[Illustration:  030.jpg DIFFERENT POSTURES FOR APPROACHING THE KING]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Insinger.  The
     picture represents Khamhait presenting the superintendents
     of storehouses to Tutankhamon, of the XVIIIth dynasty.

While hoping that his fictitious claim to universal dominion would be realized, the king adopted, in addition to the simple costume of the old chiefs, the long or short petticoat, the jackal’s tail, the turned-up sandals, and the insignia of the supreme gods,—­the ankh, the crook, the flail, and the sceptre tipped with the head of a jerboa or a hare, which we misname the cucupha-headed sceptre.* He put on the many-coloured diadems of the gods, the head-dresses covered with feathers, the white and the red crowns either separately or combined so as to form the pshent.  The viper or uraeus, in metal or gilded wood, which rose from his forehead, was imbued with a mysterious life, which made it a means of executing his vengeance and accomplishing his secret purposes.  It was supposed to vomit flames and to destroy those who should dare to attack its master in battle.  The supernatural virtues which it communicated to the crown, made it an enchanted thing which no one could resist.  Lastly, Pharaoh had his temples where his enthroned statue, animated by one of his doubles, received worship, prophesied, and fulfilled all the functions of a Divine Being, both during his life, and after he had rejoined in the tomb his ancestors the gods, who existed before him and who now reposed impassively within the depths of their pyramids.**

* This identification, suggested by Champollion, is, from force of custom, still adhered to, in nearly all works on Egyptology.  But we know from ancient evidence that the cucupha was a bird, perhaps a hoopoe; the sceptre of the gods, moreover, is really surmounted by the head of a quadruped having a pointed snout and long retreating ears, and belonging to the greyhound, jackal, or jerboa species.

** This method of distinguishing deceased kings is met with as far back as the “Song of the Harpist,” which the Egyptians of the Ramesside period attributed to the founder of the XIth dynasty.  The first known instance of a temple raised by an Egyptian king to his double is that of Amenothes III.

Man, as far as his body was concerned, and god in virtue of his soul and its attributes, the Pharaoh, in right of this double nature, acted as a constant mediator between heaven and earth.  He alone was fit to transmit the prayers of men to his fathers and his brethren the gods.  Just as the head of a family was in his household the priest par excellence of the gods of that family,—­just as the chief of a nome was in his nome the priest par excellence in regard to the gods of the nome,—­so was Pharaoh the priest par excellence of the gods of all Egypt, who were his special deities.