The Divinity of Egyptian Kingship (Reply to Heraklia)

Author: * Neseret Sekhmet - 21 Posts on this thread out of 21 Posts sitewide.
Date: Nov 20, 2006 - 23:47

Heraklia wrote: "Given the connection between Egyptian gods and Pharoah, what does it mean that, by the time of Alexander the Great, he could be installed as a Pharoah/God when he was a foreign conqueror? Or had the connections between Egyptians and political conquerors utterly changed the way Pharoah was seen at the time of the Hellenistic period, and the earlier Persian conquest? I'm thinking of a carving that shows Alexander as Lord of the Two Lands, etc., with apparently the various (divine) powers of the Pharoah. And I don't understand why that kind of divinity was extended first to Alexander, and later to the Ptolemies - and even Romans?"

In reality, there was no requirement that the Pharaoh had to be Egyptian, but merely that there was a "big man" to run the country, as the pharaonic system is based on a "big man" political set-up. The mythos of divinity followed the Egyptian institution of kingship, and was not related to the nationality of its holder.

For example, the first conquering of the Egyptians had been effected by the Hyksos during the Second Intermediate Period (SIP), and lasted for about 125-150 years. During that period, the Hyksos kings (Hyksos = Egyptian: /HqA xAst, "rulers of foreign lands"), thought to have come from somewhere in the Syro-Palestinian region, used Egyptian royal titulary, adopted all the trappings of Egyptian royalty and even associated themselves directly as "sons" of Ra or other Egyptian deities. While it's doubtful the Egyptians acquiesced to Hyksos rule (they make disparaging remarks about this period for the rest of pharaonic history and loated foreign incursions on their country thereafter, to the point of xenophobia (Belova 1998)), they also understood (as did the Hyksos) that the institution of kingship required that whoever ruled conformed to specific conventions to rule effectively.

After the routing of the Hyksos during the New Kingdom, later kingslists ignored these foreign kings (along with a few Egyptian kings whom New Kingdom kings thought weren't "proper" kings). When they did this, they merely lengthened previous kings' reigns or were simply silent about years when these foreign or "improper" kings ruled. Think of it as simply rewriting history, a'la the Russian and Chinese Communist regimes' modes (See, on the construction of kingslists, with removal of "objectionable" rulers, Redford 1986).

Considering the antipathy of the Egyptian populace to the Greeks and Romans during their respective occupations (as well as those of the Persians and Assyrians), there's little doubt that had Egypt become free of these rulers during the pharaonic period, these rulers too would have been "erased" from official documents and the official histiorical royal records of Egypt.

Some good literature on the institution of Egyptian kingship and its political functional meaning versus its "divine" mythical components, see

Goyon, J.-C. 1998. Rê, Maât et Pharaon, ou le destin de l'Egypte Antique. Collection Egyptologie. Lyon: Edition A. C. V.

Moftah, R. 1985. Studien zum Ägyptischen Königsdogma in Neuen Reich. DAIK 20. Mainz: von Zabern.

O'Connor, D. and D. P. Silverman, Eds. 1995. Ancient Egyptian Kingship. Probleme der Ägyptologie. Bd. 9. W. Helck. Leiden: Brill.

Ockinga, B. 1995. Hatshepsut's Election to Kingship : The Ba and the Ka in Egyptian Royal Ideology. Bulletin of the Australian Centre for Egyptology 6: 89 - 102.

Posener, G. 1960. De la divinité du Pharaon. Cahiers de la Société Asiatique XV. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale.

Quirke, S. 1990. Who Were the Pharaohs? A History of their Names with a List of Cartouches. Mineola, NY: Dover.

Springborg, P. 1990. Royal Persons: Patriarchal Monarchy and the Feminine Principle. London: Unwin Hyman.

Tobin, V. A. 1989. Theological principles of Egyptian religion. American University Studies. Series 7, Theology and Religion 59. New York: Peter Lang. (See the chapter on divine kingship)

Other Reference:

Belova, G. 1998. The Egyptians' Idea of Hostile Encirclement. In C. J. Eyre, Ed., Proceedings of the Seventh International Congress of Egyptologists. Cambridge, 3-9 September 1995: 143-148. Orientalia Louvaniensia Analecta 82. Leuven: Peeters.

Redford, D. B. 1986. Pharaonic King-lists, Annals and Day-books: A Contribution to the Study of the Egyptian Sense of History. SSEA Publication IV. L. M. James. Mississauga: Benben Publications.

I hope this comes close to answering your question. ;)

Katherine Griffis-Greenberg