dbz wrote: ↑Mon Nov 27, 2023 12:23 pm
- N.B. the imperial practice of seating statutes of reigning monarchs in the temples of greater gods, indeed at the right hand of the larger statue of that temple’s god. Esp. when the cult was taken to new levels with Hadrian.
Right! I recently read some stuff by D. Clint Burnett. This idea of the king sitting at the right side of a deity seems to go back to Egyptian theology. Looking at the Egyptian coronation rituals and the theology associated with the king, you can find almost every divine motif associated with Jesus in the NT texts and the emperor in the imperial cult.
* The Egyptian king is said to be preexistent (cf. Jesus in Paul and John)
* The Egyptian king has a divine birth myth where a deity impregnates the king's mother. There are depictions of some of the kings hidden out in the marshes of Egypt in emulation of Horus. Horus had to be hidden when he was a child by Isis because Seth wanted him dead (cf. Herod trying to kill Jesus)
* Every king was said to defeat the forces of darkness and chaos and bring together the divided kingdom of Egypt. At his birth, the king is said to make Egypt like it was during the time of Re (cf. the messiah and Jesus making Israel like it was during the time of David as mentioned in his birth stories)
* At the king's coronation, he is purified with water and performs a death and rebirth ritual in emulation of the sun god and is declared to be the son of a deity. The king is also transfigured during this coronation ritual where he merges with his "ka" which is also the spirit of god (cf. Jesus at his baptism and transfiguration. The spirit of god in the form of a dove enters Jesus at baptism)
* As part of his deification process, the king receives the divine names of different deities (cf. Jesus receives the name above every other name)
* The Egyptian kings were referred to as the "good shepherd" who protects the weak, poor, orphans, and widows
* After death, the king is resurrected and glorified. He is raised to the heavens were he joins his father. (cf. Jesus at his resurrection and ascension)
* Cataclysms such as earthquakes happen at the death and resurrection of the king (cf. earthquakes and darkness happening at the death of Jesus and at the finding of the empty tomb in Matthew)
You also find a lot of these tropes in the Roman imperial cult.
The Egyptian World (Routledge, 2007), Toby A. H. Wilkinson:
Maat’s role in creation is expressed in chapter 80 of the Coffin Texts (c.2000 BC) where Tefnut, the daughter of Atum, is identified with maat, the principle of cosmic order, who, together with Shu, the principle of cosmic ‘life’, fills the universe (Faulkner 1973: 83–7; Junge 2003: 87–8). Maat is, therefore, one of the fundamental principles of the cosmos, present from the beginning, like the personification of Wisdom in the later Biblical tradition (Wisdom of Solomon 7, 22; 7, 25; 8, 4; 9, 9)... Even the ‘monotheist’ Akhenaten, while aiming to abandon all myths in favour of a single divine concept of the Aten, still mobilized some very old mythical constellations in order to enhance his claim to the throne. He declared himself the sole son of his god, and his ka and representative on earth (Silverman 1995: 74–9), while presenting himself – in both text and image – as Shu, the firstborn son of the Heliopolitan creator god Atum... The triad of Atum, Shu and Tefnut is significant; there is reference to the time when Atum ‘became three’ (Coffin Texts II, 39c–e). His ka (‘vital power’) is present in his two children (Pyramid Texts 1652a–1653a). During the reign of Akhenaten, the iconography of the king, his queen Nefertiti and the Aten reflects that of Shu, Tefnut and Atum...
The Pyramid Texts trace the king’s birth back to the time of the primordial creator god. He is said to have been born from the self-impregnated sun god Ra or Atum; or even from Nun. An inscription in Theban Tomb 49 reads ‘The king was born in Nun before heaven and earth came into being’. The Memphite Theology united the king with Ptah.
Hidden Riches: A Sourcebook for the Comparative Study of the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Near East (Westminster John Knox Press, 2014), Christopher B. Hays:
As an example of the way in which Egyptian creation myths were most commonly expressed, a spell of the pharaoh Pepi I from the Pyramid Texts claims that he was born from Atum “when the sky had not yet come into being, when the earth had not yet come into being, when people had not yet come into being, when the gods had not yet been born, when death had not yet come into being” (Pyramid Texts, 1466). Since the pharaoh expected to be a god in his afterlife, this was no great theological stretch.
