La royauté lagide et le culte d'Osiris d'après les portes monumentales de Karnak

The organization of the dynastic cult was of great importance to the Ptolemies. At Karnak, three monumental gates giving access respectively to the temples of Amun, Chonsu and Montu, are decorated with scenes referring to the cult of both the living and the deceased kings. The study of the gates shows that these scenes meet a well-established pattern, each gate repeating the basic ideas but varying the ways of expressing them. The scene dedicated to the living king is put in parallel with the scene of the cult of the ancestors. But these scenes are integrated into a broader framework, identifying the king with the god Osiris and introducing the kingship as a gift of the creator Amun. In this way, the royal cult is incorporated in the Osirian liturgies of the temple of Opet and the osirian necropolis at Karnak but also in the liturgies of Djeme. While the papyri and the titles of the priests illustrate the practice of the rituals in favour of Osiris and Amun, the decoration of the gates offers us the theological theory.