History of the Ancient Near East / Monographs XI

CONCEPTS OF KINGSHIP
IN ANTIQUITY
PROCEEDINGS
OF THE EUROPEAN SCIENCE FOUNDATION
EXPLORATORY WORKSHOP
Held in Padova, November 28th December 1st, 2007

Edited by
GIOVANNI B. LANFRANCHI & ROBERT ROLLINGER

S.A.R.G.O.N. Editrice e Libreria

Padova 2010

HANE / M Vol. XI

History of the Ancient Near East / Monographs

Editor-in-Chief: Frederick Mario Fales
Editor: Giovanni B. Lanfranchi

ISBN
978-88-95672-01-4

Publication grants
from the European Science Foundation
and from the Dipartimento di Scienze del mondo antico
dell'Universit degli Studi di Padova
are acknowledged for this volume

S.A.R.G.O.N. Editrice e Libreria

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

GIOVANNI B. LANFRANCHI, ROBERT ROLLINGER, Introduction ........................... v

JOACHIM FRIEDRICH QUACK, How Unapproachable Is a Pharaoh ? ................. 1
BETINA FAIST, Kingship and Institutional Development
in the Middle Assyrian Period ....................................................................... 15
KAREN RADNER, Assyrian and Non-Assyrian Kingship
in the First Millennium BC ............................................................................ 25
SIMO PARPOLA, Neo-Assyrian Concepts of Kingship and Their Heritage
in Mediterranean Antiquity ............................................................................ 35
ROCO DA RIVA, Dynastic Gods and Favourite Gods
in the Neo-Babylonian Period ....................................................................... 45
ROBERT ROLLINGER, Das medische Knigtum und die medische Suprematie
im sechsten Jahrhundert v. Chr ...................................................................... 63
AMLIE KUHRT, Achaemenid Images of Royalty and Empire ........................... 87
BRUNO JACOBS, Herrschaftsideologie und Herrschaftsdarstellung
bei den Achmeniden ................................................................................... 107
ALESSANDRA COPPOLA, The Kingship of Alexander and of the Seleucids ...... 115
EDWARD DBROWA, The Parthian Kingship ................................................... 123
JOSEF WIESEHFER, King and Kingship in the Sasanian Empire .................... 135
PIERRE CARLIER, Les conceptions de la royaut en Grce classique .............. 153
REINHOLD BICHLER, ber das Knigtum der Inder, Araber und Aithiopen
in der griechischen Ethnographie ................................................................ 163
BERNHARD LINKE, Kingship in Early Rome .................................................... 181
KAI RUFFING, Der rmische Kaiser im 3. Jh. n. Chr. ...................................... 197
INDEX
Divine Names ..............................................................................................
Personal, Dynastic and Familial Names ......................................................
Toponyms and Ethnonyms ...........................................................................
Temple Names .............................................................................................

211
211
215
218

INTRODUCTION

Giovanni B. Lanfranchi & Robert Rollinger

This volume presents the results of the European Science Foundation (ESF) Exploratory Workshop
entitled Concepts of Kingship in Antiquity which was held in Padova from November 29th to December 1st in 2007. The application for the organization of the Workshop was approved by the ESF Standing Committee for the Humanities, and the Workshop was totally financed by the ESF according to the
ESF Exploratory Workshops scheme (see below).
According to the ESF Exploratory Workshops rules, Prof. Dr. Giovanni B. Lanfranchi, University
of Padova, acted as the Convernor of the Workshop. Prof. Dr. Peter Funke, member of the Standing
Committee for the Humanities of the ESF, participated in the Workshop offering a presentation of the
ESF at the opening and chairing the final discussion where suggestions were put forward for developing a research network. The Dean of the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy of the University of Padova, Prof. Dr. Paolo Bettiolo, and the Director of the Department of Ancient World Sciences, Prof.
Dr. Paolo Scarpi, addressed the convened scholars and introduced the Workshop.

According to the preliminary programme submitted to and approved by the ESF, the workshop was to
be devoted to the discussion of the concepts of kingship and especially of divinely inspired or sanctioned kingship in the cultures of the Near East and of the central Mediterranean from the 4th millennium BC up to late Antiquity. The Workshop was aimed at soliciting both a deep comparative discussion between scholars for singling out the channels of diffusion and the modalities of reception and
adaptation of Near Eastern cultural elements in the Mediterranean West, and an intense interdisciplinary dialogue on intercultural relations. The discussion was to be focused on the aspects of kingship
which were developed and conceptualized in the various Near Estern and Mediteranean cultures, from
the institutional, political, social, cultural, ideological, religious, monumental and literary points of
view. The main theme of the discussion was suggested to be the comparison between these concepts,
aiming at singling out similarities and borrowings, adaptations and transformations, differences and especially direct oppositions, in the framework of an increasing cultural integration in the Mediterranean
world at the dawn of the Middle Ages.
Accordingly, the Convenor invited 20 scholars, all specialists in their fields and in the historical periods mentioned in the preliminary programme to present a 30 minutes speech about the specific topic
they had selected upon acceptation of the invitation, however submitting a draft of their papers in good
anticipation for facilitating discussion. Two of them were not able to participate in the meeting and it
was not possible to replace them due to time shortage. Since the ESF Exploratory Workshops are supposed to be substantially closed to public, only a handful of colleagues of the neighbouring Universities of Verona, Venezia and Udine were allowed to listen to the papers and to assist to the discussion,
however discussing with the participants in the various social occasions.

