highly respected but not worshiped.[624] An apparently clear case of
worship is the Panjab god Nikkal Sen, said to be General Nicholson;[625]
and it is not improbable that in other cases mentioned by Frazer
(Marquesas Islands, Raiatea, Samoa, Fiji) actual deification takes
place.

+338+. Among many more-advanced communities divinity has been ascribed
to living monarchs: to the kings of ancient Egypt; to many early
Babylonian kings; to the emperor of China; to some of the Ptolemies and
Seleucids; to certain Roman emperors; to the kings of Mexico and Peru;
and in more modern times to the emperor of Japan. Whether such titles
involve a real ascription of divinity, or are only an assertion of
kinship with the gods, or express nothing more than the adulation of
courtiers, it may not be easy always to determine; probably all these
conceptions have existed at various times. The conception that men are
akin to gods, that there is no difference of nature between the two
classes, is an old one, and the ascription of divinity to a king might
involve, in earlier stages of civilization or even in relatively
advanced stages, no break in the order of things. The custom once
established, it might continue to be observed, long accepted seriously
by the mass of the people, but coming gradually to be regarded by the
educated classes as a mere form.

+339+. The development of the custom appears most plainly in
_Egypt_.[626] The identification of the king with Horus (apparently the
ancient patron deity of Egypt) runs through the history down to the
Persian conquest: he is called "Horus" or "Golden Horus," and sometimes
(as, for example, Mentuhotep IV) "heir of Horus," or is said to sit on
the throne of Horus, and has a "Horus name," the affirmation of his
divine character; even the monotheistic reformer Amenhotep IV is called
"Golden Horus." At the same time he is styled the "son" of this or that
deity--Re, Min, Amon, Amon-Re, Osiris--according to the particular
patron adopted by him; the liberal interpretation of such filial
relation is illustrated by the title "son of the gods of the Northland"
given to one monarch. The king is "the good god"; at death he flies to
heaven (so, for instance, Totmose III, of the eighteenth dynasty).

+340+. The official honorific character of divine titles appears as
early as the fifteenth century, when Queen Hatshepsut is officially
declared to be the daughter of Amon. By such an official procedure
Alexa