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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
*
acol2011@hotmail.co.uk
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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.

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

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).Footnote 1 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.Footnote 2 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’.Footnote 3 This hieroglyphic formula proclaiming the king's divinity continues for Alexander the Great and even in Ptolemaic temple reliefs.Footnote 4

In light of this, it is surprising that the idea of the pharaoh's divinity is virtually unknown in surviving Classical Greek and Hellenistic sources, except perhaps for some Ptolemaic poetry (e.g. Callim. Hymn 4.165) where the divinity of the king could just as easily be a Greek cultural idea rather than an Egyptian one. Herodotus' Histories display no knowledge of the ‘god king’ of Egypt. Herodotus declares that the Egyptian priests said that no god had assumed human form in the 341 generations since Egypt's first pharaoh – a statement which some think contradicts the idea of the divine status of the king.Footnote 5 The only explicit statement in a Greek source about the Egyptian king's divinity can be seen in Diodorus Siculus, writing as late as the first century b.c., and relying most probably on Hecataeus of Abdera:

καθόλου δέ ϕασι τοὺς Αἰγυπτίους ὑπὲρ τοὺς ἄλλους ἀνθρώπους εὐχαρίστως διακεῖσθαι πρὸς πᾶν τὸ εὐεργετοῦν, νομίζοντας μεγίστην ἐπικουρίαν εἶναι τῷ βίῷ τὴν ἀμοιβὴν τῆς πρὸς τοὺς εὐεργέτας χάριτος· δῆλον γὰρ εἶναι διότι πάντες πρὸς εὐεργεσίαν ὁρμήσουσι τούτων μάλιστα παρ᾽ οἷς ἂν ὁρῶσι κάλλιστα θησαυρισθησομένας τὰς χάριτας. διὰ δὲ τὰς αὐτὰς αἰτίας δοκοῦσιν Αἰγύπτιοι τοὺς ἑαυτῶν βασιλεῖς προσκυνεῖν τε καὶ τιμᾶν ὡς πρὸς ἀλήθειαν ὄντας θεούς, ἅμα μὲν οὐκ ἄνευ δαιμονίου τινὸς προνοίας νομίζοντες αὐτοὺς τετευχέναι τῆς τῶν ὅλων ἐξουσίας, ἅμα δὲ τοὺς βουλομένους τε καὶ δυναμένους τὰ μέγιστ᾿ εὐεργετεῖν ἡγούμενοι θείας μετέχειν ϕύσεως.

In general, they say that the Egyptians above all other people are inclined to be grateful for every benefaction, believing that the return of gratitude to benefactors is a great resource in life. For, they say, it is clear that all human beings will want to grant their benefactions mainly to those who they know will value the favours best. For the same reasons, it seems, the Egyptians practise proskynesis before their kings and honour them as being in truth gods, believing that they have not attained supreme power without the help of divine providence, and also that those who are willing to give the greatest benefactions and have the power to give such honours share in the divine nature.Footnote 6

(Diod. Sic. 1.90.2–3 = Hecataeus of Abdera, FGrH 264 F 25.1488–97)

This passage of Diodorus was assigned by Jacoby to Hecataeus of Abdera's On the Egyptians (Aegyptiaca), which appears to be a major source for Book 1 of Diodorus' universal history.Footnote 7 Hecataeus wrote his work in Egypt under Ptolemy I and claimed knowledge of priestly records and informants.Footnote 8 The work should be dated to the years between 321 and 304 b.c., but probably in the earlier part of this period.Footnote 9 It seems clear that Diodorus did draw on Hecataeus for much of his material,Footnote 10 although the extent to which he used Hecataeus in Book 1 has been disputed, and he did use other sources.Footnote 11 But it is notable that the motive for the worship of kings in Diodorus fits very well with the euhemerism of Hecataeus,Footnote 12 Hecataeus' theory of kingship, and his overall method of interpreting Egyptian culture in a Hellenized way. Nevertheless, it can be conceded that there remains the possibility that 1.90.2–3 was an editorial comment of Diodorus himself or was derived from another Hellenistic source.

Curiously, what Diodorus has recorded here contradicts what he himself wrote elsewhere (most probably indicating the use of different sources), when he asserts that the piety of Darius and his interest in Egyptian religion led to his being the first king to be honoured as a god by the Egyptians.Footnote 13

There is another important observation to be made, whatever the ultimate source of Diodorus 1.90.2–3. The language of Diodorus (εὐεργέτας, εὐεργετεῖν) appears to be derived from Hellenistic ruler cult ideology, and the motive which he gives for divine honours is Hellenistic, not Egyptian. The ruler cults of the Hellenistic age were very frequently inspired by the gratitude of cities and individuals in response to benefactions made by kings.Footnote 14 It is doubtful how far Diodorus in this passage or his source evinced any understanding of the native Egyptian conception of the pharaoh's divinity. It is highly unlikely that the ancient Greeks understood the notion of the ka divinity of the king, an idea which was mainly expressed in temple propaganda. Nevertheless, the virtual absence of other earlier passages in Greek literature at least mentioning the divinity of the pharaoh in passing remains a puzzle.

A possible solution is that some sectors of Egyptian society and the priesthood may have adopted a more prosaic view of the king's nature by the Saite age,Footnote 15 although conservative temple hieroglyphic texts unreadable to Greeks did not abandon the divine ideology.Footnote 16 Thus there had arisen a popular ‘secular’ attitude to the kingship by the Late period in Egypt.Footnote 17 Some Egyptologists have even argued that late Egyptians had abandoned the idea that the pharaoh was divine.Footnote 18 Still others posit that there was a ‘schism’ in late Egyptian thought where older conservative ideas existed alongside more earthly conceptions of the kingship.Footnote 19 Under the last view, it is entirely possible that the Greeks of the Archaic and Classical eras and the fourth century b.c. were largely unaware of the native and conservative Egyptian conception of the pharaoh as a divine being, simply because that idea had retreated in late popular Egyptian culture. This is what explains the clear absence of passages in Greek literature before Diodorus concerning the divine Egyptian king. Whether or not Diodorus 1.90.2–3 in fact stems from Hecataeus of Abdera, by the Hellenistic age, through contact with Egypt, the Greeks were commenting on the older, conservative Egyptian belief in the divine pharaoh, but saw the idea through the prism of Greek culture and Hellenistic ruler cults, which also envisaged the ruler as divine, but for quite different reasons.

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