vi

Giovanni B. Lanfranchi Robert Rollinger

The subject of the Workshop was chosen as an important component of a broader programme focussing on intercultural phenomena which was inaugurated in 2006 as a long-term scientific cooperation
between Prof. Dr. Robert Rollinger, University of Innsbruck; Prof. Dr. Josef Wiesehfer, University of
Kiel; Prof. Dr. Bruno Jacobs, University of Basel; Prof. Dr. Giovanni B. Lanfranchi, the Convenor.
The main subject of the cooperation programme was and is the study of the interrelations between East
and West in antiquity, and especially from the second half of the 2nd millennium BC to Late Antiquity;
the programme is brought forward in strict cooperation with the International Research Programme
Melammu. The Intellectual Heritage of Assyria and Babylonia in East and West, founded in 1998 by
Prof. Dr. Simo Parpola, University of Helsinki, and chaired today by Prof. Dr. Tzvi Abusch, Brandeis
University.1 In the framework of the above mentioned long-term cooperation, a specific line of
research has been inaugurated and implemented, dealing with the broad field of the various modes of
relationship between Greek Historiography and the Ancient Near East; accordingly, three international
meetings were organized up to now, dealing with individual Classical historiographers and specific
topics, in which a large group of international scholars participated with their papers. The meetings
were the following: 2006, May 17th20th, Salzau (Kiel), Ktesias und der Orient;2 2007, May 22nd
25th, Castelen (Basel), Griechische Geschichtsschreibung und Altvorderasien: der Achaimenidenhof ;3 2008, November 24th28th, Innsbruck, Herodot und das Perserreich.4 A fourth meeting about
Berossus is to be held in July 2010 at the Durham University, convened by Prof. Dr. Johannes Haubold, Durham University.5

The basic conceptions of both the Exploratory Workshop and the scientific cooperation described
above are, from the methodological point of view, interdisciplinarity, and from the areal point of view,
a focus including the Aegean World as well as the Near East. In the mind of the managing researchers,
a strict cooperation and intense debate is absolutely necessary between specialists of the various fields
and periods involved, requiring, on the one hand, a full comprehension of the basic methodological
approaches of the various specialties involved, on the other hand, a continuous exchange of data stemming from the specific researches and subjects performed by the various specialists. The target of such
interdisciplinarity is the conscious attempt to develop a coherent set of interpretative patterns, which
should be shared by the various specialists in their respective fields of research. In this view, antiquity
is meant to be much more than classical Greece and Ancient Rome, as it would normally be expected
in a large part of contemporary research; it includes, however, the Ancient Near East as well as Ancient Egypt, starting from the beginnings of the Late Bronze Age and fixing as a rough limit the arrival
of the Muslim civilization.
Upon these premises, and in the framework of the long-term cooperation programme mentioned
above, the choice of kingship as the main focus of the ESF Exploratory Workshop was dictated by
some basic principles ackowledged by all the members of the research group. Kingship, actually, is a
very broad historical phenomenon which is present in many ancient cultures, but which also shows
specific regional and cultural particularities. As such, its characteristcs can only be observed and duly
1. See http://www.aakkl.helsinki.fi/melammu/home/home.php.
2. Josef Wiesehfer, Robert Rollinger & Giovanni B. Lanfranchi (eds.), Ktesias Welt / Ctesias World
(Classica et Orientalia 1), Wiesbaden 2010 (in press)
3. Bruno Jacobs & Robert Rollinger (eds.), Der achaimenidische Hof / The Achaemenid Court (Classica et
Orientalia 2), Wiesbaden 2010 (in press).
4. Robert Rollinger, Brigitte Truschnegg & Reinhold Bichler (eds.), Herodot und das persische Weltreich /
Herodotus and the Persian Empire (Classica et Orientalia 3), Wiesbaden 2010/11, in preparation.
5. See http://www.dur.ac.uk/mediterranean.centre/berossos/conference/.

Introduction

vii

discussed within a comparative perspective, and the awareness of the existence of two different approaches must be in the background of this perspective. One has to combine a strong competence
within a given academic discipline, enabling to deal with the extant sources in an adequate manner.
The other has to broaden this perspective to a comparative view dealing with the phenomenon of kingship in a general way.
According to these basic principles, upon convening the invited participants total freedom was
given to concentrate on specific local and regional aspects of kingship, i.e. sacred versus/and profane kingship; royal cult and court ceremonies; royal family and dynasty; the king at war and the king
in peace; king and palace; king and temple; kingship as fixed institution versus kingship as an ephemeral phenomenon; kingship in the perspective of literature and of sources; kingship seen from inside
and outside of a given culture; kingship as a conception and kingship as an idea; king and court as well
as king and courtiers; etc. This wide variety of subjects had not the effect of producing a fragmented
series of contributions unconnected as regards methodology and content, but instead strongly enhanced a vivid discussion between scholars of different subjects, and helped in singling out specific
parallelisms in the methodological approach and in the interpretation of historical phenomena. Since
only drafts were presented during the conference, the vivid discussions have highly stimulated and influenced the final presentation of the papers published in this volume.

At the end of the Workshop, all participants agreed in asking Prof. Dr. Giovanni B. Lanfranchi and
Prof. Dr. Robert Rollinger to act as the editors of the Proceedings of the Workshop, to be published in
the series History of the Ancient Near East / Monographs thanks to the funding of the ESF, of the University of Padova, and of the Department of Ancient World Sciences of the same University. The present volume contains 15 of the 18 papers read and discussed in the Workshop; the detailed original
programme of the Workshop is given below. A short description of the main tasks of the ESF and of
the ESF Standing Committee for the Humanities are also appended.

The editors would like to thank Prof. Dr. Peter Funke, member of the Standing Committee for the Humanities of the ESF, for his participation in the discussion not only as a coordinating representative of
the ESF, but also as a keen scholar who felt to be involved in the issues of the Workshop and offered
many interesting points to the debate. Ms Valrie Allspach-Kiechel, ESF Exploratory Workshop Administrator, must be warmly thanked for her invaluable cooperation in making extremely easy and fast
the administration management and especially in preparing and diffusing the final programme of the
Workshop to be distributed to European scholars through the ESF. The editors wish to thank Prof. Dr.
Frederick Mario Fales, University of Udine, for accepting to publish these Proceedings in the series
History of the Ancient Near East / Monographs as its Editor-in-Chief. Finally, many thanks are also
due to Dr. Alessandro Greco, University of Padova, who participated in the organization and in the
management of the practical aspects of the Workshop, and for accepting to print this volume c/o his
publishing house S.A.R.G.O.N. Editrice e Libreria.

