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Ancient Egypt Magazine

Issue Four - November / December 2000

Myth and Ritual in the Temple of Horus at Edfu

The third and final part of our series by Dr Barbara Watterson explores Egyptian celebrations at Edfu Temple

The mythologies of most of the major deities of Egypt tell of how these deities created the world. Horus of Behdet was no exception. According to inscriptions in his temple at Edfu, in the beginning was chaos; water covered the earth, silent, inert, deep; and everything was in darkness. Then, out of the primaeval ocean, a small island – The Island of Creation – emerged around which flotsam gradually accumulated. Two amorphous beings – the Great One, and the Distant One – appeared, picked up a stick from the flotsam, split it in two and stuck one half of it into the ground at the water’s edge. Immediately, a falcon – Horus – emerged from the gloom and perched on the stick, at which point light broke over Chaos and the world began.

Horus on his perch needed shelter and so a simple reed hut was built to house him. Gradually, as the waters of the primaeval ocean receded, the island became ever larger, and as it did so the falcon’s house was extended; more rooms and halls were added on to the original shrine, always extending down towards the water’s edge, until eventually a complete temple was built. This, the first House of Horus, became the model for all later temples.

The mythological origin of the Temple of Horus was commemorated in its decoration. The Temple’s stone columns represented in re-grouped order the reeds that had grown round the primaeval island, hence their bases were engraved with marsh plants. As in many temples, especially those of the Ptolemaic Period, there is a discernable rise in floor level from the outer hall of the Temple through to the sanctuary, in commemoration of the fact that the first, mythological, sanctuary was erected on the highest point of the Island of Creation. The high mud-brick temenos wall has not survived, but it was probably built in alternately concave and convex sections, giving an impression of wavy lines in an attempt to represent the waves of the primaeval ocean that surrounded the Island of Creation.

Like all cult temples, the Temple of Horus at Edfu was the house of the god in which his priests, called hwm ntr or “servants of the god”, fulfilled many of their duties in the manner of household servants. The activities of the temple reflected the day to day activities of a home, enlivened by occasional feast days and holidays. The uses to which its various rooms and halls were put emphasized its domestic character. The innermost sanctuary was, in effect, Horus’ bedroom; the Hall of Offerings was the dining room, and on its walls are recorded in relief and inscription the details of the food offerings, amongst other things, that were given daily to the god. The Pronaos functioned as a reception, for it was here that notable visitors to the temple were received.

The most important activity of the day took place in the morning. Before dawn, priests would have brought in water from the sacred lake, reciting spells over it to ensure its ritual purity; roasted an ox, and other meats, assembled different types of bread, poured beer into jars – to all intents and purposes, making breakfast. At dawn, the chief officiant entered the temple through a side door – the pylon-gateway was only used on festival occasions – and made his way to the Sanctuary in which the statue of Horus had been safely locked and sealed inside the shrine during the night.

With constant wafting of incense to preserve purity, the priest lifted out Horus from the shrine, “washed” him with incense and “dressed” him by draping white, green, red and blue cloths over the statue. An abbreviated form of this morning ritual was performed for other deities whose statues were housed in the temple either as permanent residents or as guests. The food that had been prepared was laid out before every divine statue, after which it became the property of the priests. This Reversion of the Divine Offerings was important to the priesthood – it was their “daily bread” and it was shared out amongst them according to rank.

The first festival to take place in the Temple of Horus was its consecration or opening ceremony, called “Handing over the House to its Lord”, during which the performance of the “Opening of the Mouth” had the effect of bringing to life the Temple and all its reliefs, statues and equipment. The Consecration Ceremony ended with a “topping out” party at which a specially prepared meal was served to the priests and to the craftsmen who had built the Temple. The Ceremony itself was not a once and for all occasion, but was repeated every year on New Year’s Day.

The foundation of the temple was commemorated in a series of reliefs in the finished building. Since Edfu Temple was built in three separate stages, there are sets of reliefs for each of them, all showing the King emerging from his palace to carry out the rituals of “Stretching” and “Releasing the Cord”, that is, marking out the ground-plan of the temple with a length of gypsum-impregnated rope; “Hacking up the Ground”, that is, opening a foundation trench for the walls; “Making Bricks” by placing mud in a brick-mould; “Scattering Sand” into the foundations as a protection against water seepage; “Placing the Bricks”, that is, depositing ritual objects – many of which were of gold or silver – in the foundations; “Scattering Besen (chalk)” to purify the temple; and, finally, “Making Offerings”, especially the heads of bulls and geese.

One of the most important annual festivals celebrated in Edfu Temple was the New Year Ceremony, enacted on the day of the first rising of the Nile, on the First Day of the Inundation Season (July 19 in our calendar). The culmination of the festival came at mid-day, when the sun shone on the cult-statue of Horus, and on one of his divine consort, Hathor of Dendera, both of which had been carried up to the roof of the Temple for the purpose.

Hathor played a leading role in a festival that took place some weeks later, in the Third Month of Summer (August), beginning on the day of the New Moon and lasting for the next fifteen days. This was the Feast of the Joyous Union, for which the cult-statue of Hathor was brought in a great flotilla of boats from her temple at Dendera for the annual celebration of her marriage to Horus. The marriage of the two deities was consummated on the first day of the Feast, but on the second and subsequent days, the Feast changed from a sacred marriage to a harvest festival, known as the Festival of Behdet, a time of peace and rejoicing in which the streets of the town of Edfu thronged with its inhabitants and with visitors from miles around who were treated to days and nights of feasting and drinking. At the end of the Festival, Hathor journeyed home to Dendera to await the birth of the son that Horus had fathered.

Every year during the first five days of the First Month of Winter (Nov­ember) the Coronation of the Sacred Falcon was enacted at Edfu. On the first day of the festival the statue of Horus was carried to the Temple of the Sacred Falcon, which lay a short distance away from the main temple. Here falconers presented a selection of their finest birds from which one was chosen to receive the royal regalia and to be crowned and presented to the people – that is, priests and a privileged section of the public – from the balcony between the wings of the pylon-gateway of Horus’ temple. The festival was not merely the selection of a falcon, but a symbolic renewal of the coronation of the king whose claim to the throne had always been legitimated by the tradition of regarding a king of Egypt as the living Horus. In crowning a falcon, the priests of Edfu were preserving the link with their own native kings against the day when the usurping Ptolemies would be gone and the falcon would hand on the kingship to a true Egyptian king.

The Coronation of the Sacred Falcon was followed by the Festival of Victory, which began on the twenty-first day of the Second Month of Winter (December) and lasted for five days. The Festival was basically a sacred drama based on the myth of Horus in which he took revenge on Seth, the murderer of his father. The scenes that make up the drama, which is said to be the earliest play ever written, are inscribed on the west wall of the Ambulatory. At the end of each performance, there was a recital of the Legend of the Winged Disk, which tells of how, in the guise of a great, winged sun-disk, Horus overthrew his great enemy, Seth, cut off his head, and dragged him by his feet throughout the land. To the Egyptians, Seth was a manifestation of the hated “Ionian dogs” from Greece: and it is easy to imagine with what fervour the Egyptian section of the audience cheered Horus on!

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