The ancient Egyptian books of the afterlife (Cornell University Press, 1999) Erik Hornung:
The violent arrival of the king in the sky is depicted in an especially striking manner in the Cannibal Hymn of spells 273-274. Because the king is repeatedly identified with the creator god Atum, we encounter many allusions to this deity's act of creation... Concepts of creation play a role in a number of spells, for the deceased often appears as primeval god and creator; a series of spells revolves around the constellation of the creator god and his "children," Shu and Tefnut, who carried on the work of creation.
King and Messiah as Son of God: Divine, Human, and Angelic Messianic Figures in Biblical and Related Literature (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2008), Adela Yarbro Collins and John J Collins:
Eckart Otto has argued persuasively that Psalm 2 combines Egyptian and Assyrian influences. He finds Assyrian influence in the motif of the rebellion of the subject nations, and in the promise that the king will break the nations with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. These motifs suggest a date for the psalm in the Neo-Assyrian period. The declaration that the king is the son of God, however, has closer Egyptian parallels. The idea that the king was the son of a god is not unusual in the ancient Near East... Only in the Egyptian evidence, however, do we find the distinctive formulae by which the deity addresses the king as "my son". The formula, "you are my son, this day I have begotten you," finds a parallel in an inscription in the mortuary temple of Hatshepsut: "my daughter, from my body, Maat-Ka-Re, my brilliant image, gone forth from me. You are a king, who take possession of the two lands, on the throne of Horus, like Re." Another inscription of Amenophis III has the god declare: "He is my son, on my throne, in accordance with the decree of the gods." At the coronation of Haremhab, Amun declares to him: "You are my son, the heir who came forth from my flesh." Or again, in the blessing of Ptah, from the time of Rameses II: "I am your father, who have begotten you as a god and your members as gods." Such recognition formulae occur frequently in Egyptian inscriptions of the New Kingdom period. Otto suggests that the psalm does not reflect direct Egyptian influence, since the closest Egyptian parallels date from the New Kingdom, before the rise of the Israelite monarchy. Rather, the Hofstil of pre-Israelite (Jebusite) Jerusalem may have been influenced by Egyptian models during the late second millenium, and have been taken over by the Judean monarchy in Jerusalem.
The interpretation of Isaiah 9 in terms of an enthronement ceremony is not certain. The oracle could be celebrating the birth of a royal child. The word is not otherwise used for an adult king. But the accession hypothesis is attractive, nonetheless, in light of Psalm 2. The list of titles is reminiscent in a general way of the titulary of the Egyptian pharaohs. Most importantly, the passage confirms that the king could be addressed as elohim, "god"... The king is still subject to the Most High, but he is an elohim, not just a man. In light of this discussion, it seems very likely that the Jerusalem enthronement ritual was influenced, even if only indirectly, by Egyptian ideas of kingship. At least as a matter of court rhetoric, the king was declared to be the son of God, and could be called an elohim, a god... The invitation to the king to sit at the right hand of the deity, however, has long been recognized as an Egyptian motif, known from the iconography of the New Kingdom. Amenophis III and Haremhab are depicted seated to the right of a deity. The position is not only one of honor, but bespeaks the very close association of the king and the deity. The invitation to the king suggests that at his enthronement he was thought to be seated at the right hand of the deity...
The cultural environment must also be taken into account. in the Hellenistic ruler cults and especially in the imperial cults, men who were once human beings were honored and worshiped as gods. Some were even worshipped as gods during their earthly lifetimes. The messiah of Israel was conceived at first primarily as a king, of his own nation first of all and then of the whole world. The understanding of Jesus that emerged after his resurrection involved his kingship over Israel and over the entire world. Given the practices of the imperial cults, it is not surprising that Jesus was viewed as a god and that worship of him became an alternative to the worship of the emperor.
Iesus Deus: The Early Christian Depiction of Jesus as a Mediterranean God (Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 2014), M. David Litwa:
Literarily speaking, Mark makes the transfiguration a kind of fulcrum for his book. Peter has just confessed that Jesus is the Messiah (or anointed ruler) (8:29). On the Mount of Transfiguration this kingly status is dazzlingly revealed. The way that Mark describes the metamorphosis, however, indicates that a more-than-human messiahship is portrayed. The metamorphosis of Jesus is an epiphany of a divine being... Mark’s transfiguration account is associated with the coming of God’s kingdom (Mark 9:1), and the declaration “This is my beloved son!” is also an echo of royal traditions (Ps. 2:7). Instead of opposing kingship and godhood, Marcus remained open to the idea that royalty and divinity were linked...
