 Prayer and private offerings are generally called " personal piety " : acts that reflect a close relationship between an individual and a god . Evidence of personal piety is <unk> before the New Kingdom . <unk> offerings and personal names , many of which are <unk> , suggest that commoners felt some connection between themselves and their gods . But firm evidence of devotion to deities became visible only in the New Kingdom , reaching a peak late in that era . Scholars disagree about the meaning of this change — whether direct interaction with the gods was a new development or an outgrowth of older traditions . Egyptians now expressed their devotion through a new variety of activities in and around temples . They recorded their prayers and their thanks for divine help on stelae . They gave offerings of figurines that represented the gods they were praying to , or that symbolized the result they desired ; thus a relief image of Hathor and a <unk> of a woman could both represent a prayer for fertility . Occasionally , a person took a particular god as a patron , dedicating his or her property or labor to the god 's cult . These practices continued into the latest periods of Egyptian history . These later eras saw more religious innovations , including the practice of giving animal mummies as offerings to deities depicted in animal form , such as the cat mummies given to the feline goddess <unk> . Some of the major deities from myth and official religion were rarely invoked in popular worship , but many of the great state gods were important in popular tradition . 
