The influence of Eurocentric interpretations—particularly those shaped by a Christian theological framework—on the study of ancient Egyptian religion has been rightly emphasised in recent scholarship. In this context, the volume edited by Marilina Betrò and Gianluca Miniaci, which assembles studies that deliberately aim to avoid such interpretative biases, represents a welcome and necessary contribution to the field.

In her Introduction, Betrò engages directly with the book’s title, Clashing religions, reframing it as an open question. She defines the expression as referring to the persistent problem of Eurocentric worldviews and argues that genuinely multifaceted approaches are required to advance the study of ancient Egyptian religion. Such approaches must integrate archaeological, chronological, regional, social and gendered evidence. One might add that a more rigorous engagement with ancient Egyptian religious texts themselves is essential for recovering ancient Egyptian perspectives on their own religious thought.

The Introduction offers an effective point of entry into the volume by outlining the central arguments of each contribution. The following eight chapters explore diverse aspects of ancient Egyptian religion through the lenses of identity, unity and variation, organised into four thematic clusters: state formation and religious unification at the end of the Old Kingdom (Moreno García; Nuzzolo); private versus public religious practice (Weiss; Bickel); magic and religion as distinct conceptual domains (Conte); interactions between different religious traditions (Tallet; Buzi).

Juan Carlos Moreno García presents a compelling analysis of the administrative transformations around 2500 BCE. He argues that political, social and economic developments prompted both the establishment of the concept of Maat (a concept of truth, balance, order, law, morality and justice) and the rise of the Osiris cult, ideological frameworks that helped sustain unity across a territorially large and environmentally diverse state. Whereas early Old Kingdom (2686–2500 BCE) administration relied on a close association between the royal family and the elite—most officials belonging to the extended royal household, a relationship represented in the clustering of their tombs around the royal pyramid as both a symbol of power and a venue of ceremonies—the expansion of administrative departments, the rise of high- and middle-ranking officials and the growing importance of provincial affairs required new mechanisms of loyalty to the king. Royally supported provincial temples became key points of connection to a provincial elite that was no longer drawn from the royal family. Maat articulated shared values for prosperous and orderly living, while the Osiris cult offered a religious framework grounded in justice and universal access to the afterlife. Together, these developments supplied the ethical and theological foundations for a more complex and decentralised state.

Massimiliano Nuzzolo addresses the overarching theme of ‘clashing religions’ by examining ancient Egyptian festivals—rare occasions in which participation extended beyond the king and elite to include the wider population. His analysis focuses on the fragmentarily preserved festival calendar from Nyuserra’s sun temple at Abu Ghurab, which he uses to explore the function and significance of this sacred complex. In addition to providing a valuable synthesis of earlier scholarship on the calendar’s reconstruction and interpretation, Nuzzolo argues that many festivals were celebrated locally, not only in the temple itself but in the surrounding necropolis or even in connection with the capital Memphis. The festivals appear to have been organised according to seasons, creating a link with the Room of the seasons in the sun temple. Finally, Nuzzolo highlights the sun temple’s role in the redistribution system, emphasising that it served as an economic hub from which a broad segment of the population benefitted.

Paul Whelan’s contribution examines the royal presence in Abydos from the Fourth to the Sixth Dynasties (c. 2613–2181 BCE), drawing on the material culture excavated by Flinders Petrie in the Osiris temple in the early twentieth century. The evidence reveals a gradual intensification of royal activity, particularly in relation to the royal cult and resource management. Only during the Sixth Dynasty does the material record indicate an explicit acknowledgement of the local cult of Khentyimentiu. From the late Fifth Dynasty onward, attention to the king’s Heb-Sed—possibly connected to Abydos as the burial place of the earliest rulers—becomes increasingly visible, alongside the presence of royal Ka-chapels containing statues of kings, a trend that intensifies in the Sixth Dynasty. Strikingly, no evidence of offerings to Osiris and his cult appears in the royal material from this period. Instead, references to Osiris emerge in the elite cemetery dating to the transition of the Fifth to Sixth Dynasties. This aligns with the earliest attestations in funerary formulae on non-royal tombs at Saqqara and Giza in the Fifth Dynasty. By contrast, Osiris enters the royal sphere only later, appearing in the Pyramid Texts of Pepi I in the Sixth Dynasty and in Abydos under Senwosret I in the Twelfth Dynasty. Taken together, the evidence strongly suggests that the Osiris cult originated in the elite, but not royal, sphere.

