Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/593

Rh Here we are dealing only with facts, and the facts are that our earliest records show us man worshipping gods and their earthly representatives, namely kings. We have no right, in the present state of our knowledge, to assert that the worship of gods preceded that of kings; we do not know. Perhaps there never were any gods without kings, or kings without gods. When we have discovered the origin of divine kingship we shall know, but at present we only know that when history begins there are kings, the representative of gods.

In Egypt "as far back as we can go," says Mr. G. Foucart, "we find ourselves in the presence of a conception of monarchy based solely upon the assimilation of the king to the gods." The king was the embodiment of "that particular soul that came to transform the young prince into a god on the day of his anointing."

Prof. S. Langdon tells us that "before 3,000 ancient Sumerian city-kings claimed to have been begotten by the gods, and born of the goddesses. … Although the rulers of that period were not deified, and did not receive adoration and sacrifice as gods, nevertheless their inscriptions show that their subjects believed them to be divinely sent redeemers, and the vicars of the gods." Later they are worshipped, but it is most important to note that in Sumer kings were not deified after death, but "worship of dead kings was forbidden unless they had been deified while living. Evidently some kind of consecration of the living mortal alone gave the possession of immortality. Temples were built everywhere to these kings in Sumer" (p. 167).

In Greece it is also the earliest religion we can trace. The Homeric kings are called divine; this is usually taken to be merely an expression of admiration; but the same was once thought of the titles bestowed upon Egyptian