古埃及神廟中的儀式與祭文：以潔淨及獻啤酒為例

Ritual Texts in the Ptolemaic Temples: The Liturgies of Libation and Beer Offering

本文擬討論古埃及神廟中的儀式與祭文，並藉此探討兩者與埃及人信仰之間的關係。內文主要分四段，首先討論古埃及宗教的特色，指出古埃及宗教具有明顯的分散性以及地區性，雖然亦不能說不具有某種大體統一的宇宙觀和死後世界觀。由於具有分散性，故埃及宗教大致可分私人信仰和官方信仰兩大方面。神廟中的祭典儀式基本上體現官方信仰，亦為後人所瞭解之埃及宗教之主要面相。本文第二部分討論神廟中之祭典儀式，主要在檢討一個問題：吾人如何得知神廟中之祭典儀式之情況？有那些文獻和考古證據？其可信度為何？本文第三部分則以神廟壁上刻劃之祭典文字為討論對象，檢視其內容與儀典儀式之關係。最後，則討論，根據神廟中之儀式和祭文，吾人如何可以對埃及宗教信仰有進一步之瞭解。

This paper tries to investigate a question regarding the inner workings of the procedures of temple decoration. This is the question of whether there were pattern texts or cartoons of designs for the temple priests to follow when they designed the wall decorations. This is obviously a tremendously complicated subject, and I shall only concentrate on two specific points. First I shall discuss a text related to the daily temple rituals found in the Tebtunis temple archives. In order to find out if this text is related to the offering scenes depicted on the temple walls, I plan to compare the liturgy of libation offering in this text with libation liturgies found in various Ptolemaic temples. Secondly, in order to find out if the priests who prepared the texts for the offering scenes were composing out of their own knowledge with a free hand, or following certain kind of model texts, or given multiple choices to follow different texts but at the same time creating their own texts out of existing material, I propose to analyze the liturgy of the offering of beer and compare it with that of the offering of wine. This investigation has been able to show, I hope, that, on the one hand, the Tebtunis text demonstrates that the priests there had certain flexibility in the possibility of choosing different liturgies or employing different expressions when performing an offering. On the other hand, the temple inscriptions of the liturgies of beer and wine offering show that, in preparing the liturgies for the offering scenes, the priests had probably had certain model texts or pattern books that contain collections of spells and units of expressions that they could choose to compose the liturgies. As has been suggested, the Egyptian temple was in decline in the Roman period mainly because of the change of the structure of temple economy, the priesthood turned to offer their service in the villages and countryside as ritual experts in daily life. Evidence from documents such as the Tebtunis papyri and the temple liturgies analyzed here indicate that the priests in the Graco-Roman temples still knew their craft and had a fairly sound grasp of the literary skill as well as knowledge of their religious tradition. Recent scholarship has gradually come to the realization that the temple priests of the Graco-Roman period might not Jack the talent to play word games and produce creative expressions. This, of course, has important implications for our understanding of the strength of traditional religion, the actual state of religious practice, and the winding process of Christianization in Egypt throughout late antiquity.