LAUSR

The proposition of addressing ancient Egyptian religion in one volume can only be described as a daunting one. Ancient Egypt as we currently define it encompasses a vast timeframe of more than 3000 years of varying political and social conditions, yet it is often assessed in scholarship in terms of a relatively homogenous religious structure. The author, Stephen Quirke, professor of Egyptology at University College London, makes this point very clear from the outset and has chosen to limit his topic to the period between state formation in the late fourth millennium to the conquest of Egypt by Persia in the sixth century bce. This slightly contracted timeframe still embraces 2500 years of religious practice, but judiciously avoids discussion of Persian, Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt, each of them representing vast topics in isolation. The volume has a brief preface outlining the intentions of the author and introducing the basic difficulties of assessing early religious practice while employing contemporary western language systems and concepts, and by this both consciously and unconsciously imposing subjective values upon the evidence. The first chapter, ‘Belief without a Book’, functions as an introduction to the intentions of the volume and naturally includes an historical overview and the physical context. The chapter is aptly titled and sets the stage for the entirework by deftly leading the reader into the intrinsic contrast between pharaonic Egypt and modern, specifically western, culture. The Egyptians, in fact, were not compelled to put their religious ideas in print and therefore had no formal book of teachings to structure their belief and dictate the nature of their actions. In this way commentators on ancient Egypt are already on unsteady ground, and the scholarly debate over the last century over the existence of narrative myths from Egypt is an example of this issue. Quirke addresses this coherently with emphasis on the stumbling blocks of language and on three major obstacles to exploring and understanding Egyptian culture adequately. These are the inherent Eurocentrism of the study of Egypt; the overemphasis in scholarship on the written evidence; and finally the lack of theoretical reflection when interpreting the evidence, the latter representing the need for further interdisciplinary and holistic approaches to both archaeology and text. In this context, Quirke is also quick to emphasize his own inherent bias as a philologist. Chapter 2, ‘Finding the Sacred in Space and Time’, expands on this premise with the simple but obvious issue of how to define and identify sacred spaces and things in antiquity. This challenging proposition includes a conceptual range from potentially narrow levels of sacredness to universal sacredness, where all human experience might be interpreted as influenced by the divine. His examination begins with emphasis on the need for anthropological and ethno-archaeological approaches in order to improve understanding of the extant evidence from Egypt. Quirke is also quick to emphasize the intellectual baggage that derives from modern religious thought, such as the notion of a clear dichotomybetween official cult andpersonal practice. From this he introduces a timely discussion of the representation of the divine in Egypt as an illustration of amultivalent value system, incidentally refuting the tired cliché that the ancient Egyptians worshipped their gods in animal personifications. Rather, he argues that the ‘quality’ of a god could be represented bymultiple forms, inclusive of animal icons. The chapter closes with the caution that Egyptians did not narrate their divineworld, nor did they employ terms equivalent to those we currently employ to describe religious functionaries. Chapter 3, ‘Creating Sacred Space and Time’, turns from abstract ideas to the physical dimension of religious experience and focuses on the spatial aspect of Egyptian religion, examining the architectural and performative levels of state and private cult. This involves an overview of the chronological development of Egyptian sacred architecture, illustrating only too well the imbalance of data that is currently skewed towards state cult. From this, he moves to the core function of sacred space, which was as environments for offerings to a limited repertoire of recipients: the gods, the king or the blessed dead. This is in stark contrast to the modern notion of sacred space as places of assembly and worship. The rest of the chapter elaborates on the roles, rituals and festivities associated with these sacred spaces. The following chapter, ‘Chaos and Life’, broaches the underlying principle of Egyptian culture: Ma’at. This was the necessity for every member of society to contribute to maintaining universal harmony. The core actor within this world view was the Egyptian ruler, who was considered a liminal being situated between the divine and human realms. As such, the king functioned as the primary narrator of cult, defender of order and interlocutor with deities. This pivotal role was expressed publicly with monumental iconography of his figure suppressing the forces of chaos CAJ 28:1, 165–166 C © 2017 McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research