Giovanni B. Lanfranchi

Robert Rollinger

viii

Giovanni B. Lanfranchi Robert Rollinger

The European Science Foundation Exploratory Workshop

Concepts of Kingship in Antiquity
Padova, November 29th December 1st, 2007
Detailed Original Programme

Thursday, November 29th, 2007

09.00 09.10 Opening of the Workshop. Institutional welcome: The Dean of the Faculty of Letters
and Philosophy of the University of Padova, Prof. Dr. Paolo Bettiolo; the Director of
the Department of scienze del mondo antico, Prof. Dr. Paolo Scarpi
09.10 09.30 Prof. Dr. PETER FUNKE, Standing Committee for the Humanities: Presentation of the
European Science Foundation
09.30 10.00 Prof. Dr. Giovanni B. Lanfranchi: Introduction to the Workshop
10.00 10.30 Prof. Dr. MARIO LIVERANI (Universit di Roma La Sapienza): Sumerian and Akkadian kingship
11.00 11.30 Prof. Dr. HANS NEUMANN (Westflische Wilhelmsuniversitt Mnster): Kingship in
second millennium BC Mesopotamia
11.30 12.00 Prof. Dr. Joachim Friedrich Quack (Ruprecht-Karls-Universitt Heidelberg):
Kingship in ancient Egypt.
12.00 12.30 Prof. Dr. StEFANO DE MARTINO (Universit degli Studi di Trieste): The Hittite kingship.
15.00 15.30 Dr. BETINA FAIST (Freie Universitt Berlin): Kingship in the Middle Assyrian empire
(XVI-XI centuries BC).
15.30 16.00 Dr. KAREN RADNER (University College London): Assyrian and non-Assyrian
kingship in the first millennium BC.
16.30 17.00 Prof. Dr. SIMO PARPOLA (Helsingin Yliopisto / University of Helsinki): Neo-Assyrian
concepts of kingship and their heritage in Mediterranean antiquity.
17.00 17.30 Prof. Dr. MARIA DEL ROCIO DA RIVA MUOZ (Universitat de Barcelona): Kingship
in the Neo-Babylonian empire (VI century BC).
17.30 18.30 General discussion
Friday, November 30th, 2007
09.00 09.30 Prof. Dr. ROBERT ROLLINGER (Leopold-Franzens-Universitt Innsbruck): Kingship
in the Median dominion (VI century BC).
09.30 10.00 Prof. Dr. AMLIE KUHRT (University College London): Kinghsip in the Persian
Achaemenid empire (VI-IV centuries BC).
10.00 10.30 Prof. Dr. BRUNO JACOBS (Universitt Basel): Representations of Ancient Near
Eastern kingship in art.
11.00 11.30 Prof. Dr. PETER HAIDER (Leopold-Franzens-Universitt Innsbruck): Phoenician and
Carthaginian kingship.
11.30 12.00 Prof. Dr. PIERRE CARLIER (Universit Paris X Nanterre): Concepts of kingship in
Classical Greece.
12.00 12.30 Prof. Dr. REINHOLD BICHLER (Leopold-Franzens-Universitt Innsbruck): Kingship in
Greek historiography.
15.00 15.30 Prof. Dr. CHRISTOPH ULF (Leopold-Franzens-Universitt Innsbruck): Kingship in
Early Greece.

Introduction

ix

15.30 16.00 Prof. Dr. ALESSANDRA COPPOLA (Universit degli Studi di Padova): The kingship of
Alexander the Great and of the Seleucids.
16.30 17.00 Prof. Dr. KAI RUFFING (Philipps-Universitt Marburg): Kingship in the Late Roman
Empire.
17.00 17.30 Prof. Dr. EDWARD DBROWA (Uniwersytet Jagielloski Krkow / Jagellonian University Krakow): Kingship in the Parthian empire (III century BC - I century AD).
17.30 18.30 General discussion
Saturday, December 1st, 2007
09.00 09.30 Prof. Dr. BERNHARD LINKE (Technische Universitt Chemnitz): Kingship in the
Early Roman Empire.
09.30 10.00 Prof. Dr. JOSEF WIESEHFER (Christian-Albrechts-Universitt Kiel): Kingship in the
Arsacid and Sassanid empires.
10.30 13.00 Final discussion and suggestions for developing a research network (with the participation of the ESF representative Prof. Dr. Peter Funke, Standing Committee for the
Humanities).

The European Science Foundation

The European Science Foundation Standing Committee for the Humanities

The European Science Foundation (ESF) is an association of 76 Member Organisations devoted to

scientific research in 30 European countries. The Mission of ESF is to provide a common platform for
its Member Organisations in order to advance European research and to explore new directions for
research at the European level. Through its activities, the ESF serves the needs of the European
research community in a global context. The main objectives of ESF for the years 2006-2010 as
defined by its current Strategic Plan are to promote Science Strategy and Science Synergy, paving the
way for initiatives across disciplinary and geographic boundaries in the European Research Area
(ERA).
The Exploratory Workshops scheme is one of the key instruments of the Science Strategy pillar.
Each year, ESF supports approximately 50 Exploratory Workshops across all scientific domains. The
focus of the scheme is on workshops aiming to explore an emerging and/or innovative field of research
or research infrastructure, also of interdisciplinary character. Workshops are expected to open up new
directions in research or new domains. It is expected that a workshop will conclude with plans for
specific follow-up research activities and/or collaborative actions or other specific outputs either
within the frame of ESF (e.g. prepare the ground to develop a Forward Look, a Research Networking
Programme or a EUROCORES proposal; publication of a Policy Briefing ) or for submission to the
EU 7th Framework Programme or to other European or international funding organisations.

