Gods’ intervention in a human life in ancient Egyptian autobiographies of the 3 rd millennium b. c

It is well known that prior to the New Kingdom the Egyptian religion had communal-type features. Gods were personally interested only in the king, who represented all society, and there were no officially established cult practices for common people to communicate with the gods. Texts mentioning gods’ interest in the life of a particular king’s subject are very rare for this period. The present article is focused on mentions of god’s interference in the lives of the king’s subjects occurring in autobiographies during the Old Kingdom and First Intermediate Period. In the Old Kingdom text of Senedjemib Inti, the pharaoh plays the key role in god-human relations. God’s intervention in an ordinary human’s life happens only because of the king’s desire, and it was the king who was to be praised for all the good things done to a human by the god. In the First Intermediate Period, kings are losing their exclusive right to communicate with the gods as the nomarchs actively and lavishly point out their privileged positions in the eyes of their local gods. Ankhtifi, Khety II of Asyut, Henqu II of Deir el-Gebrawi, and others explain their success in life and deeds as a result of god’s special affection to them, and they legitimate their actions by presenting them as the god’s will being translated through. In the specific political environment of this period, when traditional centralized monarchical government seriously decreased in its power and authority, it was «love of the local god», but not of the king, that became the key source of legitimizing nomarch’s actions. A passage in the autobiography of Henqu II implies that ordinary people could directly complain to their local god against anything or anyone, even their nomarch. Being paralleled by the evidence in the «Tale of the Eloquent Peasant», it suggests a new and still unexplored «personal» dimension of the Egyptian religion.