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Sylvhia
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The Opet Festival
"Bend down gods are in front of you, praising the creator strength.
King and chief of every god, we celebrate your strength because you have made us.
We worship because you created us.
We sing hymns of praise, because you protect us »(Amun's Hymns)
The Festival of Opet was a sacred celebration dedicated to Amun, the ram god of Thebes.
In this festival, the Theban triad, consisting of the statues of Amun, his wife Mut, and his son Khonsu, came out of the temple of Karnak and was taken to the Chapel of the south of the great temple of Luxor built primarily for the celebration of this anniversary.
The Egyptians had two types of festivals, those defined astronomical, that are related to the stars and the "time of year" related to the seasons and which the Opet festival belonged to.
This name derived from "Ipt-rst" ancient name of Luxor and where in the great colonnade of the temple, the festival was represented by beautiful low reliefs which made it possible to reconstruct every stage.
This festival, like all the others in general, was very important because the people had no access to the ceremonies, they could not go past the first pylon of the temple, in Egyptian architecture is indicated as the rectangular tower with a monumental gate which gave access to the sacred soil of the temple, and therefore they could worship the deities only when the sacred statues came outside. There the statues were consulted as oracles whose answers through the oscillation they had.
The festival, which originally lasted 11 days, but during the New Kingdom came to 27, began on the fifteenth day of the second month, called Paofi, of the flood season, called Akhet, and which corresponded to our month of September, when the flooding of the Nile reached its peak and it was possible to sail with the sacred boat the way which was originally made by land.
The king and the priests, starting from Karnak kh-Menu went into the shrine where the three statues of the triad were placed each on their own boat-shrine, adorned with royal insignia and processional flabella and to which the royal boat of the sovereign was added .
After the purification rites, officiated by the sovereign itself, a procession formed and the statues on their boats came after the king, priests carried them on their shoulders through the great door of the West.
The sacred boats, preceded by the priests who purified the soil and the air with incense, waving flabellas in order to chase away ill-omened presences , slowly came to the dock and were placed on the large canal boat called Amon Userhat equipped with oars and suitable for inland navigation. As the procession of the boats reached the temple of Luxor, also called "Harem of Amun," the procession formed by the army, Nubian dancers who played the drums, priestesses who waved their rattles and singing by the people cheering for the gods rejoice, began.
SISTRI
The gods were to receive offers and along the way, between Karnak and Luxor temples were slaughterhouses and votives.
The sacred boats reached their destination and disappeared in the eyes of the crowd while the statues were placed in the naos and the king, purified with the rites, took important decisions regarding the administration of his kingdom, drawing inspiration from both the triad and the oracles.
After the sacrificial offerings of gratitude, the king reached the "Chamber of Birth" where the "mystery of divine conception" was renewed. This ceremony was to rebuild the sovereign's Ka to give it legitimacy to govern and magical rites recalled how his mother had married the god Amon-Ra, became Amon-Min, the god of fertility, in order to generate a real and divine infant in the person of the king himself. The king, at the end of the ceremony, came out of the temple and returned to Karnak , he was confirmed in his divine origin and adorned with immortal glory.
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Festa_di_Opet_(Egitto)*Attention please* - - "This translation (and / or content) is made by Sylvhia exclusively for "I Nove Mondi Forum". In case of partial or full release is mandatory to link to the original source and the required credits".
Edited by Sylvhia - 28/6/2014, 15:16
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The Opet Festival05 Maggio 2014 |
