Years later, the people replaced the wooden
shrine with a more substantial one that reflected
the idea of permanence. Thus, the temple of stone
announced a new dispensation in the creative
imagination of the African people. From the time
the people built the temples at Waset, Men-nefer,
Heliopolis (On), and other religious sites, there
was a continuation of the idea of permanence as
material, hard, stone, and physical.
When the Greeks visited Africa as early as the
9th century BC, they found temples that were
more than 2,000 years old. What became temples
in Greece and later Rome were really relatively
recent buildings compared with the antiquity of
ancient Africa. Indeed, a site as grand as the
Angkor Wat site in Cambodia is merely from
the 12th century of this era. Thus, to speak of the
ancient Egyptian and Nubian temple sites in the
same contexts as others is to diminish the mean-
ing of the term. The temple in the ancient
Egyptian conception was often called “the god’s
house.”
Whenever the people wanted to donate gifts
to the gods, they brought them to the temple, and
there the priests and priestesses managed them in
the name of the gods. These gifts and endowments
were essential to the wealth of the gods. In the city
of Waset, for example, during the New Kingdom,
no god was as rich and powerful as Amen. Like
other temples, the Temple of Amen owned land,
farms, pastures, livestock, and boats and received
the spoils of war in an effort to support a massive
staff of temple helpers, priests, and assistants. In
some cases, an entire town was used in the service
of the temple to prepare and harvest food for the
temple or make boats and art for the temple.
The Great Temple of KarnakKarnak, the massive temple at Waset, now called
Luxor, is the world’s largest religious structure.
Yet it might have been rivaled in the past by the
Temple of Ptah at Men-nefer or the Temple of
Gebel Barkal in Nubia. In antiquity, Egypt had no
peer in the construction of large stone temples. It
would not be until the appearance of Buddhism,
Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam that there
would be huge religious structures to compare
with the African temples.
The temples of the Nile Valley, Kemet and
Nubia, were often more than religious sites. They
were also places of education and healing. In this
sense, they were the first universities and hospi-
tals. If someone was interested in certain informa-
tion or in discovering the answer to a particular
question, the temple was the place to visit. People
who found themselves desperately ill with no
relief from local healers might make their way to
the temple for expert advice. Although these
functions were possible and common, it was
more likely that the priests were concerned only
with the care of the gods. Taking care that the
gods were happy meant that the country would
prosper.Types of Temples
The ancient Egyptians had mortuary temples ded-
icated to royals. These temples were usually cre-
ated for ceremonies and rituals for the dead king
or queen. The famous temple of Hatshepsut is a
mortuary temple. Because the per-aa was a god,
he required aper neteror ahet neterjust as all
gods did. Thus, the regular and mortuary temples
were used to maintain the name and life of the
king or god.
It appears that some temples in ancient Egypt
were used for political purposes, such as marking
the southern boundary of the country. The great
temple of Abu Simbel in southern Egypt, with its
two large chapels, one dedicated to Ramses II and
the other dedicated to Nefertari, his wife, seemed
to serve a political as well as a religious purpose.
Certainly the temple of Nefertari was the house of
Hathor because the temple of Ramses II was
dedicated to Amen, Ptah, Atum, and Ramses II.
Temples could be used for other purposes as
well. For example, there were the temples that
were used for the Sed Festival, the Jubilee Festival,
for the king. Other temples were used to serve as
the residence of the ka of the king; these ka tem-
ples were necessary to protect and serve the souls
of the dead kings.
Many religious buildings in ancient Egypt may
be called temples because they served sacred pur-
poses and were specialized spaces for major deities,
for the kas of kings, for mortuary ceremonies, or
for coronation activities; others served as massive656 Temples, Concept in Ancient Times