The phenomenon of the ancient Egyptian kingdom, due to the extraordinary importance of this institution in ancient Egyptian culture and social life, has been attracting the attention of specialists for a century, being the subject of diverse research and discussion. The article is devoted to the religious aspects of this phenomenon, identifying the semantic horizons of the concepts of "king" and" kingdom " in the framework of the ancient Egyptian religious worldview. It is the study of the range of ideas that make up the semantic field of the phenomenon of royalty in Ancient Egypt, the search for new interpretations of already known facts, that seems most promising to the compilers of the collection of articles published in Leiden in 1995, offering a comprehensive analysis of this phenomenon [O'Connor, Silverman, 1995, p. XXVI-XXVII].

1

The beginning of statehood dates back to ancient times - in the south of Mesopotamia and in the Nile Valley, the first state formations appeared already in the second half of the 4th millennium BC. The fact that the institution of royal power was not only a political institution in Ancient Egypt has long been beyond doubt. G. Frankfort's classic monograph, published in the middle of the last century (Frankfort, 1948), is devoted to the theological foundations of statehood in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. The problem of the genesis of the early state in ancient Egypt has long attracted the attention of researchers. In the current theories of the emergence of a state in the Nile Valley, which are certainly beyond the scope of this paper, the transition from the pre-dynastic era to statehood is explained by various "material" factors: overpopulation of the Nile Valley [Carneiro, 1970], changes in irrigation [Krzyzaniak, 1977] technology [Wolf, 1962], military conflicts [Bard, 1987], rivalry between proto-kingdoms of Upper Egypt [Kemp, 1989], etc. The Egyptians themselves regarded the institution of royalty as a divine institution, and it is safe to say that the idea of royalty was central to the complex system of their religious beliefs. Given the significant role played by the religious factor in the life of ancient Egyptian society throughout its history, especially during the heyday of statehood, when huge material and labor resources were spent on providing the royal funeral cult, it can be assumed that in the process of formation and development of power structures, its influence was also very significant.

In the research literature dealing with religious aspects of ancient Egyptian royalty, the main attention is paid to the problem of the relationship between the divine and the human in the king [see, for example: Moret, 1902; Engnell, 1943; Frankfort,

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1948; Fairman, 1958; Posener, 1960]. In the work of Russian researchers A. B. Zubov and O. I. Pavlova, based on an extensive source base, it is shown that since the main function of the Egyptian king was to mediate between his subjects and the divine world, both divine and human features must be combined in the image of the monarch, and the noted dual nature of the ruler can be traced in various ancient cultures [Zubov, Pavlova, 1995].

The oldest evidence of royalty dates back to the middle of the 4th millennium BC: a fragment of a vessel originating from Naqada dating back to the Naqada I era shows a crown that closely resembles the red crown of the kings of dynastic Egypt. According to the assumption of the German researcher W. Kaiser, this image in an era when social differentiation was relatively weak, could well be a divine symbol [see: Baines, 1995, p. 96]. The secondary nature of the earthly institution of royalty in relation to the divine one is confirmed by numerous epigraphic sources, in which the genealogy of royal power is unequivocally traced back to God. By the ascension of the Creator God on Earth as in Heaven (a euphemism for the divine world), the Egyptians understood His manifestation: "I was Atum when I was alone in Nuna." I was Ra in His glorious appearances when He began to rule (hk3) over what He had created. who is he? He is Ra, when He began to manifest Himself in Heracleopolis as King, before the pillars of Shu (stsw Sw)2 were established, (when) He dwelt on the Hill that is in Hermopolis. I am the Great God Who came into Being (hpr ds. f). "Who's that?" "The great God Who has appeared Himself, this is the Waters, this is Nun, the Father of the Gods. In other words, it is Ra "(BD, 17, 5-10). The name of Atum, the Lord Almighty (nb-r-dr) of Egyptian theology, contains connotations of wholeness, completeness, and at the same time "otherness, non-being, that is, that which is always opposed to our always partial empirical being" (Pavlova and Zubov, 1997, p.182). The name Ra, on the other hand, expresses the idea of a transcendent Deity manifesting outwardly. Without leaving His transcendence, God reigns in the immanent world, and the kingship is opposed to the state of divine passivity, in-itself-abiding, conveyed by the word nny ("to be sluggish, relaxed, unable to act"). Describing the state of the supreme Deity before the creation of the world, one of the texts puts the following words in His mouth: "... when I was still alone in Nuna (Nnw) in a state of inertia (nnwt), before I found (a place) to stand or sit down, before Heliopolis was founded, so that I could I will abide in him before my throne was united, that I might sit upon it "(CT, II, 33).

