by Erin Campbell

Created on: July 31, 2010   Last Updated: August 01, 2010

In a world where the whispers of a democratic state have infiltrated nearly every nation, the concept of a successful centralized government with a divine ruler seems like an idea doomed to corruption and collapse.  At its most basic level, this type of government most resembles the government currently destroying the people and traditions of North Korea.  This grisly comparison makes the success of this government so intriguing.  Though Ancient Egypt certainly had its share of social unrest and human rights violations, it managed to remain a powerful empire for about 3000 years in the ancient world.  

While Ancient Egypt often had a very powerful military and the power to control its citizens through violence, it is important to understand that Egypt would not have been able to succeed as an empire with military force alone.  Citizens can only be controlled through violence and tyranny for a time before they rebel.  Egypt was able to keep a relatively stable control over its people through the combination of force and a very powerful ideology that held Egyptians together.  The uniting factor of Egyptian society was the belief in the concept of a “Divine Kingship”.  This was essentially the belief that the Pharaoh possessed the qualities of a god and a man, therefore making him an responsible for maintaining harmony on earth and in the cosmos.

In order to explain the divine aspect of the Pharaoh, a mythology developed in which the living pharaoh was an incarnation of the God Horus.  When the pharaoh died in the mortal world he became the God Osiris, Horus’ father, and continued to live an eternal life.  In the Egyptian mythology, the author WIlliam Ricketts Cooper describes the Horus myth as “...the doctrine of a Vicarious Deliverer of mankind in the person of a mysterious Being, who is at once both very God and very man.”  Mr. Cooper, along with a multitude of researchers, has promoted the idea that the mythology surrounding the story of Jesus Christ in Christianity draws from this Horus myth.  As the god representing civil order and justice among the Egyptians, it is easy to see how the early Christians may have chosen Horus as a template for their own savior.  The dominance of the Christian religion throughout the world is a testament to the power of this part man, part god ideology.

As the man responsible for maintaining maat, or order both in the physical and

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