Giovanni B. Lanfranchi Robert Rollinger

The main tasks of the ESF Standing Committee for the Humanities (SCH) are:
to encourage interdisciplinary work through the independent evaluation of collaborative research
proposals emanating from the scholarly community;
to identify priority research areas and to play an integrative and co-ordinating role by creating links
between research communities which in the Humanities are often small and fragmented;
to contribute to the development of the ESF science policy agenda and to provide expert advice on
science policy actions at the European level in the field of its responsibilities.
The Committee is well aware that the ESF is the only European Agency where the Humanities have a
place next to the other sciences and where European projects are reviewed, developed and subsequently operated.
The Committee considers it all the more important to be heard as the voice of the Human Sciences
in Europe and to continue pleading for a more prominent place for the Humanities in the European
landscape.

HOW UNAPPROACHABLE IS A PHARAOH ?

Joachim Friedrich Quack

There has been a vast amount of study on the Egyptian concept of kingship.1 The question of his
divinity has been one of the principal problems. Earlier studies normally attribute a specific divinity to
the Egyptian King.2 Highly influential in bringing down such an approach was a study by George
Posener who presented evidence which, in his eyes, spoke against an authentic divinity of the Pharaoh.3 Nowadays, there is a strong tendency to ascribe a more differentiated approach to the Egyptians:
they are supposed to have considered the office itself as divine, but not the individual king.4 While
such a picture might seem reasonable, it raises, at least with me, some uneasiness. Doesnt it smack
too much like making the Ancient Egyptian civilisation palatable to a modern public by demolishing
such a thing as the real divinity of a living human being which is so hard to swallow for modern
minds? After all, the Egyptians themselves explicitly said about the king he is not a man (Edfou VI
301, 13)
The framework of this workshop does not allow more than a relatively short discussion, but that
can be turned to an advantage by focussing on one specific aspect which has not been all that much in
the focus of previous scholarship, instead of making a full-scale re-opening of the case on all fronts.
The guiding question for the following aspects will be the way the king can be approached and
dealt with. Is he treated in a way so special that it suggests an ontological status different from human
beings also as a person, not only as representing an office? To answer this, I will consider a number of
cases where the Pharaoh as a person and how to behave towards him is at stake.

1. Some of the principal ones are Goedicke 1960; Barta 1975; OConnor Silverman (eds.) 1995; Gundlach 1998; Windus-Staginsky 2006. More specifically focused on phraseology are e.g. Blumenthal 1970; Grimal
1986; Schade-Busch 1992. Recently, there has been a series of conferences, see Gundlach Raedler (eds.) 1997;
Gundlach Seipel (eds.) 1999; Gundlach Rler-Khler (eds.) 2003.
2. E.g. Frankfort 1948.
3. Posener 1960.
4. This seems to have originated with Goedicke 1960. Sceptic towards it: Posener 1960: 102103. The
wide recognition of this paradigm can be seen e.g. in the fact that it is taken over in non-egyptological literature
like Ahn 1992: 32; Edelmann 2007: 22.

Joachim Friedrich Quack

Pronouncing the name of Pharaoh

It is quite obvious that there were problems involved in simply pronouncing the actual name of the
Pharaoh.5 There are no less than three relevant admonitions in the Instruction of a Man for his Son, a
wisdom text of the Middle Kingdom (ca. 1900 BCE),6 showing the great importance of this topic.
The one who is free of his name will be an honoured one ( 6, 5), sound of limbs is he who is free
of his name ( 7, 1) and there is no tomb for the one who pronounces his name ( 7, 7). We have to
keep in mind that this instruction was more specifically written for an average, certainly not highscale official.7 By contrast, in the Loyalist Teaching 8 coming from approximately the same time, but
written for a high-level official, while it has much to say about the royal wrath against those who are
not loyal, pronouncing the name of the king is not among the punishable vices. What we have there is
rather a saying fight for his name, be pure concerning his life ( 6, 1). This can be understood to
mean an active participation against those who abuse the name of the king as well as engaging only in
true oaths (which are sworn by the life of the king), but in my opinion does not suggest real avoidance
of the name.
While these instructional texts operate more on a theoretical level, we can see the practical consequences of such rules of conduct in actual life. First to be considered are oath formulae. Already the
first commentators of the Instruction of a Man for his Son drew a parallel between the avoidance of
the name and oath formulae.9 There are some types of oaths in Ancient Egypt which are typically
sworn by the Pharaoh while in others the gods are invoked.10 In those invoking the king, the normal
case is that the actual name is not spoken by the accused one. There might be some evidence that the
royal name was only invoked by persons with authority, and not allowed to be spoken by criminals
and suspects.11 The few cases were the actual name is given are the king swearing by himself (Urk. I,
180, 8), an official of the highest court rank (Hatnub 49),12 another courtier of the highest rank who
mentions the names of kings also otherwise in his inscription (Stela of Khusobek)13 and a foreign
prince (pHarris 500 vs. 1, 9; LES 82, 13). This evidence strongly suggests that pronouncing the actual
name of the reigning Pharaoh in an oath was only appropriate for people of a well-defined high level
of society. Invoking the name of a deity in an oath, however, was not a problem and is abundantly
attested. Still, under some conditions, also naming the gods could be problematic.14
Equally, there is at least a distinct possibility of saying impersonally one instead of naming the
king as the active perpetrator of an act.15
Going further, we should pose the question of who could and would name the actual Pharaoh in his
tomb inscriptions. While some private autobiographies give the exact name(s) of the king(s) under
whom the person served, in many more cases, we do not have such indications. This phenomenon has
largely been seen, in Egyptology, as a dating problem strategies had to be developed to find other
5. Schott 1953, esp. 278280. See also Brunner-Traut 1975: 286, even though her actual examples are concerned with blasphemous use of the name, not with naming per se.
6. Edition in Fischer-Elfert 1999. For the image of the king as a god in these texts see further Wilke 2006:
127128.
7. Quack 2000a: 536-538 against Fischer-Elfert 1999: 295-316.
8. Edition in Posener 1976.
9. Posener 1976: 30; Fischer-Elfert 1999: 88.
10. Quack 2008: 146148.
11. Wilson 1948: 153. See also Menu 1998, who does not take up this question.
12. Anthes 1928: 7678.
13. Studied e.g. by Baines 1987.
14. von Lieven 2007a: 127 and 162164.
15. Shirun-Grumach 1984.