Recently, Michael Peppard has fruitfully compared Mark’s use of “son of god” with its use chiefly among Roman emperors (the cosmocrators of Mark’s day). Peppard emphasizes that Roman imperial sonship occurred through adoption, that is, the election of a grown man by the ruler producing a transfer of power (since the adopted one inherited the rule of his father). With Marcus, Peppard views the formula “You are my beloved son” spoken at Jesus’ baptism—and restated at the transfiguration—as a means of adopting him to divinity. This is not a low christology. “To the contrary,” Peppard observes, “adoption is how the most powerful man in the world gained his power.” This “most powerful man in the world”—the Roman emperor—was also a god. Peppard, in accord with new trends in conceiving of the emperor’s divinity, concludes that “son of god”—when applied to the emperor—does not imply “absolute” divinity or an abstract divine essence. (This notion of divinity, he rightly points out, is restricted to philosophical circles.) Rather, like the emperor, Jesus was divine in terms of his status: as Yahweh’s declared son and heir, Jesus was now able to exercise Yahweh’s power and benefaction...
For Peppard, Jesus’ baptism is “the beginning of his reign as God’s representative.” Virtually the same declaration (“This is my beloved son!”) heard by the disciples at the transfiguration, Peppard observes, confirms Jesus’ adoption as if it took place in a comitia curiata or “representative assembly” (practiced in Roman ceremonies of adoption). In the transfiguration, Jesus’ divine rule is proved to be more than a private vision. It is a revelation to faithful witnesses. Now the disciples know (or should know) that Jesus is Yahweh’s divine son and thus ruler of the world. The rule of God, as Jesus said, has come in power (Mark 9:1)... For Philo as for the Roman emperors, adopted sonship is real sonship... Mark’s understanding of Jesus as “son of God” is—as in emperor worship—less a matter of being than of rank: Jesus is the divine Messiah, empowered by God to inaugurate the kingdom...
The present essay zeroes in on a single divine honor that Jesus receives in his ascent/exaltation: the reception of a divine name. We learn of Jesus’ reception of a divine name—what I will call “theonymy”—in one of the oldest texts of the New Testament, Philippians 2:6-11.1. Much ink has been spilled on the first half of this passage (vv. 6-8) among scholars studying the incarnation. In what follows, I will focus entirely on the latter half of the passage (vv. 9-11). Here the divine name bestowed upon Jesus is called “the name above every name”... By depicting the prostration of all creation to Jesus (v. 10), the author alludes to Isaiah 45:23 (LXX), where Yahweh proclaims, “To me every knee shall bow and every tongue confess.” Since every knee bows to Jesus (Phil. 2:10), the writer grants Jesus the cultic prerogatives specific to Yahweh...
Even though Isaiah 45:23 clearly stands in the background of Phil. 2:9-11, early Jewish sources, I will argue, provide no analogous tradition of a human being receiving the name of Yahweh. Rather, the meaning of theonymy in Phil. 2:9-11 is informed chiefly by contemporary Roman imperial practice. As with so many imperial traditions, however, Roman emperors adapted theonymy from the royal customs of the eastern Mediterranean world. The first part of this chapter, then, also discusses traditions of royal theonymy in ancient Egypt and Greece...
