 Festivals often involved a ceremonial procession in which a cult image was carried out of the temple in a barque @-@ shaped shrine . These processions served various purposes . In Roman times , when local deities of all kinds were believed to have power over the Nile inundation , processions in many communities carried temple images to the riverbanks so the gods could <unk> a large and fruitful flood . <unk> also traveled between temples , as when the image of Hathor from <unk> Temple visited her consort Horus at the Temple of <unk> . <unk> for a god were often based in that deity 's mythology . Such rituals were meant to be <unk> of the events of the mythic past , renewing the beneficial effects of the original events . In the <unk> festival in honor of Osiris , his death and resurrection were <unk> <unk> at a time when crops were beginning to <unk> . The returning <unk> symbolized the renewal of the god 's own life . 
