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THE DIVINITY OF THE PHARAOH IN GREEK SOURCES

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2014

Andrew Collins
Andrew Collins*
Affiliation:
University of Queensland
*
[email protected]
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Extract

It has long been known that the Egyptian pharaoh was regarded as divine in Egyptian culture. He was the son of Re and the mediator between the gods and humankind. During the royal coronation, he was transformed into a manifestation of the god Horus. He could be referred to as a ntr (‘divine being’, ‘god’), and was regularly described in inscriptions as ‘the good god’ or ‘perfect god’ (ntr nfr). By the New Kingdom period, the king's divinity was believed to be imbued by his possession of a divine manifestation of the god Amun-Re called the ‘living royal ka’, which came upon him at his coronation, and which was also renewed during the yearly opet festival held in the Luxor temple in Thebes. As late as the period of Persian domination over Egypt in the fifth century b.c., Egyptian temple texts continued to describe their foreign king Darius I as a divine being, owing to the ‘living royal ka’. This hieroglyphic formula proclaiming the king's divinity continues for Alexander the Great and even in Ptolemaic temple reliefs.

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 64 , Issue 2 , December 2014 , pp. 841 - 844
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2014 

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References

1 For the more important literature on the pharaoh's divinity, see Posener, G., De la divinité du pharaon (Paris, 1960)Google Scholar; Goedicke, H., Die Stellung des Königs im alten Reich (Wiesbaden, 1960)Google Scholar; Gundlach, R., ‘Der Pharao – eine Hieroglyphe Gottes: zur “Göttlichkeit” des ägyptischen Königs’, in Zeller, D. (ed.), Menschwerdung Gottes: Vergöttlichung von Menschen (Göttingen, 1988), 13–35Google Scholar; Pressl, D.A., ‘Zur Königsideologie der 26. Dynastie: Untersuchungen anhand der Phraseologie der Königsinschriften’, Studien zur Altägyptischen Kultur 20 (1993), 223–54;Google ScholarO'Connor, D.B. and Silverman, D.P. (edd.), Ancient Egyptian Kingship (Leiden and New York, 1995)Google Scholar; Bell, L., ‘Luxor temple and the cult of the royal ka’, JNES 44 (1985), 251–94Google Scholar; Bell, L., ‘The New Kingdom divine temple: the example of Luxor’, in Shafer, B.E. (ed.), Temples of Ancient Egypt (Ithaca, NY, 1997), 127–84Google Scholar; Baines, J., ‘Ancient Egyptian kingship: official forms, rhetoric, context’, in Day, J. (ed.), King and Messiah in Israel and the Ancient Near East: Proceedings of the Oxford Old Testament Seminar (Sheffield, 1998), 17–53;Google ScholarGundlach, R., ‘Grundgegebenheiten der nationalen und internationalen Situation des ägyptischen Reiches: Ein Krisenmodell’, in Gundlach, R. and Klug, A. (edd.), Das ägyptische Königtum im Spannungsfeld zwischen Innen- und Aussenpolitik im 2. Jahrtausend v. Chr. (Wiesbaden, 2004), 73–91Google Scholar.

2 Bell (n. 1 [1985]), 256; Bell (n. 1 [1997]), 140; Kaplony, P., LdÄ 3 (1980)Google Scholar, s.v. ‘ka’, 275–82. For the sed festival, see Bleeker, C.J., Egyptian Festivals: Enactments of Religious Renewal (Leiden, 1967), 96–123Google Scholar, and Bell (n. 1 [1985]), 251–94.

3 Lorton, D., ‘The invocation hymn at the temple of Hibis’, Studien zur Altägyptischen Kultur 21 (1994), 159–217Google Scholar, at 184–5. Darius' divinity is proclaimed in terms familiar from the New Kingdom in the hymn for awakening Amun in Hypostyle Hall M of the Hibis temple (see line 10; tr. Lorton [this note], 168).

4 Quaegebeur, J., ‘The Egyptian clergy and the cult of the Ptolemaic dynasty’, AncSoc 20 (1989), 97Google Scholar. Alexander's divinity is proclaimed in his barque chapel in the Luxor temple at Thebes: see El-Raziq, M. Abd, Die Darstellungen und Texte des Sanktuars Alexanders des Grossen im Tempel von Luxor (Mainz am Rhein, 1984).Google Scholar

5 Hdt 2.142. On this, see S. Burstein as quoted in Samuel, A.E., ‘The Ptolemies and the ideology of kingship’, in Green, P. (ed.), Hellenistic History and Culture (Berkeley, CA, 1993), 168–210Google Scholar, at 209. In response to this, one could argue that the ancient Egyptians distinguished between the cosmic gods and the pharaoh; the latter was thought of as a divine manifestation of Horus, not Horus himself. See Lloyd, A.B., Herodotus Book II, Commentary 99–182 (Leiden, 1988)Google Scholar, 106; J. Baines, ‘Origins of Egyptian kingship’, in O'Connor and Silverman (n. 1), 95–156, at 123.