The most profound mystery of the appearance of the uncreated in the created sheds light on the famous monument of Memphis theology-a text carved on a stone slab by order of Pharaoh Shabaki ca. 710 BC, but probably dating back to the time of the Old Kingdom. The Creator of all things in the name of Ptah performs the creative act by declaring (wd) the language of the intended (k3i) in the heart (MT, v. 56-57). The act of uttering the divine word creates k3w-specific divine "ideas-volitions" that make up the inner essence, the core of all things [Zubov, 2001, p. 66].,

1 Nun is an image of divinity-in-Itself, divine Otherness [see Pavlova and Zubov, 1997, p. 187].

2 That is, before Shu separated the heavens from the earth.

K3 (Ka) 3 is represented by a pair of raised hands, which can mean a gesture of prayer or an embrace. Most likely, this duality is intentionally embedded in the hieroglyphics of this category of Egyptian religion, which is very difficult to translate into modern European languages due to the abundance of connotations that it learns within the ancient Egyptian religious culture. The concept of "essence"," essence "seems to be the most adequate:" the conclusion of another in their arms meant for the ancients the transfer of their vital essence to him. Therefore, the Ka is a symbol of the transfer of vital energy from the gods to people, " notes R. Clark [Clark, 1978, p. 231]. In Russian historiography, a study by A. O. Bolshakov [Bolshakov, 2001] is devoted to elucidating the meaning of the category of Spacecraft, which contains, in particular, the history of studying the problems associated with this category.

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It is placed in the very "heart" of the divine Otherness, for Ptah and Nun in Memphis theology are one (Mt, v. 50-51). Ptah, who has accomplished everything and uttered all the divine utterances, who has "spoken" Himself outwardly, is exalted with the royal title of Lord of Both Lands (nb t3wy) (MT, v. 61), is glorified as a King, the divine "prototype" of the earthly king.

A special feature of the cosmogonic ideas of the ancient Egyptians is the presence in the act of creation, when the divine Otherness emerges from Its Self-Concentration, of a certain subsequent beginning, through which God manifests His power in the created world. As such, in the Heliopolitan cosmogony, the divine Ennead (psdt)4 appears, or, in the creation of the word, "the teeth and lips of those lips that uttered the names of all things, from which Shu and Tefnut also appeared" (MT, v. 55), or the essence that is given a central place as in the Egyptian religion in general, and in the concept of sacred royalty - the divine Eye wd3t, the very name of which conveys the idea of wholeness, strength, fullness of vitality. All the power of Atum goes into the Eye, which becomes the most powerful of the gods (nht r. s r ntrw nb(w) (CT, IV, 103b). The incarnation, personification of the divine Eye is the goddess Sekhmet (Shmt - Powerful), depicted with the head of a lioness, which is surrounded by a solar disk with a uraeus, or with a solar Eye instead of a head. The "analog" of Sekhmet is the goddess Bastet (B3stt), whose name Jan Bergman suggests reading as "b3 of Isis" [see: Troy, 1986, p. 82], and thus it can be said that shm and b3 - the power and might of the Deity-are manifested through the divine Eye.

But, rejoicing in the omnipresence of God, who gives life to all things, the ancient Egyptians clearly realized that they live in an imperfect world, where the great is reduced to the small in everything that the Creator has created (BD, 175, 5-6), where not only divine forces operate, where untruth is created, wars are waged, and troubles are generated and, therefore, God is not an absolute King. Some hints about the reasons for this situation are contained in various texts, primarily related to the funeral cult, because the forces that the deceased was synergistic with during life depended on his posthumous fate. The problem of theodicy is touched upon in the famous 1130th utterance of the Sarcophagus Texts: "I created every man like another, and I did not command them to do evil. It was their hearts that resisted My words "(CT, VII, 463f-464b). The possibility of a person choosing two paths - making someone loved (by God) or hated - is also mentioned in the Memphis Theology monument (MT, v. 57). The most explicit motif of human resistance to the Creator's reign is expressed in the Book of the Heavenly Cow, a text carved on the walls of the tombs of the New Kingdom kings Seti I, Ramesses II, and Ramesses III in the Valley of the Kings5, which contains a story about how people, having planned something evil in the eyes of the "old", "tired", "exhausted" Ra, put themselves in danger of complete destruction. In this text, the situation of the removal of Ra, "outraged" by the behavior of people, to heaven and, accordingly, the separation of the divine from the earthly is played out.

