Dorotea Wollnerová, a PhD candidate at the Czech Institute of Egyptology (supervised by Filip Coppens), has received two years of funding from the prestigious Gerda Henkel Foundation for her doctoral project, Linen in Ancient Egyptian Religion.

The project investigates the ritual significance of linen in ancient Egyptian temple religion, focusing on the Ptolemaic-Roman period. Linen was among the most frequently attested temple offerings and played an important role in cultic rituals, yet it has not been comprehensively studied as a ritual material within the temple context.

The research focuses primarily on the “Chamber of Linen” in the Temple of Horus at Edfu and combines philological analysis of its inscriptions with the study of its iconography, architecture, and surviving traces of original polychromy. Particular attention is devoted to the typology and symbolism of textiles and their associations with individual deities. Comparative material from other Ptolemaic-Roman temples will help clarify the role of linen in temple liturgy and contribute to a better understanding of the material dimension of ancient Egyptian religion.