From the beginning of the first dynasty, Egyptian Pharaohs assumed the names of their gods . In earliest times, pharaohs were invoked solely with the Horus name, a name “which designated the Pharaoh as the manifestation of the old sky god Horus.” By bearing this name, Pharaoh became “Horus in the palace,” or Horus present on earth. Beginning with the fourth dynasty, however, pharaohs received a fivename royal titulary... A representative example of the fivefold titulary is that of Pharaoh Thutmoses III (1479–1425 bce), who recounts how he received his titles on the walls of the temple of Amon-Re (the Egyptian high God and Creator) at Karnak. Before the names are given, Thutmoses III describes his ascent to heaven (cf. Jesus’ exaltation in Phil 2:9): “He [Re] opened for me the portals of heaven; he spread open for me the portals of its horizon. I flew up to the sky as a divine falcon, that I might see his mysterious form which is in heaven.” In the celestial world, Thutmoses is endowed with the crowns of Re and outfitted with the ultimate symbol of power, the uraeus-serpent. He receives all of Re’s “states of glory,” along with the wisdom of the gods, and “the dignities of the God.” Finally Amon-Re draws up Thutmoses’s titulary. The names are apparently received in heaven and announced at his coronation. Thutmoses reports, ..."he made my kingship to endure like Re in heaven... he gave me his power and his strength... I am his son, who came forth out of him, perfect of birth"
Immediately after he lists his names, Thutmoses tells how Amon-Re made all peoples submit to his authority... Theonymy, as we see, leads to dominion and the prostration of enemies. Such a sequence recalls the events narrated in Phil. 2:9-11, where every knee bows to Christ the cosmocrator. Thutmoses inspires fear when he bears the names of his God(s); he has become Amon-Re’s vice-regent on earth, wielding the God’s power and authority. By bearing his divine names—the most primitive symbols of divine power—Thutmoses can boast that his Father, Amon-Re, “made me divine.” The reception of the five throne names in Egypt had not passed into oblivion by the Hellenistic and early Roman periods... Ptolemaic kings were deified while still alive. Their reception of the fivefold titulary was a way to depict their divine status. As later pharaohs of Egypt, Roman emperors continued to use the fivefold titulary, though in an abbreviated form...
Apart from obvious differences between Christ and the Caesars, however, there remains a common meaning underlying the two traditions of theonymy. In the first century ce, hellenized peoples around the Mediterranean employed theonymy as a way to deify their emperor—that is, to integrate the emperor into the larger cult of Greco-Roman Gods (with Zeus generally acknowledged as the high God). I believe that a similar function underlies the use of theonymy in Phil. 2:9-11. In a culture featuring other deities and deified men, the author of this text did not need to invent out of whole cloth a new vocabulary to express Jesus’ divinity and promotion to become God’s vice-regent. The writer could employ the widespread encomiastic practice of theonymy, whose implications were widely understood... The author of Phil. 2:6-11 knew, presumably, that those who bear a particular god’s name also bear that god’s status. Just as the emperors exercised world sovereignty as plenipotentiaries of Zeus, so the exalted Jesus obtained Yahweh’s name as Yahweh’s cosmic vice-regent. Such vice-regency implies a divine status, and depicting Jesus in a divine status amounts to a deification... If Paul (who transmits Phil. 2:6-11) opposed imperial ideology, he also re-inscribed it in an attempt to exalt Jesus over the imperial gods of his day. Again, we see the same pattern emerge that we saw in other chapters: Christians compete with perceived cultural rivals, but in the very thick of that competition they assimilate and appropriate cultural ideas to promote the unique deity of their lord.
Temples of Ancient Egypt (I.B. Tauris, 1997), Byron E Shafer:
The royal ka was the immortal creative spirit of divine kingship, a form of the Creator's collective ka. The ka of a particular king was but a specific instance, or fragment, of the royal ka... Possessing the royal ka and being possessed by it were potential at a person's birth, but they were actualized only at his coronation, when his legitimancy upon the Horus Throne of the Living was confirmed and publicly claimed. Only at a person's coronation did he take on a divine aspect and cease to be solely human. Only in retrospect could he be portrayed as predestined by the Creator to rule Egypt as truly perfect from the beginning, as divine seed, son of the Creator, the very flesh of god, one with the Father, god's incarnation on earth, his sacred image.
Becoming Divine: An Introduction to Deification in Western Culture (Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2013), M. David Litwa:
The ka was the divine spirit of the king, a spirit he shared with all pharaohs who came before him and all who would come after. Although the king's ka was shaped and molded as the "twin" of the king at his birth, it was officially inherited at his coronation. For the Pharaoh, the ka was the divine principle in his person: the "immortal creative spirit of the divine kingship". It was the spirit of the creator and king of gods Amun-Re himself. Apart from his ka, Amenhotep III was a normal human being, subject to all human foibles and frailties. Endowed with the divine force of ka, however, Amenhotep III was son of the living God and god himself...
