for uncontrollable
natural phenomena (such as drought, flood, thunder) or metaphysical theories (life after death,
spirits, ghosts) (Eliade 1997; 2004; Holloway 2016). Such overarching theories about religion are
often presented in the form of a search for the function and origin of religion. To quote Holloway:

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 "What is religion? And where does it come from? Religion comes from the mind of the
human animal, so it comes from us. The other animals on earth don't seem to need a
religion. (…) [The human animal has lost the ability] to go with the flow of existence
without thinking about it. Our brains have developed in a way that makes us self-
conscious. We are interested in ourselves. We can't help wondering about things. We
can't help thinking." (Holloway 2016, 1)
This over-simplistic statement is part of a way of thinking about religion that has a deep interest
in the origin of religion. Not only is religion considered as an essential category of human
psychological, physical or social life, but the literature that is interested in the origins, also stresses
the functional importance of religion in the development of Homo sapiens. This functional
approach to religion, emphasizes its use in social cohesion and moral behavior, either as an aspect
of culture (Durkheim 1965) or of nature (Waal 2013).
Other authors argue that it is important to not focus on the similarities between religions, but on
the differences and the specificities (Schilbrack 2013). Or, conversely, move away from narrow
definitions and pose that there are certain characteristics that together define a religion, without
establishing hard boundaries or categories (Saler 2000). Analyzing human religious thought as a
collection of categories, enables a scientific approach to understanding religion by adopting
theories and terminology from cognitive science, considering religion in relation to the cognitive
capacities of humans (Pyysiäinen and Anttonen 2002; Engler 2004; McCauley and Lawson 2007;
L. H. Martin and Wiebe 2017).
Much of these debates are of an ontological and epistemological nature. Very simply put: ontology
describes "what is", "what exists"; while epistemology describes "what we can or cannot know"
or "how we know". What these approaches have in common is that they consider religion as
something that is inevitably human (whether one is a theist or an atheist) and exists independent
of a specific context. It is this point at which I, as a student of ancient culture, become profoundly
uncomfortable. Studying ancient culture without being aware of and explicit about our own
categorizations, and without considering that epistemology is historically specific and culturally
relative, will lead to an impaired interpretation.

To consider religion as a category of human ontology dates back to the Enlightenment (or rather
enlightenments, plural), a diverse and often contradictory complex of philosophical, religious and
political thought that arose in Europe and across the Atlantic in the 18th century. The
Enlightenment is credited as the source of reason, science, civility, tolerance, empowerment and
humanism. The Enlightenment(s) went hand in hand with a belief in progress, while its emphasis
on freedom fueled a strong stance against slavery, as well as the stimulation of commerce and
capitalism. Many Enlightenment thinkers critiqued religion and especially the power of the
(Roman Catholic) church. The study of religion only became possible because it was no longer
considered all-encompassing and above evaluation and ethical critique. In recent publications,
several of these critical approaches and philosophies of enlightenment thinkers have been placed
in a context of a particular understanding of the European Wars of Religion: the political and social
interpretation of the long-lasting violent fights during the 16th and 17th century against
Protestantism and other religious movements condemned as heresy.

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The light of progress was throwing very different shadows. Most enlightenment thinkers
"agreed with Voltaire on the need to crush l’infâme, an expression which, depending on its
interpretation, can mean the Catholic Church, institutional Christianity, or religious
fanaticism in general. However, if the philosophes were perceived as a unified movement,
it was above all thanks to the writings of their enemies. Counter-Enlightenment writers saw
the new philosophy as a coordinated campaign against religion that threatened to ruin
Christian civilization as a whole." (Domínguez 2017, 274)

Based on the critique of (certain kinds of) religious thought, religion itself became a subject of
study and lately it has been argued, as outlined above, that this should not just be the study, but the
science of religion, closely linked to psychology, cognitive and evolutionary sciences. This puts at
the center of study not the phenomenon of religion, or the society or culture of which it is part, but
human beings (Saler 2004). The questions, however, remain the same:

"What should we mean by "religion?" Why are there religions? How are they organized
and transmitted? In what ways do religions resemble one another and in what ways do they
differ? And why do many people continue to invest themselves in religion whereas others
distance themselves from it or actively attempt to debunk it." (Saler 2004, 213)

A critical approach to the study of religion should not set out to just critique others, but be self-
aware and self-reflexive. If the study of religion is the study of humans, then we are dealing with
subjects, rather than objects. Increasingly in anthropology and archaeology the "study of" is
changing into the "study with, for and by". Ironically, this development is very much part of some
of the most fundamental elements of enlightenment philosophy: freedom and empowerment.

For the study of ancient Egyptian religion, this means an effort to find the various voices of the
ancient population of Egypt by analyzing the material culture, which includes texts that have
survived on ostraca, papyrus, wall paintings and inscriptions, but also objects that were used as
protection against threats to health, wealth and well-being.

It is important to discern an emic from an etic approach, terms used in anthropology, of which the
first represents the voice of the ancient Egyptians, and the second is an outside analysis, often
based on a comparison of different cultures.

An example of an etic approach is a functionalist interpretation of religious thought or action. In

his critical introduction to the study of religion (C. Martin 2012), the author explicitly bases his
appoach on Marx', Durkheim's and Weber's thoughts about religion. The concept of hermeneutics
of suspicion represents the theory that religious phenomena have a function in social relations and
the method of how to reveal these. Martin list the anthropologist Evan Pritchard as a proponent.
The latter is, however, well aware of the difference between what is observed, what is said, and
what the scholar fills in, often based on cross-cultural comparisons.

"In sacrifice [an ox] is consecrated with ashes, has an invocation spoken and is speared.
What concerns us here is the buk, the consecration: the placing, usually lightly rubbing, of
ashes on its back. What is the meaning of this act? It is clear that it is a rite of consecration,
the animal's life being thereby devoted to God; but in the most common sacrifices, the
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 piacular ones, it is also sanctified for sacrifice in substitution for the life of a man. It would
seem, therefore, that the laying of the right hand on the animal's back identifies the man
who lays it, or the person on whose behalf he is acting, with the beast. I must confess that
this is not an interpretation I reached entirely by observation, but one taken over from
studies of Hebrew and other sacrifices because it seems to make better sense than any other
as an explanation of the Nuer facts. For the Nuer, the right hand stands for the whole
person, and by placing it on the animal the officiant identifies himself with it. If this is so,
then it is himself that he offers up; or, to put it in another way, in sacrifice the
representations of man and ox are fused. " (Evans-Pritchard 1953, 191)

In an emic approach we try to put ancient Egyptian expression of thought at the center of our
investigation. We should always consider that:
• we are considering thousands of years of cumulative beliefs and expressions of these
• we are dealing with multiple interests, groups, regions
• the majority of the population was illiterate and did not express its thoughts in writing
• context (historical, archaeological, social, regional) is always of utmost importance

In order to try to come to an understanding of ancient thought, we need a variety of multi-

disciplinary and multi-cultural approaches, to grasp a plurality of traditions. It also means that I
will try to avoid using the word "religion", because it is a relatively modern and western notion
that has been unjustly and confusingly planted upon all kinds of concepts that are related to ritual,
ancestors and the divine (Nongbri 2013). At the same time a concept such as magic, which is an
interaction with the divine and the ancestors, are often considered to be outside religion (Wallace
2015). This is implicit in texts that speak about "Religion and Magic". You will not find the word
superstition used to refer to ancient beliefs, nor the word supernatural to ancient accepted, but not
always discernable realities. The materiality of ritual, healing and magic is what this book is about:
the texts written and read by a very small section of society; the tangible remains of ritual actions
performed by many; the amulets and statuettes used by everybody.

References
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