kingship-dynastyWe're still mapping where this idea was first discussed. Key passages and related ideas below.
The Royal Ka
The man was mortal; scholars argue a divine 'kingship-soul' was passed down unbroken.
Egyptians understood that each person had a ka, a vital life-force. Modern scholarship (notably L. Bell) has reconstructed a 'royal ka' — the divine essence of the kingship itself, imagined as passed from one king to the next, so that it is the office rather than the man that is truly divine. This is an interpretive reconstruction that helps explain how Egyptians could hold together the king's mortality and the kingship's divinity; it is not a doctrine the Egyptians spelled out in exactly these terms.
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