Talk:Egyptian temple

Nice job

Monumental. Question: Do we have a sense how many temples are extant? Might help for context in the lead section. 5? 5000? I have no idea :) Green Cardamom (talk) 03:03, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

I haven't been able to find numbers, though I think I can safely say there are dozens. It depends what you mean by "extant", too; one of the greatest temples in Egyptian history, the temple of Ra at Heliopolis, is little more than the vague remains of a rubble mound, except one perfectly preserved obelisk. I want to have a section about the fate of the temples (destruction, preservation, tourism, etc.) from their abandonment up to the present, but one of the sources I need for that is moving very sluggishly through the library system.

Also, a plea to anyone who can help: I still can't find a reliable source to say that tourism is a key part of the Egyptian economy and Egyptian temples are a key part of the tourist industry. I know that it's true, but of course it's verifiability that counts here. Hard numbers about the temples' modern economic importance would be good, but just getting an RS to say they are economically important is proving absurdly difficult. A. Parrot (talk) 06:57, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

• Yes - splendid effort! This link (from Tourism in Egypt) covers the first part, but nothing about temples specifically. There might be something on the UNESCO world heritage site(s), which have all the applications online. Or try wading through this (more general tourism stats), one of the links here. Specific temples are listed on a further page on the government site, but it's probably not a good moment to e-mail them for detailed figures, which might be worth it otherwise. Or you can try relying on Subject-specific common knowledge, until challenged. Johnbod (talk) 11:54, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

There's a title missing in "Reymond, E. A. E. (1969). Manchester University Press. ISBN 0719003113." Johnbod (talk) 12:27, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks; I corrected the missing title. The SIS website doesn't mention temples specifically, but it does state tourism's share of the Egyptian GDP (11.3%) and indicate that the ancient monuments are a crucial part of the tourism sector. If I can't scrounge up anything else before I put the final section together, maybe I can rely on that, combined with the subject-specific common knowledge that there are only two types of ancient monuments in Egypt: temples and tombs. A. Parrot (talk) 18:33, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Construction

There's a good description of stone dressing etc, but there's no explanation of materials and design choices such as why the walls are battered. I'm presuming that this was because of the capacities of the materials and of their elementary knowledge of structural design - e.g. the materials selected/surviving were only suitable for use in compression, they were at the limit of their capacity, and that there was no knowledge of buttresses, arches, or other designs that could be used with walls at this height. Can someone with access to suitable RS expand on this? Thanks Ephebi (talk) 07:24, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

My sources strongly imply, though they don't explicitly state, that the Egyptians used the materials that they did for convenience: limestone and sandstone are durable, plentiful in the area, and not as labor-intensive as hard stones like granite. In response to your post, I made the implication in the article somewhat stronger. As for design choices, I don't know. The source most likely to help with such questions is Dieter Arnold's Encyclopedia of Ancient Egyptian Architecture, but I don't have it on hand anymore and am having difficulty getting my hands on it again. If I do find answers, I may state them briefly in the article, but I don't want to go into a lot of detail. Ideally, information like this would go in the article on Ancient Egyptian architecture, but of course, that article is crummy. A. Parrot (talk) 21:00, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Comment re abandoned temples

A really good solid article, well done. One point on first reading: The section heading and text beginning with "After the religion that created them vanished...". Would it not be better described as the closing of the temples during the Christian era after their religion was suppressed? If some more pics are needed then maybe Abu Simbal which links to the Aswan Dam project nicely, as well as it's solar architectural symbolism that happens twice a year. Yt95 (talk) 12:22, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