Another mythologeme, known to us from Plutarch's treatise "On Isis and Osiris" and numerous allusions in the Texts of the pyramids, offers a slightly different explanation for the improper state of the universe. It is caused by a certain discord that has occurred in the divine Ennead. The beginning of time in which death reigns is marked by the event of Seth's murder and dismemberment of the body of Osiris, the firstborn of Si-

4 From psd - "shine" [see: Barta, 1973, S. 35ff]. The Heliopolis Ennead consists of Atum, Shu, Tefnut, Geb (Earth), Nut (Sky), Osiris, Isis, Set, and Nephthys (Pyr. 1655a-b). Relief images found in Heliopolis and accompanying inscriptions dating back to the third dynasty indicate the existence of ideas about the Ennead already during the reign of King Djoser [Griffiths, 1980, p. 118-121].

5 of the published text: [Maystre, 1941, p. 53-115].

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on Geb and Nut, the great king and benefactor of his people 6. Osiris in the minds of the Egyptians was clearly associated with life, creation: his color is green or black7 (the color of shoots and fertile land), he is endowed with "life, strength, dominion, health, like Ra, forever "(Pyr., 8g), his very name (Wsir), hieroglyphically written as the eye above the throne, it contains connotations of creation and power [see Griffiths, 1980, p. 87-99]. Set, on the other hand, was identified with everything chaotic, destructive, disorderly, and disorderly, 8 its color was red, the color of the desert, the barren land parched by the scorching sun. Since the Ennead is an entity inseparably connected not only with the Creator, but also with the created world, Set's rebellion against Osiris can be understood as a rebellion of a chaotic principle hostile to existence against the life - affirming principle-the creative power of the Creator-that occurred on the border of the divine and earthly worlds. "Creative synthesis of being and non-being" is, according to the Russian religious philosopher and theologian S. N. Bulgakov, the very essence of creation [Bulgakov, 1994, p.165], and, in all probability, this idea was not alien to the ancient Egyptians, who thought a lot about the most intimate secrets of the universe. Set, who rebelled against Osiris, is the energy of destruction that acts in the material world, but has, like everything else, a source in God, 10 which, with the right world order, performs a creative role, but under certain conditions becomes destructive. Indications of the possibility of such an understanding can be found in Plutarch (IO, 44; 55), a prominent exegete of the Egyptian religion.

If the category of life in Ancient Egypt is associated with the fullness and integrity inherent in everything in which God manifests Himself, then death, on the contrary, always implies division, dismemberment. The body of Osiris dismembered by Set is accompanied by the dismembered, desolate, trampled, bleeding Eye of Horus, who entered into a duel with Set, conceived by Isis from the dead Osiris, and also the divided kingdom of Egypt 11. Since the Eye of Horus, the Eye in the hieroglyphic spelling of the name of Osiris, and the Eye of Ra, i.e., the "organ" of creation, are undoubtedly one and the same Eye, its dismemberment puts a limit to the life-giving power of the Creator, who inevitably finds himself separated, alienated from the world, and no longer able to reign12. But metaphysical pessimism was not typical of the Egyptians ' worldview. Unlike many peoples who "accepted" the separation of Heaven and Earth, when God the Creator is "pushed out" to Heaven, and the Earth becomes the sphere of active activity of lower spiritual entities [see Zubov, 2006, p.252-283], the Egyptians found a way to correct this situation. The mythological model for the abolition of the discord that occurred in the divine Ennead and the restoration of the world as a place of divine epiphany is the ending of the divine epiphany.-

6 The absence to date of epigraphic data concerning the cult of Osiris prior to the Fifth Dynasty cannot serve as proof of the absence until that time of the cult itself, which, in all probability, dates back to ancient times. In one of the tombs of the First Dynasty in Heluan, fragments of ivory resembling the Osiric symbol dd were found [Griffiths, 1980, p. 41].

7 One of the epithets of Osiris km-wr ("Great Black") (Pyr., 628b).

8 The image of the animal Set is a determinative of the words meaning "storm" (nsni), " confusion, disorder "(hnnw) [see Clark, 1978, p. 115]. The conflict between Horus, who represents his father Osiris, and Set is also denoted by the word hnnw.

9 The conflict between the two persons of the Ennead takes place in the kingdom of Geb, i.e., the Earth connected with the Sky (Nut).

The 10th Set represents the divine energy shm, but with the opposite sign (see Hornung, 1996, p. 63).

11 The New Egyptian tale of the dispute between Horus and Set (P. Chester Beatty I, Recto), which contains reminiscences of ancient mythological traditions, deals with the struggle of these characters for the "Eye" - the kingdom of Egypt (Lichtheim, 1976, p. 214-223).

12 It is possible that both these aspects - the" death " (for the world) of God, i.e., the end of His reign, and consequently the mortality (as deification) of the creature-were combined in the image of the dying Osiris.