How Unapproachable Is A Pharaoh?

criteria for determining the exact date of a monument.16 While such criteria are practically helpful,
they tend to draw attention away from the really important question: was it the free choice of the
tomb-owner not to mention the king, or would he have needed a special status or favour to be allowed
even to mention him?
It is much less of a problem if what is spelled out is not really the kings name as such. We have,
especially in the Old Kingdom, the frequent phenomenon of agricultural domains whose name is composed with the one of the king (as their founder).17 In such cases, it is possible to write the kings name
without naming him as such, so his presence poses no violation of decorum (and, as a matter of fact, it
is one of the most common means of dating tombs to look at the names of kings attested in the domain
names, supposing that the latest king among those attested by such names is likely to be not far away
from the actual date of construction of the tomb).18
Another point concerns the naming of the Pharaoh in dates. While official contracts drawn by
notaries tend to indicate the actual name of the reigning Pharaoh, private letters and other unofficial
documents normally give only the year count without indicating the reigning Pharaoh.19 I would
propose to see this also as sign of taboo, where an official permission was required for using the kings
name. An interesting indication of this can be found in the protocol of an investigation against tomb
robbers (pLeopold II+pAmherst).20 The dating formula at the beginning, written by the official scribe,
makes full use of the name and the title of the reigning king (1, 1). But when it comes to the
confession of a thief, he only says but when the year 13 of Pharaoh, our lord, came about (1, 1718).
For the question of the buffers used to avoid the actual name of the king, see below.
One very obvious point clearly connected with the restricted status of the name of the king is the
writing of the two most commonly used parts of the royal titles the praenomen and the nomen in
a so-called cartouche, an encircling device going back to a rope laid around the name so that nothing
can touch it directly.21 This habit started with the beginning of the 4th dynasty.

Using Pharaoh in a name

Especially for the throne names of reigning Pharaohs, there might have been some sort of taboo.22 At
least it is conspicuous how private persons could have names looking like incomplete versions of such
names. E.g. we have a king Men-kheper-Re and a private individual Men-kheper. Especially this phenomenon omitting the name of the sun-god who was an almost obligatory part of the throne-name
of the king23 is generally frequent during the Middle and New Kingdom.24

16. E.g., Cherpion 1989.

17. Jacquet-Gordon 1962.
18. Cherpion 1989: 139 and passim; for an evaluation of the feasibility of this procedure see Seidlmayer
1997.
19. For the demotic documents, see the short remarks by Depauw 1997: 163.
20. Capart Gardiner van de Walle 1936.
21. von Beckerath 1984: 3437.
22. For personal names, nothing of this sort seems to have existed for all periods, but at least during the Old
Kingdom, there are no attestations that any private person had the same name as the king, see Windus-Staginsky
2006: 73.
23. von Beckerath 1984: 2731.
24. Ranke undated: 95. During the Late Period, things seem to have changed according to Ranke (ibid.:
246), but it should be kept in mind that the names of older kings he adduces there and on p. 248 are better to be
considered as names of deities since they concern only kings who had an ongoing cult (see von Lieven 2007b).

Joachim Friedrich Quack

This should also be investigated further with regard to the complex of using the name of the king as
part of a private name.25 There is a type of so-called court-names. Especially in the Ramesside
period, we have cases of basilophoric names.26 Often, their carriers were foreigners who rose through
the favour of the king; they obviously received these names by royal decision (and in some cases can
be documented also with their original Semitic names). How such an attribution of a new name can
come about is briefly hinted at in the fragments of the indictment of a criminal preserved in pVarzy.27
The preserved end of line reads [] the name which Pharaoh, his lord, said to him, while there was
already the name of a slave, a common one, which he had (l. 4; RAD 40, 4-5). From this, we can deduce that the attribution of such a name was an act of royal initiative and would not have been up to
free private choice.28
By contrast, using a deity in a personal name was possible at all times without discernible limitation (except that the god Seth got definitely proscribed after the end of the New Kingdom). There are
even, from the end of the Old Kingdom onwards, cases where names of deities are as such used as personal names.29
Depicting Pharaoh
During all of the Old Kingdom, there was not a single representation of the king in the tomb of a nonroyal person. This extends even to tombs of wives or sons of kings. Things changed only in the Middle
Kingdom, and even then it was quite rare.30 In the New Kingdom it becomes more frequent but is still
limited to high-ranking courtiers.31 Late Period tombs sometimes depict the king although in a rather
different context; no longer the tomb-owner presenting tribute or prisoners, or receiving rewards, but
rather the king in interaction with the gods, with the tomb-owner standing at the side.32
This should be compared with the depiction of deities. In Old Kingdom private tombs, there is
none.33 On private stelae, it started during the Middle Kingdom, but then it was still rare (less than
10% of all), and often not the deities themselves but their statues were depicted.34 Only in the New
Kingdom did their depiction become widespread.
Getting access to the royal court and behaving correctly there
Unfortunately, we are very badly informed about the protocol of the royal court in Ancient Egypt.35 We
can reasonable suppose that there was a fairly strict one, but we do not have it in its written form.36