Gabriele Conte’s chapter comprises two thematically connected sections. The first re-examines definitions of demon and magic, deliberately avoiding a Eurocentric Christian framework in order to establish a culturally grounded basis for interpretation. Although largely a synthesis of prior research, this section establishes the conceptual framework for the following analysis. The second part applies these revised definitions to exorcism—a term generally not used in Egyptology despite parallels between Egyptian demon-repulsion rituals and broader notions of possession and expulsion. By setting aside especially Christian models, Conte demonstrates that exorcistic practices were integral to ancient Egyptian healing in the form of rituals, revealing the central role of driving out harmful forces in restoring a patient’s health.

Susanne Bickel’s contribution offers a concise yet illuminating glimpse into the extended royal household, specifically a kin group—largely composed of women and not strictly defined by blood ties—who at times shared living quarters and daily activities. In the undecorated tomb KV 40 in the Valley of the Kings, 32 members of this group were buried during the later years of Amenhotep III’s reign (c. 1390–1352 BCE). Pottery jars inscribed with names and titles, together with wooden labels originally attached to burial equipment, provide valuable contextual information, even though no cult places or chapels can be associated with the tomb. These individuals belonged to the mobile court and likely died while temporarily residing in Thebes. Many vessels had been repurposed to hold pristine natron for purification rites and broken dishes from a funerary banquet. In the absence of a dedicated ritual space, Bickel convincingly argues that the rites were probably performed at the mummification site, while subsequent commemoration may have taken place individually or within the community. Her discussion of burial equipment is particularly insightful. Although the assemblage is modest—which is unexpected for members of the extended royal family—Bickel demonstrates that such equipment reflects social ostentation rather than economic means. Unlike elite officials, royal family members did not need to assert status or secure positions for descendants, making lavish burial goods unnecessary.

At the core of Lara Weiss’s contribution is the examination of family religion as a system of communication with gods and deceased ancestors aimed at securing the wellbeing of living family members and sustaining the offering cult that guarantees eternal life. Her analysis focuses on how the intended audience shaped the decoration of stelae dedicated to ancestor worship. Stelae set up within the household—seen only by family members, staff and occasional visitors—typically depict just the ancestor, omit the performers of the rites and contain barely any text. By contrast, stelae placed in tombs, especially in large cemeteries such as Saqqara and Abydos, address a broader social environment and reflect relationships beyond blood relatives to include dependents, friends and colleagues, mirroring the patron-client structures characteristic of ancient Egyptian society. Weiss convincingly distinguishes between spiritual and social capital within these networks. Spiritual capital is gained by all individuals represented on a stele or tomb wall, as they enter into the eternal commemoration of the tomb and share in the offerings. Social capital, however, is accrued through status: individuals present themselves as loyal servants to their own networks, thereby reinforcing their social standing.

Gaelle Tallet highlights the multicultural character of village and camp life in Roman Egypt through an analysis of an unprovenanced relief in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo (Mus. No. CGC 27570). The relief depicts two deities whom she identifies as Athena/Minerva and Zeus/Jupiter. Athena’s iconography, she argues, could incorporate distinctly Egyptian elements—for instance, her association with Neith, local goddess of the delta town of Sais, when shown holding a torch. Both Athena in her martial aspect and Zeus were among the deities most frequently invoked by soldiers in the Hellenistic Period (332–30 BCE), making their pairing unsurprising within military contexts in the Ptolemaic Period. This association is further supported by Athena’s appearance in the Eastern desert near mining sites and in the temple of Kalabsha in Nubia, both areas with nearby Roman garrisons. Within this broader multicultural environment, Athena becomes a striking example for cultural entanglement. As Tallet notes, Neith may be depicted on one stela, while on another she is replaced by Athena wearing a helmet—illustrating how religious imagery could shift fluidly across cultural boundaries.

