the gods and gain favor with their cults. Th e king was re-
sponsible for maintaining the cult of the gods, and he did
so by endowing the temple with land and granting temple
estates special tax privileges and exemptions. But the king
was also responsible for providing sustenance to the gods.
Th e Egyptians believed that their gods needed everything
that humans needed: food, drink, and clothes. Scenes pre-
served on temple walls show the king pouring drinks and
consecrating off erings to t he gods, who, in return, embraced,
purifi ed, suckled, and crowned him. Because the king was
one of the gods, he was represented on the same scale as the
gods. Because he was the mediator between the divine and
human realms, the king’s most important task was the main-
tenance of maat (order, justice, and harmony), for which he
was solely responsible.
Visually, the king’s divinity was expressed through the
special costume he wore and the special insignia he car-
ried: his crowns, the nemes (or striped headcloth), the long
straight-edged false beard attached to his chin, a three-part
pleated kilt called the shendyt, his crook and fl ail (which sym-
bolized his role as the shepherd of his people), and a forked
staff called a was scepter. At the king’s brow was a rearing
cobra, known as uraeus (a word derived from the Egyptian
term for “rising goddess”). Shown in “her moment,” the rear-
ing cobra is ready for action. At the slightest threat, she would
protectively spit her venom against the king’s enemies. Be-
cause the cobra also protects the son god, this feature further
asserts the king’s solar connections.
Several types of headgear were worn by Egyptian kings.
One, the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt, comprised
the red crown of Lower Egypt and the white crown of Upper
Egypt. Th is crown was held in place by its distinctive frontal
coil. Although some deities may be represented by one or the
other of its two component crowns, human subjects could not
wear them. Another, the blue crown, known in earlier litera-
ture as a “war crown,” was worn on political occasions and
was an adaptation of a close-fi tting cap.
In addition, the king’s titles and epithets also emphasized
his divinity. Upon ascending to the throne, the king acquired
a formal titulary, that is, a series of set titles. A monumental
inscription of Th utmose I (r. ca. 1504–1492 b.c.e.) addressed
to an offi cial by the name of Turi, an “overseer of the southern
hill country” (that is, Nubia, a region just south of Egypt),
and similar inscriptions indicate that the palace sought to
propagate the king’s titulary in remote areas under Egyptian
control. Th e text, which dates to the fi rst year of Th utmose
I’s reign specifi es, for example, that the king was Horus, He
of the Two Ladies, the Golden Horus, the King of Upper and
Lower Egypt, and the son of Re.
Th e royal titulary, such as the one for Th utmose I, was
composed of fi ve “names” or epithets and declared the king’s
political program. Dating to the time prior to the Dynastic Pe-
riod and the earliest names, “Horus” related the king directly
to the falcon god Horus—as did another name: his Golden
Horus/Golden falcon name. By the middle of the First Dy-
nasty (2920–2770 b.c.e.), two other names were in use. One,
literally “he of the sedge and the bee,” is more commonly
translated as King of Upper and Lower Egypt. Th e other was
“he of the two ladies,” referring to the titular goddesses of
Upper and Lower Egypt, Wadjit and Nekhbet, respectively.
By the Fourth Dynasty (2575–2465 b.c.e.), a fi ft h name was
added: “son of Re.” Originally worshipped in Heliopolis, Re,
a solar deity, was one of the earliest solar deities. In the Old
Kingdom (ca. 2575–2134 b.c.e.), he became the supreme god
of the Egyptian pantheon. In addition to emphasizing the
king’s close association with the supreme deity, this title also
declared the king’s solar religious affi liation.
Th e Son of Re na me is v iewed as t he Eg y pt ia ns’ ingenious
way of reconciling their realization of the king’s humanity
with the offi cial dictum of his divinity. Despite all the trap-
pings of divinity, the Egyptians were only too aware of the
king’s humanity and understood that his frailty and physical
limitations oft en prevented him from acting as the immortal,
omnipresent (that is, existing everywhere), omniscient (all-
knowing) being that he was supposed to be. While the title
relates the king to the supreme solar deity, it also implies that
the king was somewhat removed from the true essence of di-
vinity. It has been suggested that the Egyptian theologians
never considered the king himself to be divine, but rather the
institution of kingship. Th us a mortal became divine on as-
cending the throne only through the power inherent in the
offi ce of kingship itself. A deceased king was typically re-
ferred to as netjer-nefer, “the perfect god.”
Having an accurate set of royal titles was crucial to pro-
vincial offi cials who oversaw multiple activities on behalf of
the king, including the presentation of off erings in the temple
and the construction of new monuments. Each new monu-
ment would be dated to the king’s regnal year (that is, the
year he ascended to the throne) and inscribed with his full
titulary.
Th e king’s divinity was also proclaimed through temple
iconography, or images and symbolic representations. A se-
ries of scenes preserved on the walls of the temple of Amun at
Luxor depict the divine conception and birth of King Amen-
hotep III (1391–1353 b.c.e.). In one scene Amun is led to the
queen’s chambers. Although Amun assumes the guise of her
husband Th utmose IV, the god’s sweet aroma betrays him,
and the queen recognizes him as the supreme god and not
her mortal husband. During this conjugal visit, the queen is
impregnated. Attended by deities, the queen later gives birth
to the future Amenhotep III. In the next scene the goddesses
Mut and Hathor nurse the child while Amun looks on. Spun
aft er the fact, the birth cycles were depicted on temple walls
aft er the birth took place. Representations of birth cycles are
portrayed in the mortuary temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-
Bahri (ca. 1450 b.c.e.) and in several Ptolemaic and Roman
temples. Birth cycles were represented aft er a king assumed
the throne and served the political purpose of further le-
gitimating his (or her) rule. A Middle Kingdom (2040–1640
b.c.e.) literary text relates the birth of three Fift h Dynasty512 government organization: Egypt