In the birth room, the king fully merged with his newborn ka in a secret ritual... After his rebirth, the king entered a long hall oriented east-west with twelve pillars. The twelve columns may have represented the twelve hours of the Sun God's journey through the netherworld. By processing through the colonnade, the king imitated the voyage of the Sun God in his journey by night in the netherworld. Now seething with divine energy, the king finally reappeared as if from a divine womb into the sunny court. The assembled throng had been anxiously awaiting to see if the rites had proved efficacious. When the Pharaoh emerged from the shadows, he reflected the bright Sun with his robe of shining gold and silver. The people roared at the sight of the regenerated divine king, splendidly crowned and glorious in triumph. By now, the humanness of the king had almost been fully submerged. The king was glittering with divinity. As the living manifestation of the Sun God, the people adored their transformed king as the source of their own life.
A Companion to Ancient Egypt (John Wiley & Sons, 2010), Alan B. Lloyd:
During this central ceremony of Kingship, a more or less ordinary mortal, whom many of the elite had known on a personal level, was transfigured into a living god... During the coronation, the king became possessed and transfigured.
"Water Rites in Ancient Egypt" by Jan Assmann and Andrea Kucharek in Ablution, Initiation, and Baptism: Late Antiquity, Early Judaism, and Early Christianity (Walter de Gruyter, 2011):
What is the function of the "Baptism of Pharaoh" - the purification of the king - within the sequence of rites outlined at the beginning? Its mediating position can be seen from the situation within the sequence: the purification stands between leaving the palace and the coronation by the gods and is thus before entering the actual temple to settle: the purification, as the formulas 'Your purity is mine purity' and 'Your purity is the purity of Horus' etc., offset the king into a god-like state of purity, which first enables him to face the gods in action and to be recognized by them as one of their kind... In the three-part scheme of a "rite de passage" the purification would thus occupy the mediating phase of the transformation. The first phase, the detachment, is marked by leaving the palace, the third phase is reintegration through coronation, initiation and crowning confirmation. This ritually repeated coronation was evidently presented as a rejuvenation or even rebirth of the ruler... A purification as a prerequisite for initiation to the deity was also required when entering the afterlife... This was precisely the function of the cleansing also when the king enters the temple.
The Late Egyptian Underworld Sarcophagi and Related Texts from the Nectanebid Period (Harrassowitz Verlag, 2007), Colleen Manassa Darnell:
In Pyramid Text Spell 222. the arms of atum embrace the deceased king, just as they do in the "Amduat Cosmogony": 'Rest within the arms of your father, within the arms of Atum. O Atum, lift up this NN to you, surround him with your arms! He is your bodily son forever." As in the Pyramid Texts Spell 222, the recipient of the embracing action Atum-Tatenen in the sarcophagi is the Osirian deceased.
Death and Burial in Ancient Egypt (Longman, 2003), Salima Ikram:
Pyramid Texts are carved in vertical columns in sunk relief. They are frequently painted green or blue-green, alluding to the Osirian colour of rebirth, as well as to the sky to which the king ascends when he enters the eternal divine realm and becomes identified with Osiris. The spells are to aid the king in his ascent to the sky and to his reception into the kingdom of the gods.
The Search for God in Ancient Egypt (Cornell University Press, 2001), Jan Assmann:
"The Earth is made waste, the sun does not rise, the moon does not appear, it no longer exists, The ocean sinks, the land spins round, the river is no longer navigable. The entire world moans and cries, gods and goddesses, humans, transfigured ones, and dead, small and large cattle cry out loud..."
This ritual text is concerned with the death of Osiris, which brings the life of the cosmos to a standstill. But just as the sorrow of the gods makes the world desolate and life dry up, their joy inspires radiance and abundance. "Heaven laughs! the earth rejoices" sings the opening chorus of an Easter cantata by J.S. Bach on the theme of the resurrection of Christ, thus still displaying some consciousness of a dramatic interrelationship that connects God and humankind, cosmos and creature. Quite similarly, at a very early date, Egyptian texts began to celebrate the resurrection of the king, who has emerged from his tomb and ascended to the sky as a theophany. Here though, sky and earth participate in this event with mixed emotions, for the appearance of a new god upsets the balance of the world:
"The sky speaks, the earth trembles, the earth god quakes, the two divine domains cry out loud. The sky is cloudy, the stars are covered (?), the bow-lands quake. The bones of the spirits of the earth tremble. The face of the sky is washed, the Nine Bows are radiant."...