25. The overview in Ranke undated: 216227 is too short and mixes theophoric and basilophoric names too
much to be of real help for my question. Barta 1990 is limited to grammatical questions and does not deal with
the sociological points.
26. Helck 1958: 273276; Schulman 1986; Schulman 1990.
27. RAD 59, 14-60, 5; Loffet Matoan 1996.
28. For the fact that a name is attributed by the king, there is also the evidence of Gen. 41, 45 where Joseph
is given a new name by the Pharaoh, even though in that case it is not a basilophoric name.
29. Ranke undated: 234235; 239; 246; 247.
30. Vasilievi 2005.
31. Radwan 1969; Hartwig 2004: 54-73.
32. Kuhlmann Schenkel 1983: 137138, pl. 160.
33. Herb 2006: 127128.
34. Bolshakov 2003: 135.
35. While there are recent studies on the society of the royal court like Raedler 2004; Gundlach Klug
(eds.) 2006, they do not focus on the points of primary interest for my question. More relevant is Coulon 2002.
36. Some impression of how such rules of behaviour were set down can be gained from the so-called Duties
of the Vizier, see van den Boorn 1988.

How Unapproachable Is A Pharaoh?

Texts like the 13th maxim of the Teaching of Ptahhotep inform us that, for the audience-chamber, behaviour exactly according to the allocated rank would be required.37 So, we are reduced to assembling
individual points mainly from biographies, to some degree also from literary tales set at the court. The
biographies are the most informative evidence, since people in high positions stress how they could
get exclusive access to the king when others were kept outside.38
A key witness for the protocol at the royal court is also the hieroglyphic so-called geographical
papyrus from Tanis, a manual of fundamental knowledge.39 This contains a section naming the principal courtly functions, indicating their position to the right or left of the king, and sometimes defining
their specific actions. In such a situation it is clear why in a literary description of a court session it is
said that one character leaves his position and comes in the middle before Pharaoh (pKrall 9, 5).40
How difficult it was to get the ear of the king is also well illustrated by the dealings of pRylands IX,
16, 15-16 where it is discussed who the actual favourite to whom the Pharaoh hears is.41
For deities, getting access was also far from evident. An Egyptian temple had an elaborate system
with levels of accessibility. Ordinary people were kept in the outer courts, and the innermost parts with
the chapel containing the cult-image of the deity were off limits for all except the highest priestly
ranks.42 There was a possibility of getting a praying place at the rear of the temple where you could, in
some sense, be near to the deity while at the same time not threatening to defile it in any way.43 There
is even a letter addressed to a god where the writer says how difficult it is for him to get access just to
ask the god to appear in a procession in order to render a verdict.44
Decision making
The question of court protocol and behaviour at the court brings us straight to the question of how
actual political decision-making took place. Among Egyptologists, there is the model of the kings
novel which has dominated since its inauguration for about 50 years but by now has come increasingly into debate.45 Normally, the texts claimed for this genre depict court sessions where a decision is
at stake. The ordinary process is that either the royal view of action is adopted straightaway (sometimes with special adulation by the court), or confirmed against eventual doubts by courtiers; in the
end it always turns out to be correct. In my opinion, the main problem with this group of texts is that it
is less a real genre category but rather a depiction of cultural conventions. Firstly, open debate with
controversial sides is not often tolerated by the harmony-guided principles of the Egyptian culture.
Secondly, it is not so much simple actual propaganda which is at stake here but more a fundamental
conviction that the royal insight is infallible. In any case, it should be stressed that mythological texts
situating a process of decision-making among gods operate on almost identical parameters, e.g. the socalled Book of the Heavenly Cow.46

37. See e.g. Vernus 1999: 146147.

38. See e.g. Jansen-Winkeln 1985; Kloth 2002: 158159.
39. Edited by Griffith Petrie 1889; see further Yoyotte 1960.
40. See Hoffmann 1996: 212 with note 1090, who understands the formula differently.
41. Vittmann 1998: 170173 and 526527.
42. The best testimony for this is the Book of the Temple, see Quack 2000b; Quack 2004.
43. Guglielmi 1994; Quaegebeur 1997.
44. Papyrus Nevill, published in Barns 1949, recent translation in Wente 1990: 219.
45. Original proposal in Hermann 1938; for recent discussions see e.g. Loprieno 1996; Jansen-Winkeln
1998; Hofmann B. 2004; Beylage 2002: 553618. See my short remarks in Quack 2003: 607.
46. Edited in Hornung 1982.

Joachim Friedrich Quack

Telling of misfortune befalling the Pharaoh

There is a fairly well-attested phenomenon that it is not desirable to speak directly of misfortune
befalling either the Pharaoh or the gods, sometimes also the land of Egypt as a whole. Instead, one
possible option is to say that something evil befell the enemies of the king/the gods/the country.47
Another one is to say that the king/god was far from a misfortune.48 King and deities are treated on
the same level in this regard. Such a way of formulation is otherwise sometimes attested for sacred
animals or for the land of Egypt, but never for mortal men.
Pharaoh in tales
The role of the king in tales and belles-lettres was one of the principal cases adduced by Posener for
showing that the Egyptians did not consider their rulers to be divine.49 I would propose to re-open the
case. One first point which should be stressed is the limited possibility of using the king in such tales.
Firstly, we encounter again the question of naming the king. Sometimes, the king is completely anonymous, like in the story of the Doomed Prince or the Tale of the Two Brothers. In most cases, the king is
given with his name only once, at the beginning of a story, and afterwards tends to be alluded to by locutions as his majesty/Persona (m= in Middle and Late Egyptian texts) or Pharaoh (pr-o# in
Demotic stories).
This might be the right place to discuss these circumscriptions in general, especially since they are
not restricted to literary texts. Rather, m= (when speaking of the king) or m=| (when the king himself speaks) is a frequent term for designating the king in action in royal as well as private monumental
inscriptions. For Goedicke, m was the principal way of designating the king as a physical human
person.50 An absolutely contrary position was defended by Hofmann.51 For him, this term originally
designated the creative and authoritative aspect which was divine in origin but worked within the
world. Personally, I favour yet another alternative. The term is etymologically identical with the expression m, serve, slave, but neither in the sense of an original meaning body (thus Spiegel52 and
Goedicke)53 nor in the sense of somebody who is acting and bringing things into motion (thus Hofmann). The royal designation is literally my/his servant, but not in the sense of a self-depreciating
attitude, and also not as a simple stylistic device.54 In reality, it functions as a sort of buffer protecting
the acting king from any potentially dangerous involvement55 (if there was an actually damaging involvement, even stronger buffers were possible, see above). This explains also why it can sometimes
be used not only for the king himself but also for the palace.
The expression pr-o# (from which our Pharaoh is etymologically derived) is originally a designation great house serving to designate the royal palace. As a designation of the actual king, it is attested since the 18th dynasty.56 Here too its usage shows a reluctance to directly use the individual
name of a king.

