The Transformation of Native Temples and Invented Traditions: Between New Religiosity and Royal Policy—The Case of Ptolemaic Egypt

This paper examine how far-ranging changes in the administrative status, the spatial organization of the sacred space and cultic traditions could be explained by the Ptolemaic policy towards the temples. The cultic changes and correlated modifications in the temples’ architecture and space that are documented in the Delta city of Tanis, are evidences a twofold trend: on the one hand, some of them reflected a genuine religious change in Egypt—as the popularity of infant-gods—which the Crown simply endorsed; on the other hand, the importation to Tanis of Horus, a god that was particularly favored by the Greek dynasty, may be understood as a means of expressing dynastic support.