Conclusion

Perhaps the king’s most important role was also that which to the modern mind has the least to do with his person. Proof of a king’s proper performance of his duties seems to have been that all was right with the world - the king ‘‘having repelled disorder throughout the Two Lands, so that Maat rests [in her place] as he causes falsehood to be abomination and the land to be like its primeval state’’ (Murnane 1995: 212-13). And indeed, the king’s necessary role in the maintenance of an orderly and prosperous environment is undoubtedly the point of the propagandistic literature penned in the early Middle Kingdom, which contrasted the disorder that had come during the Intermediate Period with the new state of affairs under the kings of a united Egypt. In practice, however, the restoration of the country to peace and prosperity could be claimed by Pharaohs of any era.

Although there seems in Egypt not to have been the direct linkage attested in many African divine kingships between the king’s person and nature, the king and the natural world were closely linked, and the fertility of the land depended on the king’s good relations with particular deities. Certainly, a downturn in nature spelled a potentially fatal loss of legitimacy for the king. In modern democracies, few elected officials survive the political consequences of economic recessions, even if such were not brought about by their own doing. Thus, it seems that virtually any king - infant or imbecile - could rule over Egypt, provided that (through his piety to the gods) the Nile rose on time, the granaries were stocked, and the country’s borders remained firm. This is, of course, an exaggeration, but it may have been that the institution of sacred kingship, in many periods at least, allowed for far greater power-sharing and negotiation than is commonly thought and that its chief function was to promote a national symbol of unity - a single lord common to Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt alike.

FURTHER READING

The bibliography on Egyptian kingship is substantial. O’Connor and Silverman 1995 and Ziegler 2002 provide excellent modern introductions to the issues. Older studies of high value are Frankfort 1978(1948), Goedicke 1960, Posener 1960, and Barta 1975.