Even prior to Egypt’s official unification, Nilotic kings styled themselves as the earthly avatar of the falcon-god Horus. The Horus name, later written inside a stylized palace, conveyed the ideology that the divine falcon’s spirit had alit on the palace and infused its occupant with supernatural power. At the dawn of the state, this message was further imparted by scenes of the god dominating a foreigner in parallel with the king or offering the sign of life to the martial personification of his name, thereby animating and invigorating him. The god Horus introduced two of the king’s earliest regnal names (the Horus name and the Golden Horus name) and the same deity was virtually always incorporated into the name of the king’s funerary estates (i. e., Horus-star-of-the-divine corporation; see Wilkinson 1999: 119).
The cult of the falcon-god Homs received a great deal of royal attention and patronage, as manifested in the annals of the earliest kings (Wilkinson 2000: 121, 125, 154, 179, 198, 224). Further, it is notable that the two most elaborate, archaeologically attested early temples in Egypt were those dedicated to aspects of the living and dead king: Horus at Hierakonpolis and Khentiamentiu at Abydos. Abydos was the ancestral homeland and final resting place of the Early Dynastic kings, and the local god of this polity therefore became increasingly identified with the cult of the royal ancestors. Certainly, by the Fifth Dynasty at least, Khentiamentiu had been almost entirely subsumed into the divine persona of Osiris, the father of Horus and the collective embodiment of the divine destiny of each Pharaoh after death (Griffiths 1966: 94). The spatial geography of cities sacred to kingship ensured that the ruler’s presence was maintained in full force throughout the country. In the Delta, he ruled from his palace at Memphis, journeying on occasion to the important cult centers of Buto and Sais to visit his northern patron goddesses. Further upstream, on the other hand, the king was worshipped at the southernmost major population center (Hierakonpolis) and also at the juncture of Upper and Middle Egypt (Abydos).
Just when the god Horus received a narrative mythology to fully fledge his character is unknown, but this undoubtedly occurred some time prior to our first glimpse of it in the pyramid texts of king Unis of the Fifth Dynasty. The myth is too long and complex to discuss here in detail, but, as it served as an etiology of sacred kingship in Egypt, a brief overview of the narrative is essential. According to the origin story, Osiris - the good and just king, who served as a model for every good and just sovereign to follow - once ruled over Egypt, when this land was paradise upon earth. Osiris’ brother Seth, who envied his kingship and committed fratricide to get it, introduced evil into the world, irrevocably altering it for the worse. Despite this act, Osiris kept his blessed kingship, simply transferring it to the realm of the dead instead of that of the living. In his otherworldly kingdom, only individuals who had lived a just and honest life were deemed worthy of entry. All others died a second death.
Meanwhile, in the terrestrial world, Horus was conceived and born following the murder of his father and was safeguarded by his mother until he came of age, able to challenge his uncle’s rule. The successful resolution of this struggle between Osiris’ brother and son for the office of kingship, waged in legal courts and in single combat, set an important precedent. Brothers of kings are, by definition, also sons of kings, and in most instances their age and experience far exceeds that of the previous king’s son. However, while older and wiser rulers may be good for a country, succession struggles are not, and so this mythological judgement - this divine edict of proper succession - clearly determined that the stability and perceived legitimacy of kingship was of greater value than the ‘‘fitness’’ of any one particular king.
World History
