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Once Egypt had been united and a central government was
established, the cult of the living king seems to have been
developed in addition to the cults of the local and national
deities. This fact tends to be taken for granted, but we know
very little about how this situation came to be, and if or to
what extent the early king was viewed as divine in his
lifetime. Even in the later historical periods when evidence is
clearer and more plentiful, there is disagreement among
scholars as to the degree to which the Egyptian king was
regarded as human, divine or both...
Egyptian Gods in the Divinity of the KingshipIt is
almost certain that the living Egyptian king was viewed as a
divine being. In representations the king depicted far larger
than his human subjects and on the same scale as the gods
themselves. Not only were monarchs said to be "like" or the
"image of" various deities, but the word netcher or "god" was
also frequently used as an epithet of kings. The formal
titulary of the Egyptian king also spelled out his relationship
with several key deities, indicating that he was not only
viewed as the son of Ra during his lifetime (from the 4th
dynasty on), but also as the living manifestation or image of
the falcon god Horas (perhaps from the beginning of the
Dynastic Period). There are other important lines of evidence
for this point of view. The muth of the king's divine birth,
for example, was developed in the New Kingdom, but was
apparently not something incented by Hatshepsut, as in
sometimes stated, and seems to have existed since at least
Middle Kingdom times. Even before this, the underlying purpose
of the complex genealoogy of the gods constructed by the
priests of Heliopolis may have been as much to establish the
divine lineage and nature of the king as to establish the order
of creation, a fact seen by Rudolf Anthes as early as the
middle of the last century. As a result of this type of
evidence, Henri Frankfort, in his important study Kingship and
the Egyptian Gods, and many other scholars, have believed that
the pharaoh's rites of coronation and accession elevated him to
the identity with the gods.
On the other hand, this may not be the only conclusion that can
be drawn from the sources which provide our information on
Egyptian kingship. There is no doubt whatsoever that the living
king was regarded as subservient to the gods and that in
theory, and to some degree in practice, every king acted as
their servant in the enactment of temple rituals. The evidence
considered above may also be viewed in different ways. The
frequent identification of the king with various deities could
often be little more than hyperbole. Marie-Ange Bonheme has
also recently pointed out that while the king's formal names
may indicate an aspect of divinity in the monarch, they do not
clarify the "degree of divinity" which is involved. As early as
1960, Georges Posener showed that the image of the living
pharaoh as a god-king is perhaps exaggerated by the royal and
religious sources which aim to highten the divine aspect of
kingship. In popular literature and etxts the Egyptian king is
hardly portrayed as a god. He cannot work the miracles of his
wise men and is certainly neither omniscient nor invulnerable
in the way we would expect if he were truly regarded as divine.
From this perspective, it would seem that it was not the king
who was honored as a god, but the incarnate power of the gods
that was honored in the king.
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 The
Complete Gods and
Goddesses of Ancient Egypt
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Since you are interested in
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