The effect of religious belief the evolution of Gods’ temples in Ancient Egypt.

Abstract

Since early times, religion was the axis of life in ancient Egypt. Artistic creations revolved around it. Early Egyptians showed a great deal of respect to religion’s views on religious afterlife and resurrection after death. They also cared about all sacred religious rites associated with legends, myths, and lives of the gods. The Egyptians thought that the gods have lived on earth before, then they went to the sky (heaven in ancient Egyptian beliefs) leaving Horus that was later on followed by the rule of Pharaohs. Since the Egyptians owe the pleasures of life that they were given to the Gods, one of the priorities of Paranoiac kings was building temples and religious infrastructure – which were considered as the houses of the gods. They devoted huge resources to the temples where they kept symbols of statues and artifacts, gave sacrifices, and performed ritual ceremonies. Research problem: Because of the large number of temples scattered in all over Egypt, - some of them linked with the tombs of the Kings while the others weren’t- some specialists found it hard to recognize which temples served in which exact purposes. The researchers found the need to do such a study to explain the reasons for the differences between the temples, and whether the development of the temple shapes were due to natural, environmental, geographical, climatic, biological reasons, or were they influenced by political and historical circumstances, or was the whole issue up to the ancient Egyptian's believes that was different according to the region and the main god at this period of time. Research goals: This research aims to find out the impact of religious thoughts and beliefs in the development of the shapes of the temples of the gods, from the prehistoric era until the end of the Amarna era. Results: - Ancient Egyptian temples were divided into two main types: first, called the funeral temples, were held by orders of the king and were also attached to his tomb in order to ensure the continuation of the offerings and worship after his death, as well as the other type of temples known as temples of the gods, especially held to worship the gods. Egyptians used these temples for prayers and religious celebrations of the gods. - There is no longer any prehistoric architecture with precise details, except for some writings and inscriptions that help us to imagine how the temple was at first. -The same broad lines continued to appear in the temples form the prehistoric time until the end of the ancient Egypt history. This shows that the tradition in building the temples had Inviolable religious Holiness. - With the transmission of ancient Egyptian society from Neolithic period to the era of Dynastic Egypt some evolution happened, the evolution found in a part of the desert at Abydos on the remains of Khanta Amenti temple. -Through the remaining architectural evidence belonging to the old kingdom, we can classify Almidamod Temple, the Temple of the Sphinx in Giza, and the Sun Temple of King Ne Oosra in Obograb as ‘temples of the gods’.