Cult Religion and Authority
Both in ancient Egypt and ancient Rome, where one binding theological script was never aimed at, cult religion was governed by authorities who not only developed rules that applied to the various cults but introduced divine justice in cases of deliberate or involuntary justice.
The rules set up by those authorities were on the other hand never as impenetrable as they seemed and largely supported individual approaches to religion: in Egypt, a place for private prayers was set against the back wall of the temple of Amun at Karnak in ancient Thebes. Here, the pious were able to practise individual religion outside the opening hours of the main temple. The name given to this place also reveals its function and the important role it played: ‘(Amun,) the hearing ear’. In ancient Rome, the Senate although never turning a blind eye to the introduction of mystery cults such as the cult of Isis and having been prepared to close temples in times of scandalous events or misconducts of rituals, developed a very fine sense of the difference between religion and cult practices to safeguard pax deorum. But the closing of temples as a result of governmental intervention was certainly an exception and especially in Imperial Rome, authorities stayed away from imposing an official religion (apart perhaps from the Emperor cult in the provinces). By preferring a policy of tolerance and not interfering with the religious beliefs of their subjects, the authorities in Rome accepted the fact that cives sought a more immediate relationship with deities through rituals. Without the need to renounce the established civic deities, the inhabitants of Rome were able to openly support even the creation of new religions including the necessary cult spaces within their city. As far as personal religious practice is concerned, the term ‘experimental religions', as introduced into the study of ancient religions by Walter Burkert (1996), can be adopted to describe an individual approach to religion that nestled within an official framework provided by the state. It is this individual approach within the framework of early urban religions that paved the way for the introduction of memory into religious thinking.
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