Читать книгу A History of Ancient Egypt - Marc Van De Mieroop - Страница 46

The exaltation of the king is evident throughout the visual and written record of the earliest Egyptian dynasties, and had its roots in the Predynastic period. He was at the center of all aspects of life, both religious and secular. The king was not a mere human; he was closely connected to the divine, albeit not a god himself. It was his duty to provide for the gods and the dead, and to maintain balance (maat) in the universe for the rest of humanity, for which he could employ very violent means – he was a warrior and a hunter who subdued treacherous people and animals. The falcon god Horus was the king’s patron and the king was Horus’s earthly incarnation. At his accession the king received a name as Horus, which appeared on all his monuments. In the 1st dynasty the Horus names were often martial in character, such as “the fighting Horus” (Aha) or “Horus who strikes” (Den). From the Predynastic period on, one symbol of the king was called serekh in ancient Egyptian, a word that literally means “to proclaim.” It was the image of an upright rectangle with vertical stripes in the bottom half. On top of the rectangle perched a falcon, the god Horus. At first the serekh was empty, but soon the names of kings of dynasty 0 appeared in it. The serekh remained a powerful symbol: some large stone steles of the 1st dynasty merely showed the serekh. They were eloquent metaphors of royalty.