47. Posener 1970; Vittmann 1998: 509510, and lastly Quack 2005a: 173.
48. Quack 2003; wrongly disputed by Franke 1998 and Depuydt 1998.
49. Posener 1960: 89-103; Posener 1985: 23.
50. Goedicke 1960: 5179. Contested already by Mller 1963: 196. Accepted by von Beckerath 1984: 39.
51. Hofmann Th. 2001.
52. Spiegel 1939.
53. This seems still to be the base of the translation embodiment for m used e.g. in the publications of
James P. Allen.
54. Understood as such by Windus-Staginsky 2006: 165195.
55. Thus already Gardiner 1943; Posener 1970: 34.
56. Von Beckerath 1984: 39.

How Unapproachable Is A Pharaoh?

Furthermore, the ruling Pharaoh can never be shown as the protagonist and main actor of any tale.
He might be of some importance, or he might only be a minor player, but he never has the leading role.
The closest we get to in any Egyptian text known to me are probably some fragments on the heroic exploits of Sesostris,57 but in the setting of the tale, he is still a prince while his father Amenemhet reigns.
Some of the points highlighted by Posener as showing the lack of divinity can be explained immediately by this simple fact. For example, in the prophecy of Neferti, the fact that the king does not
foretell the future himself but gets a specialist to do it has nothing to do with his lack of omniscience
but simply with not breaking the genre rules.
Furthermore, Posener has probably applied to this material an all too theoretical image of what a
god should be. We should remember that Egyptian gods also had their weaknesses, adverse times and
sometimes did downright immoral things.58 As it is formulated in the demotic wisdom book preserved
in papyrus Insinger:
So it happened in the beginning when the gods were on earth. Re became weak before the impious ones; they in turn became weak before him. Horus was hidden in the marshes, and then he became king of the country. Isis got happiness in sorrow at the end of what she had done. (pInsinger
20, 16-19)59
Also, even gods needed protection against dangers, or, if going unprotected, were liable do get hurt.60
So, it is not out of the ordinary if the king in the Second Story of Setne Chaemwase needs magical protection against the magic of the Nubians.61
Perhaps we can take up some cases already adduced by Posener. The so-called Inaros-PetubastisCycle shows a king Petubastis who has some problems with his authority. Still, if we take the papyrus
Krall62 and look closely, the image becomes slightly different. The king is the authority, and nobody
openly disobeys him, even if not everything goes exactly as he wishes. To take an instructive example,
at one situation one of the protagonists stresses that only the respect before the king holds him back
from being very rude in court towards his opponent (pKrall 9, 8-9). In another situation, the orders of
the king are invoked by one hero against the other as a reason for not killing an opponent (pKrall 23,
12-14).
Papyrus Spiegelberg63 might show greater problems for the king, but in this case they do not result
from the fact that kingship as such was less than a divine institution. As explicitly said, Petekhons
would not obey Petubastis simply because he has not recognised him as a king (pSpiegelberg 13, 15);
and we can suppose that he would be quite obedient towards any king whom he recognises as legitimate overlord. Besides, we should not forget that king Petubastis is a Pharaoh of the late Libyan period, when a quite different model of rule and kingship than the traditional Egyptian one was
prevalent.64

57. See Quack 2005b: 28.

58. A large collection of sometimes really repulsive behaviour (killing the father, violating the mother, incest with the daughter) can be gleaned from the papyrus published in Meeks 2006.
59. Translation in Hoffmann Quack 2007: 260.
60. A case in point is the young Horus with his innumerable episodes of danger and wounds; his foolish
going without amulet is found in pBoulaq 6, rt. 5, 8; see Koenig 1981: 5763.
61. Adduced as argument against the divinity of the king by Posener 1960: 96.
62. Edited in Hoffmann 1996.
63. Edited by Spiegelberg 1910; recent translation in Hoffmann Quack 2007: 88107, 336338.
64. Jansen-Winkeln 1999; Jansen-Winkeln 2000.

Joachim Friedrich Quack

Here too it seems appropriate to compare this picture with the one attested for gods. There are quite
a lot of tales involving deities. Most especially, the conflict of Horus and Seth is again and again
elaborated as a tale. Especially for the Graeco-Roman period, also the heroic exploits of the living
Osiris seem to be an important topic.65 In such tales, there is obviously no hesitation at all to make the
gods the main heroes. As compared to the standing of the king in tales, the gods do not seem to be any
more infallible. The sun-god in the Contendings of Horus and Seth, although supposed to be the king
of the gods and chairman of the court, has serious authority problems, and the decision he wishes is
not the one which comes about.66 While Horus is supposed to be the main good guy, his character has
weaknesses (most of the important steps are not taken by himself but by his mother), and sometimes
he behaves even downright awful as when he beheads his mother; he is actually punished for this behaviour (which a king never is in a tale). In the Tale of the Heavenly Cow, the sun-god wavers in his
decisions and changes his mind, finally he more or less flees the field by ascending to heaven and
leaving Thot in charge of the affairs of ruling on earth.67 For the sun-god, there is a significant tradition
how his rule is threatened by rebellions, sometimes driving him to temporary flight.68 To sum this up:
the way gods are presented in Egyptian narrative texts shows them, if anything, even weaker and morally more problematic than kings. Thus, the narrative texts about kings cannot be adduced to argue that
they were understood in them as being non-divine.