Texts also describe the death of the king and ascent to the sky (as in the Pyramid Texts cited earlier), or even his ascension to the throne, as in this text of Ramesses II: "The sky trembled, the earth quaked, when he took possession of the kingship of Re." All of these were events that were inserted, or could be included, in the dramatic context of the process of reality, events that were reflected in nature and had an effect on the cosmos.
The Mind of Egypt: History and Meaning in the Time of the Pharaohs (Harvard University Press, 2003), Jan Assmann:
In terms of cult practice, specifically animal cults, the Ptolemies also referred to earlier traditions and extended them. Up to the threshold of the Ptolemaic era, animal cults had been a secondary phenomenon rather than the vital nerve center of Egyptian religion. Secondary phenomena can be indispensable, of course, and as early as the New Kingdom animal cults were already an integral feature of Egyptian religion. But the Ptolemies placed the animal cult at the very inmost heart of Egyptian religion. Every cult now had a triangular base:
cosmic/solar manifestation = (Re form) e.g., Apis-Osiris
living incarnation = (animal form) e.g., Apis bull
transfigured immortalization = (mummy as Osiris figure) e.g., Osiris-Apis.
Because the kings also saw themselves as living incarnations of the supreme deity, they occupied the same theological category as the sacred animals. Perhaps this explains their consuming interest in the animal cult. In any case, the connections between animal cult and royal cult were now very close... The first four Ptolemaic kings had themselves specifically lauded for hunting down and bringing back the divine images removed by the Persians; they thus cast themselves as the inheritors of the late Egyptian role of the savior-king... the Ptolemies made vigorous efforts to bring about a religious, cultural, and political synthesis between Egyptian and Greek traditions. In this regard, their most important move was the creation of a new god, Sarapis, who united within himself not only the Egyptian gods Osiris, Apis (Ptah), Amun, and Re, but was also identical with the supreme figures of other religions, notably Zeus. The cult policies of the first two Ptolemies established Sarapis and Isis as deities of such stature that their cults spread throughout the Mediterranean region... The Ptolemies spared no effort to rule the country in accordance with Egyptian ideas and practices. They instituted the annual priestly synod to discuss and adopt important political decisions. They also issued the "philanthropa" decrees, in which they presented themselves as law-abiding kings in the ancient Near-Eastern sense, as protectors of the weak and saviors of the poor.
Death and afterlife in Ancient Egypt (British Museum Press, 2001), John H Taylor:
Apis was believed to be incarnate in a bull, born to a virgin cow which was supposed to have been impregnated by Ptah through the agency of fire from heaven.
The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt(Thames & Hudson, 2003), Richard H. Wilkinson:
Mythologically, it was said that the Apis bull was born to a virgin cow that had been impregnated by the god Ptah.
"Conversion, Piety and Loyalism in Ancient Egypt", Jan Assmann, in Transformations of the Inner Self in Ancient Religions (Brill, 1999):
The pharaohs of the 12th dynasty adopted this ideology and rhetoric because they were still operating in a space where there were alternatives to the monocratic system. At the beginning of the 2nd millennium B.C.E., the historical situation was still a situation of decision. Pharaoh had to present himself to his people as the most powerful patron of all, as "the good shepherd" to use the favorite metaphor of royal ideology. The role of the patron is unfolded in a great variety of metaphors. Beside the good shepherd we find images such as the pilot, the steering oar, the father of the orphan, the husband of the widow, all of which will reappear, along with some new ones, in the discourse of personal piety. There is a very obvious line of tradition, leading from the patrons of the FIP to royal ideology and from there to the theology of Personal Piety... The new Egyptian concept of God as formed within the context of Personal Piety inherits the traditional roles and images of the patron. Like the patrons of the FIP and the pharaohs of the MK, God is called pilot and steering oar, father of the fatherless, husband of the widow, judge of the poor.
The Mind of Egypt History and Meaning in the Time of the Pharaohs, (Harvard University Press, 2002) Jan Assmann:
This, then, is the new development: god succeeds to the role played by the king in the Middle Kingdom and by the patron in the First Intermediate Period... From the New Kingdom, the deity was father and mother to all: father of orphans, husband of widows, refuge for the persecuted, protector of the poor, good shepherd, judge of the poor.
