temples

    The courts often consider the existence of temples in determining if a religion is legally valid.

legal standards

    “5. c. Gathering Places: Many religions designate particular structures or places as sacred, holy, or significant. These sites often serve as gathering places for believers. They include physical structures, such as churches, mosques, temples, pyramids, synagogues, or shrines; and natural places, such as springs, rivers, forests, plains, or mountains.” —United States of America v David Meyers

    “established places of worship,” —IRS definition of a church

Kemetic or ancient Egyptian religion

pr - temple

    The ancient Egyptians used the same word as “house” for their word for temple. This is because they believed that the temples were the actual physical houses of the deity worshipped there.

    The ancient Egyptian word for “house” is “pr” (shown below). The hieroglyph “pr” is a line drawing of a house’s walls viewed from above. Because the hieroglyph “pr” is used both for the word “house” and for the syllabic sound “pr” are the same character, the ideogram (also called the pictorial sign, drawn as a short vertical line) is placed below the hieroglyph “pr” when the meaning is house rather than just the sound. Context indicates whether the word means an ordinary house or a temple.

hieroglyph for temple

per - temple

    The ancient Egyptian word house is also used for temples, which are considered to be the personal house of the corresponding deity.

    The ancient Egyptians built many of their earliest temples with wooden columns topped with palm leaves. When the Egyptians switched to stone columns they continued to carve palm fronds and leaves into the tops of the columns (see example below).

illustration of temple columns and ceiling
submerged temple at Philae

Baalbec ruin

Great Temple at Ephesus

    The Great Temple at Ephesus, one of the Seven Wonders of the World, was dedicated to Bast (called Artemis by the Greeks and Diana by the Romans). Women from all over Africa, Europe, and Asia (from as far away as China) came to the Great Temple at Ephesus and brought gifts from their homelands. The Christian writer Paul specifically congratulates Ephesian Christians on their vandalism (including destruction of art and burning of books) at the Great Temple of Ephesus.

    The statue of the Lunar Goddess at the Great Temple of Ephesus depicts the Goddess holding a large number of Easter eggs (although some claim they are bull testicals).

Great Library at Alexandria

    The Great Library at Alexandria was a temple of Pr Ntr Kmt, headed by a High Priestess of Aset (Isis) or High Priest of Ptah.

converted temples

    In the 300s and 400s the Christians in control of the Roman Empire forcibly converted hundreds of temples of Isis into Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian churches.

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