Religious Practice and Cultural Construction of Animal Worship in Egypt from the Early Dynastic to the New Kingdom: Ritual Forms, Material Display, Historical Development

Religious Practice and Cultural Construction of Animal Worship in Egypt from the Early Dynastic to the New Kingdom presents an articulated historical interpretation of Egyptian ‘animal worship’ - intended as a segment of religious practice focused on the mobilisation of selected animals within strategically designed ritual contexts - from the Early Dynastic to the New Kingdom, and offers a new understanding of its chronological development through a fresh review of pertinent archaeological and textual data. The goal is twofold: (1) to re-conceptualise the notion of ‘animal worship’ on firm theoretical and material bases, reassessing its heuristic value as a tool for analysis; (2) to demonstrate, accordingly, that ‘animal worship’ did not represent a late degeneration of traditional religion, socially (popular cult) and thematically (animal mummies and burials) restricted, but a complex domain of religious practice with a longer history and a larger variety of configurations than usually assumed.