I briefly described the end of Egyptian religion at the end of "Later periods", earlier in the article, and I phrased it this way in "After abandonment" because I didn't want to go over it again. In any case, the process was very complicated and wasn't simply "suppression". Emperors withdrew their support for the temples, but they were busy with other things, so it was usually Christians on the ground who ended the pagan practices, village by village, through argument and conversion as well as by violence. A. Parrot (talk) 17:37, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't doubt for a second you have a source who gives this as fact but it betrays an astonishing ignorance on their part. The "local Christians on the ground" whom the article mentions as being responsible for the attacks on the pagan temples where led by Canonised saints, Doctors of the Churchs, and Bishops, people like Augustine, Cyril and a whole host of lesser celebrity figures. Some mark the period of decline as beginning around 1000BCE, through socio-economic reasons rather than lack of belief, and this continued forward, but what "ended" the Ancient Religion was the forcible suppression with the rise of the Christian emperors, most notably Theodosius towards the end of the 4th century who introduced the death penality, not only for public civic rituals that were carried out in the Temples (which were not ordinarly open to the general public) as well those carried out at popular shrines or in the privacy of a persons own home. Since they had no dogmatic belief in having to proclaim One-Godism on pain of eternal punishment in hell you will not find many pagan "martyrs". That Philae closed in the 6th century had nothing whatsover to do with Christian toleration but rather the Romans, great contract legalists, who stuck to the agreement Diocletian made with a tribe to protect a border and he granted them perpetual visitng rights to Philae to honour Isis: that great Chrsitian, Justinian, put an end to that. Anyhow it is misleading to suggest that the Ancient Religion just "vanished". Common sense tells you that this just doesn't happen. Look at how so many Churches are being turned into beer halls, Cash and Carry's and so forth in your own country but do scholars say that Christianity has vanished - of course not. Popular practices and belief continue with people still having the own personal form of devotions, but that was never allowed with the coming of the Christian emperors in Ancient Egypt. Save those practices that were preserved in Christianity, the old religion and devotions of Ancient Egypt were stamped out "with great severity" as one Catholic historian puts it. I'm not a home at present but I can provided scholarly citations for any point of fact I have mentioned. Yt95 (talk) 12:14, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Frankfurter's book was already in the works cited, so there's no need to add it to the further reading. Titling the final section "Christian era" is wrong, because the section deals with the period from the temples' closure to the present (most of which is the Islamic era). There was a lot of suppression going on, but to used "suppressed" to describe the whole process is, I think, an oversimplification. It was native Egyptian Christians who did the suppressing, after all, so conversion was involved somewhere along the way. Besides, as Frankfurter points out, a lot of Egyptian practices were absorbed into Coptic Christianity, so those parts of the religion were not suppressed.

I admit that "vanished" isn't the right word, so I changed it to "disintegrated"—insofar as Egyptian religion was a unified entity at all, it had definitely fallen apart by the seventh century AD. And I don't deny that that was due to Christianity; I said so in the "Later periods" section. "After abandonment" is not mainly concerned with that subject; the first sentence merely serves to bring the reader back to the period when the Egyptians were no longer maintaining the temples. A. Parrot (talk) 18:10, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

"Abandoned" isn't the correct word either because it has voluntary overtones, when clearly that wasn't the case. No matter the economic and political travails there would always have been some kind of civic Temple cult no matter how diminished in grandeur from its previous heights. That none at all remained was due to one simple reason - it was proscribed under pain of death by the Christian Emperors so it's not correct to suggest that it was entirely due to local Egyptians who were acting under their own volition, indeed Theodosius had to send a prefect to Egypt to enforce his policy. Of course conversion is a factor but I think this is much overstated. During the rise of early Christianity Egypt was indeed a noted centre for the new faith - it was one very small step for man to move from the good Osiris cult which promised resurrection to the Jesus sect that offered very similar promises but came with an absolute promise that their holy book was the very word of God. At that time the new religion was not Roman and that too had a strong appeal to Nationalists which is still reflected today with the Copts. On the otherhand its very debatable that this was indeed the prime mover (i.e purity of heart) because when Islam came the people supposedly by and large jumped ship to that new religion as well. Rather than try and reconcile how two mass conversion can come about in a relatively short period of time it much easier to see that both Islam and Christianity, sharing supposedly the same god but hating one another, simply suppressed the existing religious tradition and people do what people of all times do - sail with the wind. Anyway I will leave it to you to suggest a better wording and heading to this section before I try again. Could you also comment on the addition of Abu Simbul pictures as mentioned earlier. The sources say "In the sanctuary, the deified Ramesses sits with Amun-Re, Re-Horakhty and Ptah. Twice a year, on 21 February and 21 October, the rising sun shines directly into the Sanctuary and illuminates the figures of Ramesses and Amun-Re." "The most extraordinary feature of Abu Simbel is that the ancient architects have deliberately, and successfully, sought to honour the rising sun by this daily victory over the powers of darkness". The idea is to have a nice pic from Abu Simbel and perhaps integrate within the caption or reference something from the above regarding the architectural symbolism and how the Temple was saved during the Aswan dam project by Unesco. Yt95 (talk) 08:53, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

My dictionary gives one meaning of abandon as "leave (a place, typically a building) empty or uninhabited, without intending to return", which is not necessarily voluntary. The usage notes say, "If one relinquishes something finally and completely, often because of weariness or discouragement, the word is abandon." How is that voluntary? "After abandonment" is simply the shortest and least awkward way of titling this section.