Egyptian Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Goddesses, and Traditions of Ancient Egypt (Oxford University Press,2002), Geraldine Pinch:
Like the creator deity Atum, she [Isis] is able to produce life without an active partner. She stimulates the “inertness” of Osiris and takes his seed into her body to conceive a son. An earlier version of this event in Coffin Texts spell 148 has Horus conceived by a flash of divine fire. Isis knows at once that she is carrying a son who will overcome Seth. She hides Horus in the marshes of Chemmis and brings him up to avenge his father... The place of Horus’s birth is said to be in the Delta, usually in the region of Chemmis. To evade his enemies, the divine child was hidden inside a papyrus thicket or on a floating island. This “nest of Horus” is one of the few mythical places that is commonly shown in Egyptian art. Temple wall scenes depict kings in the role of the Horus child in the marshes being washed or suckled by a cow...
The queen gives birth to the future ruler surrounded by deities who will nurse and protect the child and its spirit-double, the ka. This royal birth scene may be based on mythical prototypes, but it predates all the known depictions of the birth of infant gods. Greek myth has equivalent stories of Zeus’s disguising himself to seduce mortal women, but their focus is on very human emotions of lust and jealousy. The seductions by Zeus are set in a mythical age of heroes, and the god’s behavior may be criticized. In Egypt, such stories were a solemn part of the myth of divine kingship and were told about living people... Each Egyptian king was the “son” of the supreme creator god Amun-Ra but also Horus, the avenger of his father, Osiris...
Many kings claimed that they, like Horus, had been chosen to rule "while still in the egg"... The accession of individual kings might be validated by giving them a divine parent. One such royal birth myth is found in the inauguration inscriptions of King Horemheb [c. 1319-1307 BCE]. Horemheb was a soldier who served under Akhenaton and Tutankhamun, but the inscription presents his career in mythological terms. He is called the son of Horus...Horemheb claims that his exceptional qualities were evident as soon as he was born and that Horus of Hnes always intended that he should be king... Horemheb is then able to restore the country and it's institutions to the way things were "in the time of Ra"....
This inscription can be interpreted as a factual account of Horemheb’s inauguration at Thebes during the Opet Festival in the presence of statues of the gods, but it elevates these events to the divine realm. A historical event of the fourteenth century BCE becomes part of the repeating cycle of the acceptance of the rightful heir by the Divine Tribunal and his restoration of harmony to Egypt. In the Egyptian worldview, each reign was supposed to be a successful battle by the leader of the forces of order (the king or a prince representing him) against the forces of chaos (rebels, foreigners, and dangerous creatures or natural forces). Such victories were routinely attributed to the reigning king whether or not they had actually taken place, so that much Egyptian history is mythical in the modern sense of not being factually true.
Chronicle of a Pharaoh: The Intimate Life of Amenhotep III(Oxford University Press, 2000), Joann Fletcher:
At Luxor we can follow the great king from his divine conception right through his life, and beyond. The story begins with Amun diplomatically taking the form of Tuthmosis to visit Mutemwia, who is asleep in the inner rooms of her palace... "Words spoken by Amun-Ra: 'Amenhotep, ruler of Thebes, is the name of this child I have placed in your body ... He shall exercise the beneficent kingship in this whole land, he shall rule the Two Lands like Ra forever.'"
Old Testament Parallels: Laws and Stories from the Ancient Near East, Fully Revised and Expanded Third Edition (Paulist Press, 2006), Victor Harold Matthews, Don C. Benjamin:
Hatshepsut, like many rulers in the world of the Bible, was celebrated as the child of a human mother and a divine father... The annunciation to the wife of Manoah (judg 13:1-23), the annunciation to Hannah (1 Sam 1:9-18), and the annunciation to Mary (Luke 1:26-38) parallel the description of the birth of Hatshepsut:
"I, Amun-Re, promise Ahmose,
The divine patron of Thebes says to the queen:
'I have given you a child,
You will name her Hatshepsut.... (Judg 13:1-23; 1 Sam 1:9-18)
She will reign over the land of Egypt....'" (Luke 1:26-38)