Egyptian religious poetry

INTRODUCTION 39

was part of the Osirian creed that he had been killed, and that his body had to be guarded till he rose again. Every goddess was a mother, and as such was regarded as the protector of her children, i.e. her worshippers, and the wings emphasized the idea of protection, reminding the spectator of a mother bird in the nest. Gods, when in human form, are not winged.

The Sacred Drama of the dedication and sacrifice of the Incarnate God can be followed in the Pyramid Texts (see p. 67 seq.) by the hymns and prayers used on these solemn occasions. It seems clear that there was a special ceremony of dedication when the King was made divine, which was celebrated when he was appointed to the Kingship. Though more than one Pharaoh claimed to have been “ King from the egg”, documentary evidence shows that this was not the case and that, with few exceptions, every Pharaoh was a full-grown man at his accession. As the throne went in the female line, and as the Pharaoh only obtained his high position by right of marriage with the heiress, he was not necessarily a member of the royal family. Yet every Pharaoh had to be the son of God and a human mother in order that he should be the Incarnate God, the Giver of Fertility to his country and his people. This difficulty was overcome by a ceremonial birth in which, in the primitive form, the two goddesses Isis and Nephthys acted as mothers, so that the King was born of the goddess of each main division of the country. The ritual birth is a well-known rite in many religions of the Lower Culture.. The ceremonies of the baptism and naming of the new King followed immediately after the ceremonial birth. With the naming came also the calculation (probably by a horoscope or other astrological means) of the length of his life. The length of the reign was limited to seven years, but the Pyramid Texts show that there were means of escaping the doom, “ Turn thou back, turn thou back the years for Tety,”