Dressing Up: Role-Playing in the Egyptian WPT R Ritual and a contextualized View of the Biblical Priesthood

Abstract

Dress and the act of dressing-up find expression in earliest antiquity in both simple and complex forms. In ritual contexts dress is best labeled as costume, which informs roles played within the ritual. The study here is interested in ritual texts of the ancient Near East and examines the costume of the sm priest in the Egyptian wpt r ritual and the rituals related to the costume of the biblical priesthood, namely those in Exod 28–29, 40, Lev 6, 8, 16, and Ezek 42 and 44. Both Egyptian and biblical rituals demonstrate necessary costuming for the efficacy of ritual participation. The costume symbolically and temporarily transformed the wearer for the purpose of playing a role. The wearers, then, embodied an identity other than their own, believing themselves capable of playing the roles necessary for the ritual. For the sm priest in the Egyptian wpt r ritual, the ba transformed the sm to ba, such that the sm then embodied a physical strength beyond his own and the divine roles of the gods Horus and Thoth. For the biblical priests, their costumes, which were crafted of the same materials as the house for the presence of the Israelite deity Yahweh and labeled “holy to Yahweh,” קדש ליהוה, were the conduit by which they were transformed and embodied the divine.