rank as chief god were appropriated by a deified hero. How natural such a process was in those days may be seen from the liturgy of Unȧs on the pyramids at Sakkarah in Egypt.[1] Here Unȧs is described as rising in heaven after his death as a supreme god, devouring his fathers and mothers, slaughtering the gods, eating their "magical powers," and swallowing their "spirit-souls," so that he thus becomes "the firstborn of the first-born gods," omniscient, omnipotent, and eternal, identified with the Osiris, the highest god. Now this Unȧs was a real historical man; he was the last king of the Fifth Dynasty, and was deified after death, just like any other king of Egypt. The early Egyptians, like many savage tribes, regarded all their kings as gods on earth and paid them formal worship after their death; the later Egyptians, going a step further, worshipped them even in their lifetime as embodiments of the gods.[2] What is said in the liturgy for the deification of Unȧs is much the same as was said of other kings. The dead king in early Egypt becomes a god, even the greatest of the gods, and he assumes the name of that god[3]; he overcomes the other gods by brute force, he