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The Supreme Court of Geb, which recognized Hora as the sole ruler of the Two Lands, from whose head two crowns "sprang" (MT, v. 13c-14c). The enthronement of Horus, the son of Osiris, over the Two Lands marks the restoration of God's" rights " as King, for Horus the infant (Hr hrd), who descended from the deceased Osiris as his seed to avenge the death of his father, is both the Horizon Chorus (Hr 3hty) and the Great Chorus (Hr wr), Eternal "Lord of Heaven" (nb pt), which appears in the Memphis monument as one of the epiphanic images of Ptah (MT, v. 53-54). "For the Egyptians, the ideal earthly community...," notes B. Kemp, "was a fundamental reflection of the divine order" [Kemp, 1989, p. 20]. The "heavenly" (i.e. divine) situation of the annihilation of the conflict within the Ennead, which was approved by Geb, is actualized in the natural and historical reality with each ascension to the throne of a new ruler - the "earthly" Choir at the head of all living beings.

2

All the ancient Egyptian texts that have come down to us, and especially the Texts of the pyramids, reveal a characteristic feature of this people-a constant remembrance of the West (i.e., of death), an obsession with a passionate desire to break through the limits of the local empirical reality, a search for the possibility of the transition of the divine life to the life of The fear that possessed the ancient Egyptians most of all was the fear that entered through the Eye of Horus - the fear of the separation of two worlds, the closure of the natural world, which was therefore doomed to inevitable disintegration, to death. The division of Egypt in this context is a manifestation in the political sphere of the situation of "impotence" of God in the world, hopes for the abolition of which the Egyptians associated with a single kingdom, which retained its sacred significance for thousands of years.

Investigating the problem of the correlation between the terms ntr nfr and ntr ‘3, which are often found in ancient Egyptian inscriptions, the Russian Egyptologist O. D. Berlev noted that for the Egyptian picture of the world, the presence of two Suns, two kings is fundamental: "heavenly", "senior" - the Creator God, called ntr ' 3 nbpt ("Great God, Lord of the Sky"), and "earth", "junior" - His son, who bears the title ntr nfr nb t3wy ("god the younger, lord of Both Lands") [Berlev, 2003, pp. 1-18]. The first Sun owns the Sky, the second-the Earth, earthly Egypt. Let us only add that it is not so much a question of two kings ruling the world as a whole (Heaven and Earth), but rather of extending the sphere of government of the heavenly King to the Earth through His son, who rules on it.

In favor of the fact that the main duty imputed to each ruler of Egypt is the task of connecting the divine and earthly worlds, is evidenced, in particular, by the well-known image on an ivory crest from Abydos (Fig. 1), dating back to the reign of the fourth king of the First dynasty, whose name H. Gedike suggests reading as Dt-Hr ("The Incarnation of the Choir") [Goedicke, 1975, p. 206]. According to H. Gedike, this image shows a two-level structure of the universe: two outstretched wings represent a kind of dividing line separating the transcendent (in the image - unlimited) and immanent (limited by outstretched wings on top, and on the sides - two w3s-scepters) space. Each of the two spaces contains an image of a falcon-Choir: in the upper one - sitting on a roost in the form of a heavenly boat (Choir of the Highest), in the lower one-on a serekh containing the name of the king Dt (Choir of the Earth). The meaning that is read in the image as a whole is quite transparent: the transcendent and immanent are not completely separated; the transcendent God reveals Himself in the immanent world in the king and through the king as His earthly "incarnation". "Although still in a rudimentary state, the structure that the image made for the Dt-Hr king sheds light on," says X. Gedike, - creates the basis from which all further theological work has developed.

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Figure I.

speculative thought in Ancient Egypt", which introduces more and more new categories that clarify the nature and method of interaction between the transcendent and immanent [Goedicke, 1975, p. 206]. At the same time, the serekh itself, in which the Choral name of the king is written out, as A. O'Brien notes, plays the same role of a "window" or" door "between the worlds (divine and earthly) as the so-called tomb "false door", which was also depicted on sarcophagi from the end of the Ancient Kingdom [O'Brien, 1996, p. 134-135].

Since the Fifth Dynasty, the desire to actualize the epiphany in the world has been embodied in the construction of solar temples and the inclusion of the name Ra in the royal titulature: the royal warming is accompanied by the epithet s3 R' (son of Ra)13. In the New Kingdom era, this idea is expressed in images where the solar disk appears as the equivalent of the crown crowning the king's head (Wildung, 1977, p. 8). Various divine names are combined with the name of Ra (Atum, Amon, Khnum, Harakti), in a number of royal names the king is glorified as "lord" attributes of Ra: nb-hprw-R' ("Lord of the phenomena of Ra"); nb-nfrw-R' ("lord of the beauty of Ra"); nb-m3't-R' ("lord of the Truth of Ra"); nb-hps-R' ("lord of the power of Ra"); nb-phty-R' ("Lord of the power of Ra"); nb-t3wy-R' ("lord of the Two Lands belonging to Ra") 14.

