Household Gods and Domestic Worship
Although ordinary people may have understood
something of the god’s role within the temple and had contact with
the temple deities during the festival processions, their religious
practices were generally directed toward another group for which we
use the term “household gods,” since they were generally worshiped
at small shrines in houses.
People approached these gods for guidance and assistance about various aspects of their lives and, although the gods did not possess temples, cults, or priesthoods, they were worshiped at all levels of society. Evidence for this popular religion has to be sought in the settlement sites (cities, towns, and villages), which have survived less well than the tombs or temples. However, three of the towns that were populated by the workers (and their families) who constructed and decorated the royal tombs have been discovered and excavated. Objects and documents found at these sites have provided insight into the personal religion of these families. .
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Religious Worship
at Deir el-Medina It is evident that the tomb laborers and their families considered religion to be very important. At the site known as Deir el-Medina, where a town was built to accommodate the workmen who constructed the royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings during the New Kingdom, there were several important cults. Perhaps surprisingly the great state god Amen-Re was treated by these residents as their local god and regarded as the arbiter of divine justice and protector of the weak and poor. These families worshiped Amun and addressed their personal prayers to him. There was also an important cult to the royal patron and founder of the community, King Amenhotep I and his mother Queen Ahmose-Nefertari. They received the unusual honor of deification and personal worship even after death. Two gods were widely worshiped at Deir el- Medina and throughout Egypt. Bes was a jolly but grotesque dwarf whose cult may have been introduced into Egypt from Asia or Ethiopia at a very early date. As the god of love, marriage, dancing, and jollification he also assisted at childbirth and protected the young and weak. He attended the circumcision ceremony and defeated the forces of evil by making music, singing, and dancing. Represented as a bowlegged dwarf with a feathered crown, he always wore a hideous mask and was often shown playing a musical instrument. Bes’s consort, Tauert, was the goddess of fertility and childbirth who was present to assist women of all classes at the birth of their children. She was depicted as an upstanding pregnant hippopotamus. Other important goddesses at Deir el-Medina were Hathor the cow goddess, Mertetseger the serpent goddess of the Theban necropolis, and “Peak-of-the- West,” the personification of the mountain situated above the Valley of the Kings. At Deir el-Medina there is also evidence of several Asiatic gods. An important aspect of popular religion at Deir el-Medina was the use of an oracle. This was worked by the priests (who were chosen from within the workforce by the workmen themselves) who held the god’s statue in front of the petitioner and made it move in a particular direction in response to his inquiry. The priests claimed that through them the deified Amenhotep I thus gave advice to the petitioners over personal quarrels and family concerns; he even ruled on law cases since it was acceptable to seek an oracular answer instead of the decision given by the local law court. The priests also organized local festivals when the divine statues would be carried in procession through the town. In general this community enjoyed great religious and legal autonomy. Domestic gods were worshiped at a shrine filled with stelae, offering tables, water jars, braziers, and vases in a separate area of the home. Worship at home probably reflected the rituals performed in the great temples and would have included the presentation of food offerings and libations and the burning of incense in front of the god’s statue. At Deir el-Medina there is evidence of a particularly interesting and very unusual aspect of personal piety. Memorial stelae (stones) set up in some of the offering chapels by the workmen have inscriptions in which the workmen appeal to the gods for help. Some express humility (a rare admission in formal inscriptions in Egypt) and gratitude to the god for delivering the person from illness or affliction believed to have been the result of his own sins. These appeals for mercy and confession of sins have prompted scholarly interest; one suggestion is that these were new ideas perhaps introduced by Syrian immigrants, but others claim that such concepts had probably always been part of popular faith, but because of the high level of literacy at Deir el-Medina they were more frequently written down there and have therefore survived. The workmen’s transgressions appear to have included impiety and swearing falsely by a god’s name; blindness seems to have been regarded as a special punishment for sins against a god. .
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Religious Worship at
Tell el-Amarna and Kahun At the other royal workmen’s towns at Tell el- Amarna and Kahun similar household cults have been discovered. Although Tell el- Amarna was the capital built at the end of Dynasty 18 specifically to promote King Akhenaten’s monotheistic cult of the Aten, the workmen’s village provides evidence that they retained their religious independence and continued to worship such popular deities as Bes and Tauert. At Kahun some aspects of the community’s religious practices that are somewhat unusual may be due to the presence of foreign immigrants among the workforce. Nonetheless, the gods worshiped in this town (built in Dynasty 12) include the usual domestic deities, and it is evident that offerings of food were presented in household shrines. Several roughly carved stone dish stands have been discovered in the houses, and these were probably used for offering bread or dough to the god’s statue. Although these incorporate unusual features, it is difficult to determine if they really represent foreign religion or if they were a purely local development of Egyptian popular cults. Another strange religious custom found at Kahun was the practice of burying babies in boxes underneath the floors of some of the houses. In Egypt it was usual to inter the dead on the edge of the desert, but similar intramural burials have occurred at various Near Eastern sites. .
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Household Gods and Domestic Worship
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