The Glory of Kings

This view, maintained in the KEBRA NAGAST, holds that the kings of Ethiopia who were descended from Menelik original: "Menyelek" were of divine origin, and that their words and deeds were those of gods.

The idea of the divine origin of kings in Ethiopia, the Sudan, and Egypt is very old, and it appears to have originated locally. According to a legend found in the Westcar Papyrus in Berlin, three of the great kings of the Fifth Dynasty in Egypt were the sons of the sun god Ra by Rutttet, the wife of Rauset, a high priest of Ra. Before the close of that dynasty, every king called himself the "son of Ra." Many Egyptian kings state in their inscriptions that they reigned "in the egg"—meaning before they were born. We are to understand by this that the "egg" was placed in the mother by the Sun God, who was the king's true father.

Some of the rulers of the Eighteenth Dynasty—specifically those who were the chosen candidates of the priests of Amen—were declared to be the actual children of Amen and made of his very 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 A type of sculpture carved into a flat surface where the figures project only slightly from the background in which the god Amen is seen consorting with the mother of that Queen. Consequently, Hatshepsut regarded herself as Amen's daughter.

In the Temple of Luxor, there are similar carvings where the god Amen is seen occupying the couch of the queen who, through him, became the mother of Amenhotep III. This king was so thoroughly convinced of his divine origin that he ordered a statue of himself to be sculpted on the walls of the temple of Soleb original: "Sûlb" in the Egyptian Sudan, alongside the figures of the great gods of Egypt. In fact, he was worshipped by the people just like the other Egyptian gods and goddesses. Ramses the Great was also held to be the son of the god Ptah-Tanen; in the inscription on a stele An upright stone slab or pillar, often bearing an inscription or design and serving as a monument at Abu Simbel, this god...