[Sidenote: Nativity of the divine Egyptian kings represented on the monuments.] After the begetting of the divine child—for we must remember that the kings and queens of Egypt were regarded as divinities in their lifetime—another series of scenes represents the fashioning of its body and its birth. The god Khnoumou, who in the beginning of time moulded gods and men on his potter’s wheel, is seen seated at his wheel modelling the future king or queen and their doubles—those spiritual duplicates or external souls which were believed to hover invisible about both men and gods all through life. In front of Khnoumou kneels Hiqit, the frog-headed goddess, “the great magician”; she is holding out to the newly-created figures the symbol of life, the _crux ansata_ ♀, in order that they may breathe and live. Another scene represents the birth. At Deir el Bahari the queen has already been delivered, and is presenting her daughter to several goddesses, who have acted the part of midwives. At Luxor the double of the royal infant is born first; the goddesses who serve as nurses have him in their arms, and the midwives are preparing to receive the real child. Behind the queen are the goddesses who watch over childbirth, led by Isis and Nephthys; and all around the spirits of the East, the West, the North, and the South are presenting the symbol of life or uttering acclamations. In a corner the grotesque god Bes and the female hippopotamus Api keep off all evil influence and every malignant spirit.
[Sidenote: These representations probably copied from the life.] We shall probably not err in assuming, with some eminent authorities, that the ceremonies of the nativity of the Pharaohs, thus emblazoned on the walls of Egyptian temples, were copied from the life; in other words, that the carved and painted scenes represent a real drama, which was acted by masked men and women whenever a queen of Egypt was brought to bed. “Here, as everywhere else in Egypt,” says Professor Maspero, “sculptor and painter did nothing but faithfully imitate reality. Theory required that the assimilation of the kings to the gods should be complete, so that every act of the royal life was, as it were, a tracing of the corresponding act of the divine life. From the moment that the king was Ammon, he wore the costume and badges of Ammon—the tall hat with the long plumes, the cross of life, the greyhound-headed sceptre—and thus arrayed he presented himself in the queen’s bedchamber to consummate the marriage. The assistants also assumed the costume and appearance of the divinities whom they incarnated; the men put on masks of jackals, hawks, and crocodiles, while the women donned masks of cows or frogs, according as they played the parts of Anubis, Khnoumou, Sovkou, Hathor, or Hiqit; and I am disposed to believe that the doubles of the new-born child were represented by as many puppets as were required by the ceremonies. Some of the rites were complicated, and must have tired excessively the mother and child who underwent them; but they are nothing to those that have been observed in similar circumstances in other lands. In general, we are bound to hold that all the pictures traced on the walls of the temples, in which the person of the king is concerned, correspond to a real action in which disguised personages played the part of gods.”[454]