Practical Religion and Piety

Official religion is presented as centring on royal-divine relations; decorum excludes human non-funerary religious concerns. For want of evidence, pre-New Kingdom personal religion must therefore be approached through constructing hypotheses rather than accumulating evidence. A biographical model s...

Full description

Saved in:  
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Baines, John (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Check availability: HBZ Gateway
Journals Online & Print:
Drawer...
Fernleihe:Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste
Published: SAGE Publishing 1987
In: The journal of Egyptian archaeology
Year: 1987, Volume: 73, Issue: 1, Pages: 79-98
Online Access: Presumably Free Access
Volltext (JSTOR)
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
Description
Summary:Official religion is presented as centring on royal-divine relations; decorum excludes human non-funerary religious concerns. For want of evidence, pre-New Kingdom personal religion must therefore be approached through constructing hypotheses rather than accumulating evidence. A biographical model suggests that practical religionȔreligious action in an everyday contextȔmay focus on affliction, to which responses include communication with the deadȔletters to the dead among the literateȔand perhaps divination through oracles and consulting seers. These approaches may precede further, unknown actions. The use of intermediaries to deities and the deification of non-royal individuals does not certainly extend beyond the élite. PietyȔpersonal relations with deitiesȔis most clearly attested in personal names, while the élite display of personal religious involvement implies some general aspiration to divine contact. Later Egyptian society, in which practical religion and piety are more visible and integrated, had different rules of decorum and perhaps a different organization, in which values and religious action were less local in their focus.
ISSN:2514-0582
Contains:Enthalten in: The journal of Egyptian archaeology
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1177/030751338707300108