The Temple Cult — Feeding the Gods
Every day, priests woke, washed, dressed, and fed the gods' statues — on the king's behalf.
Also: temple cult · daily temple ritual · offering ritual · cult statue · feeding the gods · temple offerings · priesthood
Egyptians believed a god could be present in its temple statue, and that the statue had to be cared for daily: awakened, purified, dressed, and offered food and incense. In theory the king performed these rites for every god; in practice priests acted on his behalf. This service kept the gods 'content' and, Egyptians held, kept the cosmos in order. Temples were not congregational halls but the houses and households of the gods.
In short
The daily temple ritual by which the gods, present in their cult statues, were awakened, washed, clothed, and fed with offerings — the king's (delegated) duty to sustain the gods and so maintain ma'at and the order of the world.
Where it’s found
New Kingdom daily-ritual texts and temple reliefs; later temple liturgies
Read it in the Egyptian texts
The passages in our corpus where this idea is discussed — each opens in our reader with the Egyptian transliteration and the English translation side by side.
How the idea developed across Egypt
The daily cult ritual is attested in developed form especially from the New Kingdom (e.g. reliefs and the daily-ritual papyri) and continues into the Greco-Roman temples; the king-as-sole-officiant ideology is constant even as priests perform in practice.
Placed under kingship because the cult is ideologically the king's duty; offerings 'reverted' to the priests after presentation (the 'reversion of offerings').