1.
Divine Kingship probably originated in the role of a traditional shaman
who possessed special ability to commune with the supernatural on behalf of his
people. During the evolution of the
Upper Egyptian tradition this position became more formalized and powerful,
becoming transformed into divine kingship during the Naqada III (Gerzean) and unification period. However, it retained its reliance on the
supernatural identity of the shaman-ruler, of his ability to affect the destiny
of his people, to be part of the supernatural realm, and expanded this to a belief
in the convergence of death and rebirth in the immortal person of the
king. Here the village shaman is
transformed into the divine king.
2. The central element of this unique
shaman-ruler identity embedded the king’s immortality in the act of rebirth
that accompanied a king's mortal death.
Thus the associated rituals of funerary practice became important in the
maintenance of the social order that depended on this rebirth. While having a deeply religious basis,
funerary ritual rapidly assumed a strong political and economic role in supporting
the social order and the state itself.
3.
Within this ideological system the monuments and rituals associated with
the king's divinity became the central locations of kingly authority. These not only included his immortal
physical home – the great pyramids and their counterparts in other periods, but
the sacred complexes where he conducted the rituals of power while alive, and
the provincial temples, royal manors and shrines whose often- religious
managers acted as agents for the central government in all aspects of economic,
religious and political administration.
4.
Hence divine kingship was the central institution in a system whose
related rituals and institutions, and the extensive system of officials who
managed them, served the interests of political authority. Together they comprised a well- organized
structure that embedded the sociopolitical in the religious ideology of the
populace and was regularly strengthened and renewed by great seasonal and
annual festivals, (Sed Festival, festivals of death and transformation).
Mortuary Ritual System as the
Catalyst for Royal Power
The royal tomb.
1.
The royal tomb served as a supremely important state reliquary where its
most sacred objects were deposited.
First of all these included the mortal aspect of the divine king
himself. In addition the tomb with its
abundant offerings and living symbols represented his physical home and ensured
his supernatural presence in the land.
The royal tomb this became an active and vital embodiment of the
enduring Egyptian state. Royal
mortuary architecture evolved in form and meaning through time marking the
evolution of the concept of divine kingship, both as the practical instrument
of statecraft and the ideological core of Egyptian civilization. In a vast array of elaborate “artistic”
bearers of ideological/religious items and tomb embellishments accompanied the
king. These not only helped secure his
future welfare but, on the social level, stimulated the development of arts and
crafts, technical prowess and writing.
2.
On a political level, the effort that went into the building of the
royal tombs, especially from the 3rd Dynasty (Old Kingdom), may well
have formed the active context for the creation of the pharaonic administrative
system. They required the following
institutional capacities to a degree never needed earlier:
- mobilization of huge labor forces.
- major expansion of attached specialist
artists and craftsmen - diverse art forms.
- scribal specialization for recording -
development of writing as an accounting device and to
document the accomplishments of the king and divine kingship.
- technical skill for planning,
transportation and building.
- mathematics.
- long distance transportation system
- powerful, far-reaching and permanent
central administrative organization.
- ability to produce, transport and
distribute food to huge bodies of state employees.
3.
Following the major construction projects of the 3rd and 4th
Dynasty pyramids this system was in existence and constituted a flexible
organizational and managerial apparatus for the central government to apply to
state needs throughout Egypt. Thus even though the emphasis on giant pyramids
later subsided, the administrative system that it engendered continued in place
as the basis of pharaonic government.
Early royal funerary architecture (through
the 2nd Dynasty)
1. The 1st Dynasty tombs at
Abydos were large North/South-oriented compounds with external facades that
possessed recessed brick niches, possibly inspired by Mesopotamian temple
architecture during the late predynastic period, and probably imitated the
facades of the royal palaces. They
contained central burial chambers for the king surrounded by huge areas for
storage of food and elite materials.
2.