The idea of restoring the situation of divine kingship through earthly royalty found expression in the symbolic identification of the king with the" male "aspect of God the Creator, the Source of life, and his wife with the" female " aspect associated with the manifestation of God's power in the world. The iconography and titulature of the women of the royal house (mothers, spouses, daughters of the king) reveals their identity with the divine Eye of Ujat in the images of Sekhmet, Tefnut, Hathor: Queen Ahhotep (XVIII dynasty) is "one who is united with the members of Sekhmet" (hnmt m h'w Shmt), Teye - "one who is united with the members of Sekhmet" (hnmt m h'w Shmt). with the king appearing as Shu" (hnmt nsw h ' m Sw) [Troy, 1986, p. 66], queens have borne the titulature of priestesses of Hathor and participated in her cult since at least the reign of the IV dynasty. [15] The wives of Pepi II are depicted in their funeral complexes with attributes

13 The name Ra first appears in the royal name Raneb (Nebra) at the beginning of the second Dynasty. Some royal names of the IV dynasty also contain the name Ra, for example, Khafra, Menkaura.

14 For the fact that the subject in names of this type is the king, and the name Ra should be translated in the genitive case, see [Iversen, 1988, p. 82, 87].

15 Among these titles: hmt-ntr Hwt-Hr (it was worn by queens of the IV, VI, VIII, XI, XIX dynasties), hmt-ntr Hwt-Hr nbt ' Iwnw (IV, XXII dynasties), hmt-ntr Hwt-Hr nbt nht (IV Dynasty), hmt-ntr Hwt- Hr nbt Kis (XXI dynasty), dw3t Hwt-Hr (XXI dynasty) [Troy, 1986, p. 187].

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Hathor - the solar disk between the horns 16. The idea of personification in the queen of divine power is also revealed in her symbolic identification with the hts scepter, which is homologous to the divine Eye (Troy, 1986, p.85). The title wrt hts has been included in the title of the royal consort since the Fourth Dynasty. An allusion to the Divine Eye is also found in the title of Queen hmt ntr, which has been in use since the 18th dynasty (Troy, 1986, p. 107-114).

The regular attribution of various divine names to the tsar and the glorification of him as a god is a fact well covered in the research literature [see, for example, Moret, 1902; Engnell, 1943; Frankfort, 1948; Wildung, 1977; Morenz, 1996]. The fact that most researchers ignore, sometimes completely, the human qualities of the king of Egypt when asserting his identity or likeness to the Deity is explained by the fact that the subjects associated with the ruler primarily their hopes for restoring the situation that took place at the "moment of the beginning" (spry), when the Creator Himself was the sole Ruler over the entire universe. Numerous cult images of God (hntyw, shmw) - both made of stone or wood, and alive, like, say, the bull Apis in Memphis-were considered by the Egyptians to be the receptacle of the divine b3 or shm, i.e., the "visible embodiment of the invisible energy" of the Deity [Hornung, 1996, p. 138]. And above all, the king himself is shm-R' - smn-t3wy, shm-R'- sw3d-t3wy, shm-R'-hw-t3wy, shm-R' - sd-r-t3wy (the one through whom " the power of Ra asserts (smn), gives life (sw3d), protects (hw), saves (sd) Two Earths"); shm-R'-nfr-h'w, shm-R'-w3d-h'w ("the power of Ra, beautiful (nfr), life-giving (w3d) manifestations"); shm-ds-pr-im-Nwn ("the very power that came from Nun") [Iversen, 1988, p. 86].

Through the cosmocrator-king, the whole world became the place of the presence of God17, His sanctuary, and therefore it was the king who was revered as the sole founder of all the temples erected during his reign, and the sole performer of all the rituals through which the divine and the earthly were united: in all Egyptian temples, it is the king who is depicted offering sacrifices and performing rituals, k3 was often depicted standing in front of him as the king mediated on behalf of his people.