Regarding Abu Simbel, I made mention of its solar alignment and that it was one of the temples rescued in the 1960s, but I don't see any good place to include a picture. I dislike cramming a lot of images into sections because it makes the images dangle below the text (and even if it doesn't dangle on everybody's screen, it may well do so on a wide screen). More importantly, the images are supposed to illustrate the general statements about Egyptian temples made in the text, not show every popular temple there is. If you're so interested in Abu Simbel, why not work on its article? It's very much in need of improvement. A. Parrot (talk) 21:35, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

The text at present reads: "After the religion that created them disintegrated, Egyptian temples suffered slow decay. Many were defaced or dismantled by Christians trying to erase the remnants of paganism. A few, such as Luxor and Philae, were converted into churches, but many more went completely disused, and over time locals carried off their stones to use as material for new buildings." That decline had set in is accepted but the religion hadn't disintegrated leading to the now abandoned temples being subject to vandalism as you suggest. You mention Philae in particular but we know even from Christian accounts that it was still functioning when it was forcibly closed through the orders of Justinian in the 6th century. I can give you multiple Christian (if that's your bias) sources that affirm that "paganism" was suppressed in Egypt (with the exception of Philae - for reasons given above) and not "disintegrated" as the article suggests. I would simply ask that you mention the imperial edicts suppressing paganism, mention that Philae was only allowed to continue for a time due to an old treaty and head the section with Suppression of Paganism or words to that effect Yt95 (talk) 11:59, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

At the end of the "Later periods" section, it says: "In the fourth and fifth centuries AD, Christian emperors ordered the closing of pagan temples throughout the empire, and local Christians worked to eradicate worship of the traditional gods. In AD 550, Philae, the last functioning temple in Egypt, was closed." The lead section also indicates that Christian persecution ended temple activities. And I just added a note saying why Philae persisted as long as it did and that it was closed by force. Is it not enough to say that Christianity destroyed ancient Egyptian religion? Must the article fixate on that fact? That is what you are doing, but that is not what this article is for.

You missed out the line before which reads "Temple-building continued well into the second century AD, but as the empire weakened, support for the temple cults dried up", giving the impression once again that the imperial edicts and the destruction of the temples followed their abandondment. This isn't true. You also fail to mention "the world famous" Serapeum which was considered in it's time a "wonder of the world" but that would then explode the myth of the temples being abandoned wouldn't it? All the books I have which cover Egyptian Temples mention this. They describe how it was defended by pagans (who hadn't been told their temples had now been abandoned or that their religion had disintegrated) but destroyed anyway by a Christian mob. Your are the one who is fixating on text that falsifies history. "Suppression of Paganism" is not my term, do a google search if have a limited library. There is no book I have read that puts the spin this article does by suggesting the temples were abandoned and that their religion disintegrated. If you indeed have a source which says this then it must have taken some effort to find it, it certainly isn't scholarly consensus. Please refer to sources below:

"In a later edict (384 ACE), Theodosius I (379-95ACE), who was baptised a Christian soon after his accession, formally declared that Christianity was the official religion of the Roman Empire. He also ordered the closure of all temples dedicated to the old gods. There was now widespread persecution of heretics and pagans, and a systematic destruction of temples was pursued throughout Egypt, with the result that the old faith was largely destroyed. " (Religion and Magic in Ancient Egypt", Rosalie David, Penguin, p. 342)

"In A.D 313 Constantine the Great and Licinius proclaimed the equality of all religions in their Milan edict, and after this pagans were on the defensive in many parts of the Roman world, including Egypt. They were attacked in various places by Christians whose intolerance was directed indiscriminately against all pagan religions. From equality it was only a step to the first restrictions under Constantious (A.D. 3337-361); and finally under Theodosious (A.D. 379-395) Christianity was declared the official religion of the empire and pagan cults were forbidden altogether. Fanatical Christian mobs set themselves to destroy the pagan temples....[in 452] Justinian at last succeeded in closing the temple of Isis; he threw her priests into prison and brought the statues of the gods of Philae to Constantinople." (Ancient Egyptian Religion", Jaroslav Cerny, Hutchisons University Press, p. 150)

"Constantine's conversion in 312 had had almost immediate consequences: legitimacy was bestowed on the church along with other great favours and privileges, while at the same time, under this ruler as under his sons, an increasingly explicit disapproval was directed at the old religious organizations and institutions. In the succeeding generation, Theodosius promulgated harsh anti-pagan laws and ordered the destruction of the huge, the world famous, Sarapis temple in Alexandria." Christianity & Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries", Ramsay MacMullen, Yale University Press, p. 2 “Monks were called in from the desert to help in the task of demolition; they next moved on to the sacred buildings at Canopus (where they themselves afterwards settled among the ruins); and the impulse to destroy spread rapidly through Egypt.” (Christianizing the Roman Empire A.D 100-400, p. 99, Ramsay MacMullen, Yale University Press)

