According to Diodorus Siculus, Osiris ruled Egypt as an earthly King and gave to them "the greater part of their laws." (3.2) Egyptian tradition offers much in support of this view: a Middle Kingdom Coffin Text reads, "You are crowned Lord of the West after having governed Egypt and the inhabitants of the earth." (CT I 189f-g) and an inscription at the temple of Dendera praises Osiris as the "Lord of Egypt, who governed the inhabitants of the desert, who governed the foreign regions as King, who stopped the massacre of the Two Lands." (X. 240, 2-3) The Pharoah believed that he had received his crown from Osiris - "Ho! King Neferkere! How beautiful is this! How beautiful is this, which thy father Osiris has done for thee ! He has given thee his throne, thou rulest those of the hidden places (the dead), thou leadest their august ones, all the glorious ones follow thee (Pyr. 2022-3). Whereupon the King was depicted carrying the crook and flail of Osiris as symbols of his apropriateness to rule.
Nebet Mirjam has summarized the Ancient Egyptian views on Kingship as follows:
"The mediator between humans and gods was the king. At his crowning, a new king became transformed into a living god, a concept which of course went through changes in the more than 3000 year long history of ancient Egypt, but nevertheless was the basis for the prevailing religious, economic and social structure. The theory which this based itself on was that when the king, called the Living Heru, died, he passed over to the Kingdom of Osiris (Osiris) and left the kingship in the hands of his son, just as the myth of Osiris (Osiris), Isis (Isis) and Heru (Horus) describe. The newly ascended king becomes the Living Heru (Horus) at the moment of his coronation, and is thereby transformed into a divine status. So the Divine Kingship rests on mythical precedence and on two generations - a transmission of status from father to son as laid out by the gods in the beginning of time. One important distinction should be made; it is the office of the king which is sacred, the office is eternal but the person holding it is human and of course he changes through time."
Dionysos plays a similar role with Kingship in Greece and Asia Minor. He was, himself, descended from Kadmos, the King of Thebes (Euripides Bacchae, 3) and his sons by Ariadne, a Cretan Princess (Homer Iliad 18.590-92, Apollodorus 1.9.17), were considered Kings and founders of cities in their own right. (Oenopion ruled Chios, Agrius ruled Calydon, Thoas and Staphylos founded cities after sailing with the Argonauts, etc.) In Sophocles' Oedipus the King (1105-9), it is suggested that Oedipus may have been a child of Dionysos and one of the Nymphs of Mount Helicon (though clearly this was not the case). Dionysos took the place of the Calydonian King Oeneus, and bore Deaneira by Althaea (Apollodorus 1.7.10-1.8.2) much the same way that he was annually married to the wife of the Arkhon Basileus ("King Ruler") during the Anthesteria festival (Aristotle Constitution of the Athenians 3.5). During his travels, Dionysos is said to have visited a number of Kings and their households - Amphiktyon in Athens (Pausanias 1.2.5), the daughters of King Minyas in Orchomenus (Pausanias 9.26.4-5), Lykourgos in Thrace (Homer's Iliad 6.130-140), Proteus of Argos (Apollodorus 3.5.1), Pentheus (Euripides' Bacchae) and Polydorus (Pausanias 9.5.3-4) of Thebes, and Perseus of Mycenae (Pausanias 2.23.7) to name only the most famous. (It is worth noting, however, that many of these encounters were hardly felicitous.) And according to Herodotus, the Scythian King Skyles sought to be initiated into the mysteries of Dionysos Bakkhios after which his countrymen saw him "playing the Bakkhos" (4.72).
According to Plutarch (Alexander 2-3) the Macedonian Queen Olympias was "addicted" to Orphic-Bacchic mysteries, and was seen handling winnowing baskets and snakes, hence the story that she was impregnated by a God in the form of a snake to give birth to Alexander the Great. Walter Burkert informs us that "the prominence of Bacchic cults in Macedonia and its surroundings at that time is made clear by archaeological evidence, by remarkable "Bacchic" monuments that have come to light in funerary contexts, such as the gilded krater of Derveni, used as an urn, or tombs painted with Dionysiac scenes, such as the one recently discovered at Potidaea." (Bacchic Teletai in Masks of Dionysos, pg. 262) According to Herodotus, the Dionysian connection with the Macedonian royal line goes back much further, to the house of the Argeade, who set out in conquest from the Gardens of Midas, where Silenus dwells, to conquer Macedonia. (8.137-38) When Alexander the Great set out to conquer the world, he was, according to Plutarch, simply following in the footsteps of his mythical ancestor, Dionysos. In On the Fortune of Alexander Plutarch puts the following words in Alexander's own mouth, "I imitate Herakles, and emulate Perseus, and follow in the footsteps of Dionysos, the divine author and progenitor of my family, and desire that victorious Greeks should dance again in India and revive the memory of the Bacchic revels among the savage mountain tribes beyond the Caucasus." Alexander's mother made sure that during his foreign travels and contact with their religious traditions he did not forget his family cults, "both the Argadistika and the Bakkhika" (Athenaeus 15.659-60) It would seem that he did not, for under Alexander's successors, the Ptolemies, Seleukids, and Attalids, Dionysos' worship rose ro great prominence in Egypt, Syria, and Pergamon and was intimately linked with their claims to Kingship.
The Ptolemaic Kings in Egypt claimed descent from Dionysos through Arsinoe, whose ancestry branched off from the Macedonian royal house (Satyrus F. H. G. iii p165). The Macedonians were descdents of Herakles and his wife Dianaira, who was a daughter of Dionysos (Diodorus Sicculus 7.15), thus Dionysos came to be their divine ancestor and the tutelar deity of their Dynasty. As early as Ptolemy II this theme was proclaimed in his great procession, where the glory of Dionysos is said to radiate upon the Kings of Egypt. (Kallixenus FGrH 627) Ptolemy IV made the most of this connection. I have already discussed how he gave royal patronage to the mysteries of Dionysos, attempting to codify and standardize them, but it was also said that he had himself branded with the ivy-leaf, and played the tympanon in Dionysos' honor at the royal residence (Plutarch Kleomenes 33), and even had himself called "Neos Dionysos" and renamed several demes in Alexandria after the God - most notably Bacchias (modern-day Umm-el' Atl) and Dionysias (Kasr Kurun). His work on behalf of the God did not go unnoticed outside of Egypt - Bakkhistai from Thera passed a decree, about 150 B.C.E.E, by which the envoy of the Egyptian King together with his wife and descendants were given divine honors by their thiasos. (OCG no.735)
The Attalid Kings of Pergamon claimed a similar descent. Pausanias (10.15.3) refers to an oracle of a prophetess called Phaennis, which referred to Attalos as "son of the bull fostered by Zeus" that is Dionysos, and the Delphic oracle made the link even more explicit, referring to the Pergamene King as Taurokeron, or "bull-horned". The Attalids issued official coins minted at Pergamon with the kiste or mystic basket of the Dionysian mysteries, from which a snake can be seen to emerge. The worship of Dionysos Kathegemon or "The Leader" was installed by the Kings, with the priesthood drawn directly from the royal family. (IPergamon no. 248) At Teos, near Pergamon, there was a cult of Dionysos Setaneios (also meaning "Leader") with its mystai and oregeones, and in 230-200 B.C.E.E the city tried to gain international recognition for its right to sanctuary on behalf of its ancient cult to Dionysos the Leader, claiming that "the city and its land were sacred to the God". It was from Teos that the Dionysian tekhnitai or "actors" spread, those crafters of ritual processions which were so intimately linked with the rule of Hellenistic Kings in the East.
Copyright 2005 Sannion
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