The king, as the ritual equivalent of a Deity, was worshipped as an "image" 18 manifesting the fullness of divine manifestations (hprw). Iconographically, the idea of endowing the king with divine powers is conveyed by the pictorial scenes that appear already in the era of the Ancient Kingdom: laying the Deity's hand on the king's head or feeding him with the milk of Isis [Wildung, 1977, p. 13]. Through His" image " on earth, God even now, in a situation of discord, reveals His presence, and the space where this presence is actual extends to the entire area of the royal dominion, which is a continuation of his earthly essence, which, although not specifically emphasized, was not only not denied, but was assumed with necessity [see: Zubov and Pavlova, 1995, pp. 45-50]. The idea of combining two principles in the king - divine and earthly-is clearly expressed in the practice of placing royal statues on the border of the sacred and profane (at the gates or in the outer courtyard of temples), and in the scenes of theogamy depicted on the walls of the "birth houses" in the temples of the New Kingdom, and in the famous legend about the birth of the first three kings. dynasties preserved on the Westcar papyrus, and in particular-

16 The iconography of Hathor conveys the idea of the manifestation of the power of God in this image: the horns are a symbol of power, the solar disk is its manifestation.

17 "Ka desires him, that I may make this land his dwelling place," reads the inscription of Thutmose III on the wall of the Karnak temple complex of Amun-Ra (Breasted, 1906, p. 149).

18 "Image of Ra", "image (tit) of the gods" - constant royal definitions since the Middle Kingdom and the Second Transition Period. Hatshepsut described herself as an image (snnt) of Amun-Ra (Hornung, 1996, p. 138-139). The king is hnty Ra or Ptah [Bell, 1997, p. 288].

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Figure 2

images of kings worshiping their own divine image 19.

By claiming that the king was born in Nuna "before the heavens were restored, before the Earth was restored, before the solid foundations were restored, before the discord, before the fear that arose from the Eye of Horus "(Pyr., 1039-1040), the Egyptians expressed a great desire for the abolition through their ruler who gave birth to death hnnw: in the king, "Two Masters" are reconciled, "both gods are pacified", which means that the correct world order, i.e., the one that was before the discord, is restored. In the early dynasties, the names Hor and Set were included in the names of kings: the Horovo name of the first king of the second dynasty, Hotepsehemui, means " the one in whom there are two forces (shmwy-t. E. Horus and Seth) are at peace" (Baines, 1995, p. 142); the king of the same dynasty, Seth Peribsen, used the animal Seth as his symbol, but his name is also found with the Horus falcon (a human figure with the head of a falcon before the name Seth Peribsen); Hasehemui ("Shining with Two Rods").), who had the title Hor-i-Set and used both the falcon and the animal Set as his symbols, added a "commentary" to his name, clearly expressing its essence: "Two Lords (reside) in it in peace" (Baines, 1995, p. 143); the kings of Cheops (IV dynasty) and Merenra (VI dynasty) had a title depicted as two falcons above the sign of gold, signifying reconciliation in the king of Horus and Set. Ancient titles of the queen: "looking down on Horus and Set" (m33t Hr Sts)20, "consort of Two Lords" (sm3yt nbwy) [Troy, 1986, p. 183] 21. The reliefs of Deir el-Bahri represent Hatshepsut, on whose head crowns are placed in Chorus and Set. The bases of the royal thrones contain images that represent the theme of reconciliation between Horus and Set: the throne of Senusert I from his pyramid temple contains a relief depicting Horus and Set intertwining symbolic plants of Upper and Lower Egypt around a hieroglyphic signsm3 ("unification"), on the top of which the name of the tsar is written in an oval cartouche (Kemp, 1989, p. 28) (Fig. -

19 For example, images of Amenhotep III making offerings to his divine image in his temple in Soleb, or Ramesses II in the temple of Abu Simbel (Wildung, 1977, p. 6-8).

20 This title was worn by queens of the IV, V, VI, XI, XII, XVIII, and XIX dynasties. Some queens of the First and third dynasties bore the title m33t Hr - "looking down on Horus" (Troy, 1986, p. 189).

21 Title of two queens of the First dynasty.

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The "paired" images of animals on pre-dynastic ceremonial palettes and early dynastic images of two falcons in royal monograms and names can be considered the main precursors of this pictorial plot [see: Kemp, 1989, p. 51].

The coronation rituals and the ancient festival of Cheb-sed are also full of allusions to cosmogony and the myth of the reconciliation of Horus and Set. The ceremony of assuming the office of a new king was performed at the dawn of the day following the death of the previous ruler, the act of ascension of the new king to the throne was conveyed by the same verb as the appearance of the rising sun (h'i) [Bleeker, 1967, p. 95], and, thus, the event of assuming the royal office symbolically reproduced the accession above the primordial creation of Ra, who abolished the darkness of non-existence with His life-giving light.