Paola Buzi’s contribution focuses on a specific episode from the life of Pisentius, a seventh- to eighth-century biographic narrative from late antique Egypt. The text—including fantastic elements—offers an intriguing window into how religious beliefs and concepts from earlier time periods of Egyptian history were reworked in a Christian context. In the imagined dialogue between Bishop Pisentius and the mummy whose tomb in Thebes he inhabits, the unexpected mention of Poseidon stands out. As a Greek deity absent from the interpretation graeca in Egypt and attested only in Alexandria and the Mediterranean coast, his appearance in the Theban desert is striking. Buzi compellingly argues that Poseidon’s presence reflects the continued role of classical education in the training of writers during the seventh century. Rather than indicating active cultic relevance, the god functions symbolically: from a Coptic perspective, Poseidon embodies the heretical past.

Miniaci concludes the volume, echoing Betrò’s opening, with a broader reflection on the future of research into ancient Egyptian religion. He rightly questions the pursuit of a fixed definition of religion, noting that ancient Egyptians lacked any term corresponding to ‘religion’ or to discussions of beings and events beyond the human realm; these spheres were inseparable from political, economic and social structures. The boundary between what modern scholarship labels ‘religion’ and what might instead be considered ‘folklore’ is likewise unstable, a point he illustrates effectively through the juxtaposition of Heqaib’s cult (a governor who was venerated after his death) and contemporary devotional practices surrounding the late footballer Diego Maradona. His most promising proposal is to conceptualise religion as a map structured by identifiable markers. These emerge through speech acts (semiotic) and gestures (kinetic) and gain strength where material, iconographic and textual evidence intersect. This approach encourages close engagement with primary sources while avoiding modern Eurocentric frameworks and over–interpretation. The denser the convergence of material, iconographic and textual evidence, the more securely one can assess an object’s function. Miniaci also distinguishes between personal religious sentiment—fundamentally private—and shared sentiment, which must be socially intelligible to crystallise into rules and ritual practice. Within this model, institutional power plays a decisive role in stabilising and disseminating religious markers.

Abandoning Eurocentric interpretations—or, more broadly, recognising and disregarding one’s own culturally conditioned perspective—when interpreting the primary evidence of an ancient civilisation such as Egypt, and combining this with approaches drawn from other fields such as anthropology, social theory or cognitive linguistics, is essential for deepening our understanding of ancient cultures, but is also challenging. One must avoid over-interpreting the evidence or applying analytical frameworks that may not be suitable for a society that existed millennia ago, while at the same time attending to all aspects of the object or question under study by integrating philology, iconography, material culture and archaeological context.

This volume succeeds in this regard. It offers a fresh collection of essays on religion, approaching the theme of Clashing religions through diverse perspectives and methodologies. By addressing understudied topics and reframing familiar ones, the contributors collectively advance a more culturally grounded understanding of ancient Egyptian religious practice. Some chapters offer substantial theoretical insight and present original arguments, while others remain primarily descriptive. Particularly compelling are the contributions that revisit well-studied material but analyse it through a different interpretative lens—for example, the rise of the Osiris cult and the establishment of Maat as mechanisms for religious life across Egypt. Other notable examples are the studies of royal-household burials and the representation of individuals on private funerary stelae through the framework of kinship, as defined in Olabarria’s ‘Kinship and family in ancient Egypt: archaeology and anthropology in dialogue’. Both studies offer new insight into the broader household of individuals, whether royal or non-royal, by demonstrating that social status was a crucial concern for those outside the ruling class, whereas members of the royal family already occupied the highest position and therefore had no need to assert or display their status. The discussion of exorcism demonstrates how a single term, understood within a specific cultural setting, can obscure our grasp of a phenomenon.

Finally, two contributions underscore the importance of cultural entanglement and the enduring traces of a culture’s past, examining the evidence of each culture separately and carefully analysing the influence of one culture upon another, as well as their reciprocal relationship, without being misled by traditional or overly schematic views of cultural interaction. The volume’s scheme, Clashing religions, is sustained throughout, whether it refers to religious frameworks from different cultures, modern interpretations of ancient concepts or the comparative analysis of evidence from the royal and non-royal sphere. Interdisciplinarity is evident in some contributions where it suits the examination of evidence, advancing our understanding of the subject.

The book thus represents a valuable resource for anyone interested in ancient Egyptian religion and in the methodological challenges posed by Eurocentric interpretative frameworks and by the application of approaches drawn from other disciplines.