6 See Burton, A., Diodorus Siculus: Book 1: A Commentary (Leiden, 1972)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 261, for commentary.

7 Jacoby's commentary to Hecataeus of Abdera, FGrH 264 F 25; Jacoby, F., ‘Hekataios 4’, RE 7 (1912), cols. 2750–69Google Scholar; Schwartz, E., ‘Hekataios von Teos’, RhM 40 (1885), 223–62Google Scholar; Lang, P., commentary to ‘Hecataeus of Abdera’, in Worthington, I. (ed.), Brill's New Jacoby (Brill Online, 2012)Google Scholar, 264 F 25. For other work on Hecataeus, see Murray, O., ‘Hecataeus of Abdera and Pharaonic kingship’, JEA 56 (1970), 141–71Google Scholar; Murray, O. and Stern, M., ‘Hecataeus of Abdera and Theophrastus on Jews and Egyptians’, JEA 59 (1973), 159–68Google Scholar; F.H. Diamond, ‘Hecataeus of Abdera: a new historical approach’ (Diss., University of California, 1974); Sterling, G.E., Historiography and Self-definition: Josephos, Luke-Acts, and Apologetic Historiography (Leiden and New York, 1992), 59–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Burstein, S.M., ‘Hecataeus of Abdera's history of Egypt’, in Johnson, J.H. (ed.), Life in a Multi-cultural Society: Egypt from Cambyses to Constantine and Beyond (Chicago, IL, 1992), 45–9Google Scholar.

8 Murray (n. 7), 143–51.

9 Sterling (n. 7), 78.

10 Murray (n. 7), 160.

11 See Spoerri, W., ‘Zu Diodor von Sizilien I 7/8’, MH 18 (1961), 63–82Google Scholar, who argued that Diod. Sic. 1.7–13 contains Egyptian theological notions from the first century b.c. and not from Hecataeus of Abdera; also Burton (n. 6), 1–33.

12 For Murray (n. 7), 151, it was Hecataeus, not Euhemerus, who first systematically developed the euhemeristic theory of the origin of the gods.

13 Diod. Sic. 1.95.5.

14 Chaniotis, A., ‘The divinity of Hellenistic rulers’, in Erskine, A. (ed.), A Companion to the Hellenistic World (Malden, MA, 2003), 431–45Google Scholar, at 442.

15 Baines (n. 1), 47–8.

16 R.B. Finnestad, ‘Temples of the Ptolemaic and Roman periods: ancient traditions in new contexts’, in Shafer (n. 1), 185–237.

17 Otto, E., ‘Zwei Bemerkungen zum Königskult der Spatzeit’, MDAI(A) 15 (1957), 193–207Google Scholar; J. Baines, ‘Kingship, definition of culture, and legitimation’, in O'Connor and Silverman (n. 1), 36–42; D. Delia, ‘Response: Diana Delia’, in Green (n. 5), 192–204, at 199. Kuhlmann, K.P., Das Ammoneion: Archäologie, Geschichte und Kultpraxis des Orakels von Siwa (Mainz am Rhein, 1988)Google Scholar, 152: ‘in the Late period the identifiable conception of kingship was in no way based on the acknowledgment of the pharaoh as a god … and accordingly in late Egyptian mammisi [i.e. shrines or ‘birth houses’ dedicated to the birth or childhood of gods] [sc. the emphasis was] no longer on the celebration of the birth of a specified successor … to the [sc. reigning] king, but on the worship of an actual divine child, whom the king on earth represented' (‘basiert auch die spätzeitlich feststellbare … Vorstellung über das Königtum keineswegs auf einer Anerkennung Pharaos als Gott, und entsprechend wird in den spätägyptischen Mammisis denn auch nicht mehr die Geburt des … zum Herrscher bestimmten Thronfolgers, sondern eines rein göttlichen Kindes gefeiert, welches der König auf Erden vertritt’).

18 Assmann, J., The Mind of Egypt: History and Meaning in the Time of the Pharaohs, tr. Jenkins, A. (New York, 2002)Google Scholar, 385: ‘The Egyptians [sc. of the late period] no longer viewed the king as the living embodiment of divine power, a living “token” of the god Horus … the priests had long since taken matters into their own hands. With their daily rituals, they ensured that the offering tables of the gods were never empty …. With the recitation of sayings against Seth and Apophis, they warded off any possibility of civil war or invasion by foreign foes …. The king's sole responsibility was to provide the material basis for the priests’ service by means of temple construction and the provision of offerings.'

19 Collins, A.W., ‘The divinity of Alexander in Egypt’, in Wheatley, P.V. and Hannah, R. (edd.), Alexander and His Successors: Essays from the Antipodes (Claremont, CA, 2009), 179–206.Google Scholar