The coronation of the king was usually timed to coincide with the beginning of the prt season, when the waters of the Nile subsided and new life was born and sprouted, and thus the accession to the throne took on the same meaning as the New Year's celebrations, through which the correct, intact, original order of the universe was restored in all cultures of the Ancient East22. Three rituals formed the basis of the coronation ceremony - the red and white crowns were placed on the king, then the priests representing Horus and Set performed the ritual of "connecting the Two Lands" (sm3 t3wy) in the presence of the king, and finally the king performed the so-called circumambulation of the walls (phr h3 inb) - a ritual dating back to the time of the foundation Memphis ("White Wall"). The royal crowns were identified in the coronation ritual with the divine Eye; they were addressed as Uraeus, the Eye of Ra, and His daughter Ujjat (Frankfort, 1948, p. 107-108). Through the placing of the two crowns by Thoth, the reconciler of Horus and Set, the king gained the fullness of divine powers. The action was accompanied by a recitation: "Receive your whole Eye on your brow. Put him well on your forehead. Your Eye will not be saddened by sorrow. Accept the fragrance of the gods, which purifies, which comes from you " (Frankfort, 1948, p. 131). Like Atum, who reigned over primordial creation, the crowned king ascended to the dais symbolizing the original hill. As far as we know from the papyrus text reflecting the coronation procedure of Senusert I, the first act performed by the king after placing the double crown on him was the gift of sacred bread to the people of Egypt [Frankfort, 1948, p. 132]. The meaning of this act is clarified by comparing it with the granting of the Eye of the Choir to the deceased in a funeral ritual, i.e., e. with the gift of divine life. Further, the king acted as a Choir, reviving the life of the deceased Osiris - his deceased predecessor. The King-Choir performed the symbolic embrace of Osiris-an action with an allusion to Atum's embrace of Shu and Tefnut (Pyr. 1652)with the corresponding meaning of transmitting the divine Ka, the connection with which is incompatible with death. 23
Like the coronation ritual, the scenario of Heb-sed 24 is full of allusions to the myth of the reconciliation of Horus and Set, which corresponds to the hieroglyphic image of this festival, which is two thrones standing with their backs to each other. During the festivities, the coronation ceremony of the ruler of the Two Lands was played on a double throne placed between two rows of temples of the gods of Upper and Lower Egypt-

22 Ideally, the coronation rituals should have been timed to coincide with the New Year's festivities, but if this was not possible, the chronology began precisely from the day of the king's coronation.

23 An excellent illustration of this idea is a stone vessel from the burial of the First Dynasty in the form of the hieroglyph Ka, which has the sign 'nh ("life") placed between its hands (Wengrow, 2006, p. 194).

24 The main sources for the reconstruction of this festival are the heb-sed reliefs of King Niuserr (V dynasty) from the temple of Ra in Abu Gurob, the images related to the heb-sed of kings Amenhotep III (XVIII dynasty) from the temple he built in Soleb and the tomb of Cheruef in Thebes, and Osorkon II (XXII dynasty) from temple of the goddess Bastet in Bubastis.

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For example, the king attended the oratory of Horus and Set, the gathering of the" companions of Horus " (smsw Hr) in the so-called fortress of the gods, which showed the presence in the king and the manifestation of the totality of divine forces in the entire universe through him.25 Seated in a double crown on a stepped dais, the king turned in the direction of each of the cardinal directions, while a priest standing behind him recited the sacred formula: "The choir appears in glory, sitting on its southern throne, and now the union of heaven and earth is being made" (Uphill, 1965, p. 371). "I declare Thebes, in its height and breadth, a sacred place, purified and belonging to its lord... the inhabitants (of Thebes) will forever be protected by the name of the great good god" - this ritual announcement made by Osorkon II in the presence of Amun [Bleeker, 1967, p. 106] best expresses the purpose of this festival: to transform Egypt into a sacred land, the possession of God. The same meaning is contained in the ritual of sacred marriage between the king and Hathor, which supposedly took place during Cheb-sed.26
Additional light on the meaning and purpose of ancient Egyptian royalty is shed by the rituals that formed the most intimate layer of heb-sed. We are talking about ritual actions that correlate with the sacrificial ritual recorded in the sarcophagus chamber of the royal pyramids, during which the deceased was endowed with the Eye of Horus and thereby transformed into a deified 3h27[see Uphill, 1965, p. 377ff]. In the temple at Bubastis, wp r, the "mouth opener,"is depicted above the scene representing the worship of Horus, King Osorkon. The secret rites performed by the "mouth-opener" in relation to the crowned king were apparently accompanied by sacrifices given by the king (htp d'i nsw). The climax was the descent of the king into the tomb with a whip (an attribute of the deity and the king) and a scepter in his hands. The king addressed the 12 deities represented in three registers: Ra, Atum, Shu, Tefnut (upper case), Geb, Nut, Osiris, Horus (middle case), Set, Isis, Nephthys, and his Ka (lower case). An inscription accompanying this scene reads: "Repose in the grave (is)". According to the images of King Niuserr's cheb-sed, during this festival, rituals were performed during which gifts mentioned in the pyramid Texts as material symbols of the Eye of Horus (the front leg of the bull and ssf-oil) were offered, and words were recited that correspond in the funeral cult to the reunion of the head of the deceased with the body (Pyr., 9b) [Uphill, 1965, p. 378-379].

