er chiefs and king of all Egypt, into a living god here below, the
all-powerful son and successor of the gods; but the divine concept of
royalty, once implanted in the mind, quickly produced its inevitable
consequences. From the moment that the Pharaoh became god upon earth,
the gods of heaven, his fathers or his brothers, and the goddesses
recognized him as their son, and, according to the ceremonial imposed
by custom in such cases, consecrated his adoption by offering him the
breast to suck, as they would have done to their own child.

[Illustration: 028.jpg THE GODDESS ADOPTS THE KING BY SUCKLING HIM]

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