Conclusion
Looking at the points brought up so far, we gain some material illustrative of how the king was removed from the sphere of the ordinary, and how deities were treated in similar situations. Either, they
are treated alike, or the king has even more restrictions about him. The cases I have considered concern the actual persons being king, not the abstract office whose divinity is conceded generally. Still,
they do not show clear evidence for the less-than-divine status of the individual royal person which is
nowadays the communis opinio of Egyptology. In my opinion, it would be worthwhile to compare the
Egyptian material with that of far-eastern monarchies, especially China and Japan, were we have good
evidence for the divinity of living kings (the Japanese emperor gave up his claims of divinity only
after the defeat against the USA in the Second World War).
Postscript
It seems appropriate to illustrate the status of the king vis--vis the gods through the quotation of a liturgical papyrus. The manuscript itself dates from the Late Ptolemaic period, even though it certainly
goes back to earlier models.69 The passage follows after a festival song to the god, and, like so often in
Egyptian texts, it invokes the favour of the deity towards the king as a fitting end to a composition
which in the previous part centres around the figure of the god.

65. Overview of the attestations in Quack 2005b: 2425.

66. Text in Gardiner 1931; recent English translation e.g. in Lichtheim 1976: 214223.
67. Text in Hornung 1982.
68. Smith 2000.
69. The text is pStrasbourg 2, col. 4, 30-5, 18, published in a not always reliable way by Bucher 1928 and
1930; German translation in Assmann J. 1999: 351361. My translation incorporates changes in the reading on
the basis of the published photographs, as well as new digital images provided by the Bibliothque Nationale et
Universitaire de Strasbourg, augmented by a collation of some points on the original. I would like to thank Gisela Blot and Daniel Bornemann for the possibility to work with this papyrus. The more important philological
points are indicated in the notes.

How Unapproachable Is A Pharaoh?

Oh come to the Pharaoh, in peace!

Re, may you make him endure while overthrowing your enemy!
He has driven back for you Apopis in his moment (of attack),
he has stabbed for you the one of evil character.70
Ptah, may you make Pharaoh endure 71 with your endurance,
May you let him be powerful 72 with your power,
He has given you life, his arms carrying truth.
May you cause him to be revered 73 with it!
Shu, may you provide 74 the nose of the Pharaoh with life, endurance and power!
Geb! He has equipped your food-offerings,
He has planted for you this land and what is in it.
The field produces for you everything which exists.75
Osiris! Enrich the limbs of the Pharaoh with everything which came forth from you!
You shall not hide anything evil of his followers!
His body is complete for life.
May you protect Pharaoh on your throne!
Horus! May you give him eternity as king of the two lands,
Everlastingness in guiding all countries!
May you glorify the happiness of the Pharaoh in that your name of Sobek,
May you render mysterious for him the products of this land
In that your name of He-of-Shedty!
You have united and copulated with the cows in that your name of Khnum.
Come to Pharaoh, oh Re in all his names!
He has offered to you everything which has come forth from the abyss,
Everything which came into being from your limbs.
He has provided for the sanctuary of your image,
He has found all your cult-orders in you,
He has united for you your children against the gods
As for their Kas together with your Ka.
He has given you a collar on your neck,
So that you may become high and develop into Khepri.
He has made for you your two feathers upon his 76 head,

70. Designation of a snake-shaped enemy of the gods.

71. To be read @=k, with causative force for the simplex.
72. To be read wsr=k.
73. What is written is |mn=f, but with the determinative
, thus it probably is a writing for |m#=f.
74. nk written for n=k.
75. The word wnn.t has the determinative of the goddess.
76. So the manuscript according to my collation. We would rather expect your head, but perhaps the actual formulation brings out the close interaction between god and king especially well.

10

Joachim Friedrich Quack

So that you may become sound against his breast.
He has directed his arms with your offerings, he has made durable your bread,
Pure and clean 77 on your offering-table,
With what I have said on you.78
Oh Sobek-Re, lord of Sumenu.
May your heart be loving upon the king of Upper and Lower Egypt, Pharaoh!
He has adored you with your beautiful hymns,
He has pacified you with all his (read: your) names,
He has given praise to your crown,
He has presented truth to you towards your nose.
He has pacified you with the divine words,
He has justified you against your rebel,
He has pierced for you your enemy.
May you let him endure as king of the two lands
While your enemies are fallen to your massacre!
May you let him rejuvenate in order to overthrow your enemy,
Kissing the ground (before him) as his chief.
May Pharaoh be like the one who does everything which you wish as Re day by day.
May he guide for me 79 the islands of the Hau-nebut 80
As my offering-cattle towards his palace,
With all things for your Ka, due to the awe of your person.
Pharaoh, beloved of Sobek-Re, lord of Sumenu, he shall not perish in eternity.
May your beautiful face be benevolent towards Pharaoh!

Perhaps this passage longer and more explicit than ordinary intercessory prayers at the end of
liturgical hymns can serve to illustrate the interdependence between gods and king. We tend to see
mainly the prayers for the benefit of the king. However, we should not overlook to which degree also
the gods are dependent on the provision and ritual activities of the king, including overthrowing the
enemies of the gods.

77. To be read wob twr.

78. According to a collation, to be read m @.n=| |m=k.
79. We would rather expect for you, but the reading is certain on the original. Still, it might be a mistake
in transmission, the two signs being fairly similar in this manuscript.
80. A designation of a foreign people, most probably in the Aegean region, see Quack 2007.

How Unapproachable Is A Pharaoh?

11

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