nder, though not akin to any Egyptian royal house, was declared to
be the son of Amon; Ptolemy Philadelphus became the son of the sun-god,
and his wife Arsinoe was made a goddess by a solemn ceremony. Possibly
the recognition of the divine title, in educated Egyptian circles, as a
conventional form began at a relatively early time--the easy way in
which a man was made a god may have been felt in such circles to be
incompatible with real divinity. Nevertheless the cult of the divinized
king was practiced seriously. In some cases the living monarch had his
temple and retinue of priests, and divine honors were paid him.[627]

+341+. The case was different in the _Semitic treatment of kings_ styled
divine. The custom of so regarding them is found only in early
Babylonia. The evidence that they were held to be divine consists in the
fact that the determinative for divinity (Sumerian _dingir_, Semitic
_an_) is prefixed to their names in the inscriptions.[628] It appears
that the determinative occurs at times during a period of about a
thousand years (ca. 3000-2000 B.C.--the chronology is uncertain), and is
then dropped. The data do not explain the reasons for this change of
custom; a natural suggestion is that there came a time when the
conception of the deity forbade an ascription of divinity to human
beings. However this may be, the nominal divinization of kings seems not
to have had any effect on the cultus. As far as the known evidence goes,
the king seems never to have been approached with divine worship.[629]

+342+. It may be doubted whether the Babylonian usage can properly be
called Semitic. As such a custom is found nowhere else in the Semitic
area, and as the early Babylonian Semites borrowed much from the
non-Semitic Sumerians (they borrowed their system of writing and some
literary material), it is conceivable that they adopted this practice
from them. There is, to be sure, no proof, except from the inscriptions,
that the practice was Sumerian; but, as it is found in some Asiatic
non-Semitic lands,[630] there is the possibility that it existed among
the Sumerians, of whose history, however, we unfortunately know little.
It is to be noted that the cessation of the practice appears to be
synchronous with the establishment of the first great Semitic dynasty at
Babylon.

+343+. No ascription of divinity to men is found among the _Hebrews_.
The Elohim-beings (called "sons of God" in the English translation of
the Bi