"In 391, the Alexandrians - as ever, spoiling for a fight - rioted, and the agitated pagan population opted to make their on ground they deemed too sacred and too famous to be violated: the great temple of Serapis, a wonder of the ancient world. To their dismay, imperial troops sided with the Christian besiegers, and before the action was over the wonderful Serapeum lay in ruins. Even more daunting, instead of punishing the transgressors Theodosius held the pagans themselves responsible. For both reasons, the event marks a defining moment in the struggle between Christianity and traditional religion and culture." (Constantine and the Bishops: The Politics of Intolerance, H. A. Drake, John Hopkins University Press, p. 404)

"Theodosius (379-95) forbade the pagan cults in 391, the same year the Serapeum of Alexandria was pillaged and closed. But as late as the fifth century we hear of the existence of pagan temples in Egypt and of an Isis festival celebrated in north Italy. At the beginning of the sixth century, medieval historians wrote that as late as the tenth century, people from local villages still gathered at Philae for the annual feast of Isis. It is from Philae we have the last hieroglyphic inscriptions." (Osiris: Death and Afterlife of a God, Bojana Mojsov, Blackwell, p. 118)

“Narses' men in the 530's evidently spent weeks methodically smashing the feet and faces off the relief figures of the Isis Temple at Philae.....Elsewhere in Egypt the work begun with the Serapion in Alexandria had been promptly carried forward we are told, 'throughout every Egyptian city, fort, village, rural district, riverbank, even the desert, whatever shrine could be found or rather, tomb, at the urging of every bishop. So exclaims the enthusiastic Rufinus.” Christianity & Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries", Ramsay MacMullen, Yale University Press, p. 53

“There [Alexandria], in the theatre and the streets, non-Christians rioted against the emperor's hostility toward their beliefs in the 380's and 390's. Until that time they had enjoyed free access to their shrines and the regular schedule of their sacrifices – indeed, the city had served as point of repair for throngs of pilgrims. Outside, the sources show churches and monasteries but also temples and processions: perhaps the numerical balance tipped toward Christianity in the 390's” (Christianizing the Roman Empire A.D 100-400, p. 99, Ramsay MacMullen, Yale University Press)

"Although Christianity had made great inroads into the populace by AD 391, the year in which the practice of pagan religion was officially made illegal, it is hardly possible to quantify it or to trace a neat and uniform progression. It engulfed its pagan precedents slowly and untidily. In the first half of the 5th century a pagan literary revival occurred, centred on the town of Panopolis, and there is evidence that fanatical monks in the area attacked pagan temples and stole statues and magical texts." Encyclopedia Britannica, CD-ROM 2004 Edition. Yt95 (talk) 13:12, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

As Frankfurter points out, and as you have pointed out elsewhere, many scattered elements of Egyptian religion persisted into Coptic Christianity. Therefore, to say that the religion was simply "suppressed" is too simplistic. And the last section absolutely should not be titled "Suppression of Paganism", because its subject is the entire length of time from the closure of the last temples to the present.

Incidentally, my private opinions on Christianity would irk even the most reasonable and tolerant believer. I simply don't feel the need to emphasize Christianity's destructive past at every possible opportunity. You may want to consider your own biases before assuming that I have one. A. Parrot (talk) 18:28, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Incidentally, I don't care what your religious beliefs are but I did note the sarcastic put-down of Unas before (FYI information he wasn't the only historical figure who claimed to be a god and make reference to eating the flesh of a god. Jesus, No? It's about the same level as your comments on Isis and the conception of Horus. Imagine how people like Johnbod would react to the suggestion that the dove hovering over the Virgin Mary at the annunciation means Mary had sex with a bird. All I am interested in historical accuracy, nothing more.Yt95 (talk) 13:12, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

All your points (Yt95) would seem to relate to Ancient Egyptian religion more than this essentially architectural article. Johnbod (talk) 19:21, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

If that was so why not name the article accordingly and take out the distorted history? Yt95 (talk) 13:12, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

They would apply even more to the article Persecution of Pagans by the Christian Roman Empire (its parent article, Religion in ancient Rome, is already pretty bloated). Probably there are enough sources to start a separate article on the Christianization of Egypt. But in any case, this stuff does not belong here. A. Parrot (talk) 21:39, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Simply delete your spin on history by taking out your opinions that the Egyptian religion had disintegrated and the temples were now abandoned. Take your fringe opinions to an appropriate article as you mention above where they can be treated fully and fairly. Yt95 (talk) 13:12, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

In fact there is room to expand the very brief coverage in Ancient Egyptian religion, but you might consider taking a sedative before reading that. 87.194.52.251 (talk) 13:51, 2 August 2011 (UTC)