Includes bibliographical references (pages 239-317) and index.

Temples, priests, and rituals : an overview / Byron E. Shafer -- Royal cult complexes of the old and middle kingdoms / Dieter Arnold -- New kingdom "mortuary temples" and "mansions of millions of years" / Gerhard Haeny -- The new kingdom "divine" temple : the example of Luxor / Lanny Bell -- Temples of the Ptolemaic and Roman periods : ancient traditions in new contexts / Ragnhild Bjerre Finnestad.

Five distinguished scholars here summarize the state of current knowledge about ancient Egyptian temples and the rituals associated with their use. The first volume in English to survey the major types of Egyptian temples from the Old Kingdom to the Roman period, it offers a unique perspective on ritual and its cultural significance. The authors perceive temples as loci for the creative interplay of sacred space and sacred time. They regard as unacceptable the traditional division of the temples into the categories of "mortuary" and "divine," believing that their functions and symbolic representations were, at once, too varied and too intertwined. Both informative to scholars and accessible to students, the book combines descriptions of specific temples with new insights into their development and purposes.