These “mastaba” tombs represent great mansions where the dead king
eternally rested. His immortal needs were tangibly taken care of during the
process of funerary ritual. In this
concept the dead, though immortal king had joined the divine pantheon and was a
distant, historic figure. This is the
natural development of earlier ancestral reverence of the pre-dynastic period
and the king’s connection with his dynastic ancestors and the local (Tribal)
god of Upper Egypt - Horus.
3.
During this period the struggles between Set and Horus reflect the
competition between the supporters of two local (tribal) ancestral deities of
Upper Egypt with origins in the earlier predynastic period who had become the
deities of the competing dominant cities of Naqada and Hierakonpolis. The later Memphite theology explains the
triumph of Horus within a consolidated formal state religion that did not exist
in the Early Dynastic period. The
central importance of Horus was transferred to the kings of This (Abydos) with
the unification of Egypt under King Narmer, founder of the 1st
Dynasty.
4.
The above statement is supported by the later texts referring to the
"birth" of many deities in the early dynastic period. This indicates that the local beliefs of
earlier Egypt were being consolidated into a single religious system that grew
from familiar beliefs yet changed them in scope and regularized their meaning. This process involved the transformation of
local deities into members of a transcendental pantheon with set relationships
and roles and supporting priesthoods and temples. Significantly the king became
a central member of this divine pantheon.
King Djoser's (Netjerikhet) Funerary
Complex and the Pyramid Age
1. King Netjerikhet or Djoser, first king
of the 3rd Dynasty (ca. 2680 BC), initiated the pyramid age that was
to last till the end of the Middle Kingdom.
His step pyramid was part of the last major North-South-oriented
complex, which incorporated his reliquary (tomb), a mortuary temple to house
the rituals of the royal cult, and a complex of courts, provincial pavilions
and shrines, and his funerary temple. A
great wall surrounded the entire complex over a mile in length that replicated
the earlier palace facades and the "White Walls of Memphis" around
which the early kings ran to mark their possession of the Two Lands.
2. While the storage magazines and
"great mansion," primarily concerned with the immortal aspect of the
king following death, remain from earlier periods, Netjerikhet’s funerary
complex introduced new elements that had their principal use during his
life. These new components reveal the
evolving state political ritual and the central role played by the ruler at
every step of this development. Most
importantly, they include the architectural features that housed the Sed
Festival, a series of ceremonies conducted over several days, which
periodically renewed the ruler’s kingship status, and asserted his role as the
being who integrated the land of Egypt and its divinities. Important features of Netjerikhet’s complex
include the jubilee court where the king ritually and symbolically circumnavigated
the land, the dual throne where the two lands were united under the king’s
rule, and the rows of Nome (province) shrines that symbolized the concentration
in one place of the local divinity of Egypt in the king’s presence.
3.
This monument marked change from previous practice in the conception of
divine kingship. Earlier practice
asserted the king’s immortality as a distant (departed) supernatural
figure. With Netjerikhet the royal
ideology integrated present existence with future immortality after death in a
way not done previously. It also saw the final consolidation of the practice of
formalizing continuity after death with the religious cult of the king in which
his statue embodied his living presence in the mortuary temple after his death.
4. The change in the royal funerary
complexes from their earlier North/South to an East/West orientation, starting
after Netjerikhet’s (Djoser) funerary complex, and introduction of the pyramid
form with its symbolic representation of the rays of the sun, signaled the rise
of importance of the worship of Ra the Sun-God with his cult center at
Heliopolois near Memphis and identification of the pharaoh with Ra.
5. From this time divine kingship was
identified with the sun, the creator and life-giver in his role as Atum or
Ra. As the sun traveled in his (Ra-) boat through the underworld at night
and across the sky by day in its E-W trajectory, so the orientation of the 3rd
and 4th Dynasty pyramid complexes and their successors symbolized
the continuous presence of the king as an aspect of creation and life force,
alive or “dead.” Thus the immortal
king remained at the center of all aspects of Egyptian civilization in his
identification the basic force that made all life possible and with it the
socio-political construction that was the pharaonic state.