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Portals to Eternity
Ancestor Worship


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The existence of such an elaborate funerary cult at this site is almost predictable, since ancestor worship is attested in Egypt from as early as the third millenium BC. Since prehistoric times the tribes inhabiting the Nile Valley believed that the dead required physical sustenance for their afterlife activities. In practical terms the spirit-food was provided by the deceased's family. The inducement to the living was threefold: to lessen the individual and collective grief; to propitiate, i.e. "to satisfy," the ancestor's imagined needs; to invoke helpful intervention of the satisfied loved-one from the "land of the dead." Over generations there evolved a family-based popular cult of the immortal ancestor involving complex networks of mutual -- even third-party -- arrangements for the provisioning of food and the carrying out of specified rites, especially on the festival days of the Egyptian and later the Greek and Roman calendars.





Essential to the functioning of the ancient cult of the venerated immortal ancestor was the traditional tomb stele, found in many hundreds of Kom Abou Billou. The stelae, as a rule, are framed by some form of architectural structure, the forms and components of which can be directly traced back to the traditional Egyptian temple's columnar entrances. Often found within the columnar porches is an arching, black, ribbon-like motif, centered directly over the head of the figure within the entrance.





Traditional superstitions concerning the potential malevolence of the dead dictated that he or she be approached cautiously, i.e. ritually and at a neutral spot, readily identifiable as such. There, the descendants might draw near but at the same time be magically separated from them, for in Pharaonic as in Graeco-Roman times the dead were thought to fear and respect the living as much as the living respected and feared the dead. The tomb's threshold, guarded by the "Lord of the necropolis" Anubis, contained the summoned spirit in a defined place. In this way the threshold of the tomb's porch was a neutral meeting ground within which the dead were consigned to the spirit world while at the same time the living might respectfully approach.






Source of image and text:
http://www.umich.edu/~kelseydb/Exhibits/PortalsToEternity/Necropolis.html#Cult


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