Kebra Nagast

Kebra Nagast — Budge — Section 6

Now the idea of the divine origin of kings in Ethiopia, the Sudan, and Egypt, is very old, and it appears to have been indigenous. According to a legend given in the Westcar Papyrus in Berlin, three of the great kings of the Vth dynasty in Egypt were the sons of the god Ra by Ruttet, the wife of Rauser, high priest of Ra, and before the close of that dynasty every king called him¬ self “ son of Ra.” Many a king of Egypt states in his inscriptions that he reigned “ in the egg,” i.e. before he was born, and we are to understand that the egg was deposited in his mother by the form of the Sun-god, who was his father. Some of the sovereigns of the XVIIIth dynasty, certainly those who were the nomi¬ nees of the priests of Amen, were declared to be the actual children of Amen, and to be of his substance. On the walls of the famous temple which the architect Senmut built for Queen Hatshepsut in Western Thebes, there is a series of bas-reliefs in which the god Amen is seen companying with the mother of that Queen, and Hatshepsut regarded herself as Amen’s daughter. In the temple of Luxor there are bas-reliefs of a similar character, and the god Amen is seen occupying the couch of the queen who became by him the mother of Amen- hetep III. This king was so thoroughly convinced of his divine origin that he caused an effigy of himself to be sculptured on the walls of the temple of Sulb in the Egyptian Sudan, together with the figures of the great gods of Egypt. In fact he shared the worship of the people with the gods and goddesses of Egypt. Rameses the Great was held to be the son of the god Ptali-Tanen, and in the inscription on a stele at Abu Simbel this god, xi Preface in addressing the king, says : “ I am thy father. Thy members were begotten as [are those of] the gods, i took the form of the Ram, the Lord of Tet (Mendes), I companied with thy august mother” @ /c==u) a oQ -- /vww\