URL originale : https://books.openedition.org/pulg/15790

Offerings and libations for the king and the question of ruler-cult in Egyptian temples
p. 83-102
Résumé
It was a common habit in the Hellenistic and Roman world to perform offerings to the gods by including the wish that they ensure the well-being of a third party, often the rulers and the royal house. In both Greek inscriptions and literary texts, the persons expected to benefit from these dedications are mentioned by means of the formula hyper with the genitive, whose semantic ambiguity can be compared with that of the English preposition for, meaning either “in the name of” or “for the benefit of”. However, in Greek, the hyper-formula always implies that a ritual action is accomplished for the benefit of the agent and/or another person. Since the habit of accomplishing dedications and offerings to the gods hyper a third person is particularly well documented in Ptolemaic Egypt, scholars have proposed that in Egyptian temples, this formula might have a different meaning than in Greek ones, reflecting the Egyptian traditions by which every dedication or offering made by a ritual agent would ideally be considered as an act of the pharaoh. In other words, in Egyptian contexts, the formula would more properly mean “in the name of”, granting the pharaoh the role of a virtual agent of any accomplished ritual act. While not excluding that in some cases, Egyptian priests might have consciously exploited the ambiguity of the Greek hyper-formula, the first part of this paper provides a series of case studies showing that hyper dedications in Egyptian contexts are better understood by keeping in mind the same functions that this formula has in Greek religious traditions. Secondly, the reassessment of Ptolemaic and early-Roman trends against the broader background of Egyptian dedicatory traditions enables a better understanding of the similarities and differences in the way Greeks and Egyptians would position ritually honoured rulers between the human and the divine sphere: as the recipients of full-fledged cults in the temples of traditional gods and as human leaders depending on divine protection for their well-being and for the integrity of their power.
Remerciements
I am deeply grateful to Stefano Caneva for all his fruitful corrections and comments as well as for the opportunity this paper has offered to us to work in such a close collaboration.
Extrait
Introduction
1In Ptolemaic Egypt, the king could be venerated as a god in various social and ethnic contexts: in Alexandria, in the Greek milieus of the chōra, and in Egyptian temples. Much more often, however, he was not equated to the gods but would receive honours clearly showing that he was a man, whose life and success depended on the grace of the Greek and Egyptian gods. In many cases, moreover, rituals directly equating sovereigns to the gods could coexist with others being addressed to the gods for the well-being of the rulers (with the formula hyper + the genitive, or alike). If such a synchronic combination of religious representations of a political leader both as a saving god and as a man in need for divine protection might seem confusing to the modern eye, it was in fact a current practice in Hellenistic Egypt, in both Greek and Egyptian ritual contexts, and as such, it cannot be regarded as an inconsistency at the level of religious representation and political pr
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The Materiality of Hellenistic Ruler Cults
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