A new look at the function and ritual of ancient temples

This book presents an important survey of ancient Egyptian temples and the rituals associated with their use. It covers the entire pharaonic era, from the Old Kingdom to the Roman period, and offers a fresh perspective on ritual and its cultural significance, demonstrating the role of temples as loci for the creative interplay of sacred space and sacred time. Temples of Ancient Egypt challenges the traditional division of temples into the categories of either ‘mortuary’ or ‘divine,’ showing that their functions and symbolic representations were, at once, too varied and too intertwined. Contributors: Dieter Arnold, Lanny Bell, RagnhildBjerreFinnestad, Gerhard Haeny, and Byron E. Shafer. “New books occasionally appear which cause genuine excitement amongst their target audience . . . the Shafer volume has already become required reading at my own and other Universities.”—Susanna Thomas, Antiquity Magazine