There are also known images of the funeral cult that contain allusions to cheb-sed. In the sarcophagus chamber of Seti I's tomb at Abydos, the deceased king is depicted wearing the characteristic cheb-sed garb, sprawled on a lion-headed couch similar to that approached by Niuserra in the cheb-sed scene. God gives Seti I, whose face is painted green (the color of life), symbols of life and power, the image is accompanied by a single inscription: "Rise up!" at the top shows two structures that resemble those that were built for cheb-sed.

The tomb of Cheruef depicts a ritual event that probably took place at the end of rituals that correlate with funeral services: King Amenhotep III.-

25 This structure was symbolically identified with the King-Choir itself: during the reign of Senusert I, cheb-sed was celebrated in the fortress of the gods, called "Senusert I, looking down on the Two Earths from above " [Arnold, 1997, p. 39], while" gods", as D. Arnold notes, originally meant divine energies, symbolized, in particular, by images of animals [ibid., p. 34].

26 For the heb-seda rituals associated with Hathor and the sacred marriage between the king and the goddess, see [Wente, 1969, p. 83-91].

27 According to most researchers, 3h is derived from the root meaning "to shine", "to be shining" (see Demaree, 1983, p. 191). Category 3h expresses the state of enlightenment acquired after death by those who have entered the divine Otherness. In early texts, ihw is synonymous with ntrw [ibid., p. 194], and therefore means the state of theosis.

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flax is here erecting the dd pillar, the symbol of Osiris who conquered death. Even if this plot is historically unreliable (it is absent from the images of Amenhotep III's heb-sed in Soleb), it is also significant for us that its inclusion in the tomb image of heb-sed seemed quite appropriate to the bearers of tradition, that is, it corresponds to the meaning of this festival, which is thus correlated with the funeral aspirations. The reconciliation in the king of Horus and Set allowed both the living and the dead to make an exodus from the "time of Osiris", when death triumphs over life, that is, from death itself, to life, to eternity. This meaning is also conveyed by the pictorial program on the gate of the Medamud temple: King Amenemhat-Sobekhotep (XIII dynasty), sitting on a double throne in a cheb-sed robe, receives from Hora and Set the symbols hh ("millions of years"), i.e. the gift of eternity [Arnold, 1997, p. 82-83]. Osorkon II is also depicted in Bubastis with two "million years" signs in front of him, and the register below is the image of the king and queen in the temple of Amon and the inscription in which Amon-Ra, Lord of the Thrones of Both Lands, promises His beloved son "millions of cheb-seds "(Uphill, 1965, p. 374)..

In the final part of cheb-sed, the coronation of the ruler was repeated, whose accession marked the triumph of power that overcomes death itself. The king, whose power was proclaimed to all the ends of the earth, shot an arrow in the direction of each of the four cardinal directions [Frankfort, 1948, p. 87-88], thereby confirming the appearance of divine power in all lands and the expulsion of all God-defying forces from them.

The great hope of victory over death, which meant for the living the separation of the divine and the earthly, the autonomization of the created, and as a consequence - its disintegration, projected into the division of the earthly kingdom of Egypt, and for the dead - the corruption and disintegration of the flesh brought to the limit of dehumanization, is the thread connecting cheb-sed with the royal funeral cult.

(The ending follows)

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

MT

Memphis Theological Treatise: [Breasted, 1901]. English translation: Lichtheim, 1973, p. 51-57.

BIFAO

Bulletin de l'Institut Francais d'archeologie orientale. Cairo.

BD

Budge W. The Chapters of Coming Forth by Day or the Theban Recension of the Book of the Dead. Vols. I - III. L., 1910.

CT

Buck A. de. The Egyptian Coffin Texts. Vols. I - VII. Chicago, 1935 - 1961.

IO

Plutarch. About Isis and Osiris / Translated by N. N. Trukhina // Bulletin of Ancient History. Moscow. 1977. N 3 - 4.

JARCE

Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt. N. Y.

JNES

Journal of Near Eastern Studies. Chicago.

MAS

Munchner Agyptologische Studien. Berlin-Munich.

SAOC

Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilisation. Chicago.

Pyr.

Sethe K. Die altagyptische Pyramidentexte. Leipzig, 1908 - 1910.

ZAS

Zeitschrift fur Agyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde. Leipzig-Berlin.

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