Religion and Ritual in Ancient Egypt

Religion and Ritual in Ancient Egypt by Emily Teeter, 200 pages

For three thousand years, Egyptian civilization thrived along the banks of the Nile, producing monumental temples that continue to stir the imagination.  But what really happened in those temples, and how did the Egyptians themselves relate to their gods?  These are the questions Dr Teeter attempts to answer, as she strives to translate the religious practices of the ancient Egyptians into terms that are easily comprehensible - and even sympathetic - to a modern reader.  

Unfortunately, this aim is complicated by the introductory nature of the book, leading her to sometimes make sweeping claims on seemingly little or even contradictory evidence.  For example, she stresses the ubiquity of the gods in ancient Egypt at the start of a chapter in which the evidence repeatedly demonstrates the extreme importance the Egyptians placed upon their temples as sites of divine presence, and goes on to contrast this with "societies in which communion with the deity was restricted to temples or churches," without stating which societies she has in mind.  This calls into doubt other conclusions, as when she implausibly suggests that the Egyptian afterlife was egalitarian, or when she elides the role of the pharoah outside of the Amarna period.  The drive to simplify and generalize results in a book that seems to tell us more about Teeter's attitude towards religion than the ancient Egyptians.