Egypt's Sunken Treasures

[ikhet_sekhmet]

Preparing to write my usual book report thing on Egypt's Sunken Treasures, I stopped short at the first paragraph of the introduction (written by Manfred Clauss):

"Nothing had so strong an influence on the thoughts and actions of the men and women of antiquity as the concept of supernatural powers. Religious ideas helped them to understand the world around them; they were dominated by fear through religion and thus made tractable; hope of a better life after death and divine retribution consoled them." (My emphasis)

How true is this? To what extent was an ancient society such as Egypt organised along religious lines, and to what extent practical or political lines - the temple alongside the palace? Was offending the local deity a more immediate danger than that posed by the police officer, the tax collector, or a crocodile? Or is this an artificial division, since these could be seen as agents of divinity? How was terror of the divine used in propaganda at different levels of the hierarchy - not just the king's boasts to foreign lands, but to peasants, artisans, and nobles? Without dismissing the obviously huge significance of religion in all walks of Egyptian society, the picture of Egyptians "dominated by fear" just doesn't match my mental picture of them.