Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Insinger.  The original is in the great speos of Silsilis.  The king here represented is Harmhabit of the XVIIIth dynasty; cf.  Champollion, Monuments de l’Egypt et de la Nubie, pl. cix., No. 3; Rosellini, Monumenti Storici, pl. xliv. 5; Lepsius, Denkm., iii. 121 b.

Ordinary mortals spoke of him only in symbolic words, designating him by some periphrasis:  Pharaoh, “Pirui-Aui,” the Double Palace, “Pruiti,” the Sublime Porte, His Majesty,* the Sun of the two lands, Horus master of the palace, or, less ceremoniously, by the indeterminate pronoun “One.”

* The title “Honuf” is translated by the same authors, sometimes as “His Majesty,” sometimes as “His Holiness.”  The reasons for translating it “His Majesty,” as was originally proposed by Champollion, and afterwards generally adopted, have been given last of all by E. de Rouge.

The greater number of these terms is always accompanied by a wish addressed to the sovereign for his “life,” “health,” and “strength,” the initial signs of which are written after all his titles.  He accepts all this graciously, and even on his own initiative, swears by his own life, or by the favour of Ra, but he forbids his subjects to imitate him:  for them it is a sin, punishable in this world and in the next, to adjure the person of the sovereign, except in the case in which a magistrate requires from them a judicial oath.

[Illustration:  029.jpg THE CUCUPHA-HEADED SCEPTRE.]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the engraving in Prisse d’Avennes, Recherches sur les legendes royales et l’epoque du regne de Schai ou Scherai, in the Revue Archeologique, 1st series, vol. ii. p. 467.  The original is now preserved in the Bibliotheque Nationale, to which it was presented by Prisse d’Avennes.  It is of glazed earthenware, of very delicate and careful workmanship.

He is approached, moreover, as a god is approached, with downcast eyes, and head or back bent; they “sniff the earth” before him, they veil their faces with both hands to shut out the splendour of his appearance; they chant a devout form of adoration before submitting to him a petition.  No one is free from this obligation:  his ministers themselves, and the great ones of his kingdom, cannot deliberate with him on matters of state, without inaugurating the proceeding by a sort of solemn service in his honour, and reciting to him at length a eulogy of his divinity.  They did not, indeed, openly exalt him above the other gods, but these were rather too numerous to share heaven among them, whilst he alone rules over the “Entire Circuit of the Sun,” and the whole earth, its mountains and plains, are in subjection under his sandalled feet.  People, no doubt, might be met with who did not obey him, but these were rebels, adherents of Sit, “Children of Euin,” who, sooner or later, would be overtaken by punishment.