Being a priest in Ancient Egypt didn’t mean to have a vocation. The Egyptian priest didn’t pray, didn’t care for the pubblic morality, almost had no relation with the believers and his only duty was to serve his god. He so was the “god’s servant” (ham neter) and he was expected to take care of himself and of his house, keeping the temple and the sacred objects clean (every grain of dust could be a menace for the divnities power), keeping the statue safe from impure looks and mostly caring about the offering service and performin the divine ritual so the god and his temple were always able to assure their function: the maintenance of the universal equilibrium, the rennovation of growth the permanence of the cosmic phenomenons (as the dawn and sunset, the cycle of the seasons, the annual flood of the Nile) thanks to which life continued and the universe didn’t return to the primordial caos. So, in the Ancient Reign, the priest was in service only for a certain time as other duties and professions that had even a secondary religious aspect.
In this epoch the priest’s civil aspect dominated and there wasn’t yet an actual clergy organized.
During the middle reign, there is an important change:
Now the priests can practise a civil profession only if it is directly dependent from the state and anyway they had to dedicate the best part of their time to their religious function. Nevertheless the highest clerical positions continue to be in the laics’ hands: great priest of the god protector of the nomos and always nomarca, as the pharaoh’s representative, and the first prophets were often functionaries. Moreover, the priests of the lower class, who are at the god’s service only for of their life, can go back to their laic jobs for the other three quarters.
If in many cases the priesthood was hereditary, the grade couldn’t in no way be handed down from father to son and the great priest couldn’t hand down to his descendants his specific function.
In theory, the young priest had to go up the hierarchical ladder from the lowest steps.
The clergy could be enter for one’s own choice coming from a completely different background and a priest’s son wasn’t forced to priesthood. It seem that the high sacerdotal positions were even bought.