The king had his own cult, which was functionally similar to that of the gods. In the New Kingdom, the king's cult was celebrated in the temples in western Thebes called "Mansions of Millions of Years. " These temples had shrines to the gods, but they also had a false door or an altar where the king, and often the cult of the king's father, was celebrated. The wall reliefs in the second court of the Temple of Ramesses HI at Medinet Habu (and elsewhere) show that a statue of the king joined the divine statue in processions and festivals (Fig. 20).
These offering cults for the king were celebrated during his lifetime and apparently were intended to continue long after his death. A few kings, including Thutmose HI, Amenhotep HI, Seti 1, and Ramesses H, were worshipped during their lives. 1n an extraordinary scene from the Temple of Seti 1 at Abydos, Seti is shown making an offering to himself. The cults of some kings continued to be active long after the death of the celebrant, while others were short-lived. An official at the end of Dynasty 18 prayed that he "might smell the incense of the offerings when there is a gathering [?] in the temple of [Thutmose 111]," who at that time had been dead for 150 years. The cult of Thutmose 1 was still active more than five hundred years after that king's death.25 We do not know why some kings' cults were more popular and long-lived than others. Some apparently were discontinued shortly after the death of the king out of sheer disinterest. 1n the case of Thutmose 111, the cult was probably abandoned in Dynasty 21 after rock falls from the nearby cliffs demolished his temple.
World History
