pharaoh Merymaat Khamnesretnebetaapehti Neferrenputseankhibu Aakheperkare Thutmose, with various titles inserted between the names according to the occasion THE PHARAOH’S ROLE IN RELIGION As the son of Horus (and as a result of his connection with sun deities), the pharaoh had a divinely paternal relationship with his nation: personal, disciplinary, protective, and sustaining The pharaoh was the source not only of the land’s fertility and abundance but of the maintenance of maat, a distinctly Egyptian concept sometimes translated as “truth” or “justice” (as the goddess Ma’at presided over both) and related to the Greek logos Maat is perhaps best understood, as “the way things ought to be,” a blueprint of a healthy and working universe in which everything is interdependent and in proper balance: Without it there would be chaos When maat was in balance, the annual Nile floods would nourish the farmland, the people would have enough to eat and would not be beset by illness or plague, and Egypt would remain unconquerable The pharaoh’s responsibility was to preserve maat not merely through appropriate action but by being sufficiently divine, as a people ruled by a god would live in balance The pharaohs’ extraordinary and labor-intensive construction projects resulting in the Sphinx, the pyramids, and other monuments reinforced the pharaoh’s importance The pharaoh’s ka, a part of the soul—in ordinary people passed on from the father, for the pharaoh from his divine parent—was unique in that, perhaps like the double crown, it was passed on from one pharaoh to the next It did not matter if the successor was the blood relative of his predecessor: As celebrated in the Opet festival of the New Kingdom, the pharaoh received his ka from Amun and returned it to the god in the form of ritual and offerings so that it could be strengthened and maintained for the pharaohs to come The Opet festival was one of many which celebrated the pharaoh’s relationship with his kingdom and the divine and consisted largely of ceremonies and rituals in which the public did not participate, not even to bear witness Increasingly, especially during the Middle Kingdom and New Kingdom periods, participatory religious activities were absorbed into the religiopolitical framework of Egyptian government, and the priesthood was indistinguishable from the court bureaucracy SIGNIFICANT PHARAOHS Sneferu Sneferu was the founder of the Fourth Dynasty and a prolific builder of pyramids and monuments Under his 351 reign the pyramid of Huni at Meidum was completed and turned from a step pyramid into the world’s first true pyramid (one with smooth sides) At the royal necropolis of Dahshur, he also built the so-called Bent Pyramid (the top of which was built at an angle 11 degrees shallower than the rest, making it appear to bend or dimple) and the Red Pyramid, so called for its exposed granite surface All of Sneferu’s pyramids show an interest in experimenting with building styles not seen under other pharaohs Khufu Best known by his Greek name, Cheops, Khufu was the son of Sneferu and builder of the Great Pyramid of Giza The only one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World that stands today, the Great Pyramid originally stood at 481 feet with a base covering 53,000 sq miles and weighed about million tons, or as much as 17 Empire State Buildings Khafra A Fourth-Dynasty pharaoh, Khafra was most likely Khufu’s grandson and continued in his family’s tradition of building After building a smaller pyramid at Giza, he built the Great Sphinx, a half-man/half-lion statue 260 feet long, 20 feet wide, and 65 feet tall The lion was often a symbol of the Sun, as well as one used Labor-intensive construction projects such as the Great Sphinx (above) reinforced the pharaoh’s importance and divine status