Rituals
Opening of the Mouth
Also Known As Wepet-Ra (Egyptian) · Opening of the Mouth and the Eyes (English)Original Term Wpt-r (Egyptian)
Funerary Rituals
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Origin from 2600 BCE
The Opening of the Mouth was the ancient Egyptian rite that made a thing able to receive offerings. A priest touched the mouth and eyes of a mummy, a coffin or a statue with a set of implements, among them a small adze and a forked flint blade called the psh-kf, so that the figure could breathe, speak, see and eat. It was performed at the tomb entrance immediately before burial, and it was performed in temple workshops on newly carved cult statues, which is the clearest evidence of what it was for: it animated a made object so that the offering cult could begin. Without it, the food, drink and incense presented daily at a tomb or a shrine had no recipient. Scenes and spell sequences survive from the Old Kingdom onward and reach their fullest form in New Kingdom tomb decoration and funerary papyri.
Facts
Origins
Origin Period2600 BCE marks the start of the Old Kingdom, which its own text names as the period from which scenes and spell sequences for the rite survive onward. Place of Origin Historical OriginScholars trace part of the rite's origin to birth rather than to death: its signature implement, the psh-kf blade, is attested even earlier than the funerary ceremony itself as an ordinary tool used to cut a newborn's umbilical cord. The blade's form was carried unchanged into the funerary and temple rite, on the reading that the same instrument that first opened a newborn to breathing, eating and speaking was reused to do the same for a mummy, a coffin or a statue. 2 Attributions
PurposeTo make a mummy, coffin or statue able to breathe, speak, see and eat, so that the offering cult presented to it has a recipient 3Tradition: Ancient Egyptian Religion Practice
Who Performs ItClergy or ordained officiants 3Tradition: Ancient Egyptian Religion Practitioner DetailA sem priest wearing the leopard skin, or the eldest son acting in that role at a family funeral 3Tradition: Ancient Egyptian Religion FrequencyAs the occasion requires 2 Performed at a burial and, separately, whenever a new cult statue was carved; not to a fixed calendar. Form
Implements and MaterialsA small adze, chisels and rods, and the forked flint blade called the psh-kf, with censers and vessels for the accompanying meal 2Tradition: Ancient Egyptian Religion Meaning
Literal MeaningEgyptian wpt-r, literally the opening of the mouth, naming the rite's central act of touching instruments to a mummy's or statue's mouth, eyes and ears so as to restore breath, speech and sight and let it receive the offerings made to it. 2 Use
OccasionAt the tomb entrance immediately before burial, and in the temple workshop on a newly finished cult statue or on a new temple 3Tradition: Ancient Egyptian Religion Status
Standing as a Comparative CategoryUsed, but its validity as a comparative category is disputed 2Tradition: Ancient Egyptian Religion Scholarly Standing DetailWhether the implements derive from childbirth practice, as Ann Macy Roth argued in 1992, or are craft tools of the sculptor's workshop, is genuinely disputed 2Tradition: Ancient Egyptian Religion Learn More
The Rite That Made an Image Able to Eat
Egyptian religion ran on offerings. A tomb, a mortuary temple and a god's shrine all worked the same way: food, drink and incense were brought at fixed intervals and presented to someone. The Opening of the Mouth is the rite that supplied the someone. Until it was performed, a mummy was a wrapped body and a statue was worked stone, and neither could take what was offered to it. Afterwards the ka of the dead person, or the god, could inhabit the figure and be fed.
That explains the two settings in which the rite appears, which otherwise look unrelated. At a funeral it was performed on the coffin propped upright at the tomb door, with the son or the officiating priest touching the face of the mask. In a temple workshop it was performed on a statue as the last stage of making it, and on the temple itself. The Egyptians did not treat these as a metaphor extended from one case to the other. Both were the same operation on a made thing.
The sequence of episodes grew over time. Old Kingdom versions are short. By the New Kingdom the ritual as written out could run to seventy-five scenes, taking in purification, the presentation of an ox foreleg, the touching of the mouth and eyes with a series of implements, censing, dressing and a final meal. What stayed constant across two and a half thousand years is the gesture at the centre and the claim behind it, that speech, sight and appetite could be given to something that did not have them.
The Adze, the Flint Blade and an Argument About Birth
The implements are the part of the rite that has been argued over most. The kit included a small adze of the kind used by carpenters and sculptors, several kinds of chisel and rod, and a forked flint blade, the psh-kf, whose shape has no obvious woodworking use. The adze is easy to read: a sculptor's tool used on a statue, finishing the work of making. The flint fork is not.
In 1992 Ann Macy Roth proposed that the psh-kf came from childbirth rather than from the workshop, and that the rite as a whole was modelled on the care of a newborn. On this reading the fork is the implement that cut or held the umbilical cord, the little vessels that accompany it hold the first feeding, and the finger-shaped rods stand for the adult finger that clears a newborn's mouth. The Opening of the Mouth would then be a birth rite reused, which fits the way Egyptian funerary language treats death as a second nativity.
The reading has been influential and it is not settled. Others hold the implements to be straightforwardly craft tools, the ritual straightforwardly a consecration of an image, and the birth parallels to be read back into it. The atlas records the argument rather than picking the winner, because the evidence, a set of objects and a set of scenes with captions, genuinely underdetermines the answer.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Belongs to Tradition
Performed throughout ancient Egyptian funerary and temple practice.
Related To
The rite that opened the offering cult a royal mortuary temple then maintained.
Distinct Mesopotamian rite with a parallel name and function to the Egyptian Opening of the Mouth; performed on temple cult statues, not primarily on funerary images.
Performed on the mummy that embalming produced, at the tomb door.
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