Señor de Maat: innovaciones y cambios de la realeza divina egipcia bajo el reinado de Snefru

Abstract

The reign of the founder of the Four­th Dynasty, Snefru, was a crucial episo­de in the history of the Egyptian divine kingship. Besides important economic and administrative transformations, the political ideology is a very dynamic sphere of activity, nearly unpreceden­ted until then. Examples of that process are the changes in the funerary realm, emphasising its cultic facets and the centrality of the King in the afterworld, the founding of hierogamic mrt-shri­nes at the capital and a possible social mutation by means of the creation of a new palace ceremonial. At the same time, some shrines devoted to the ro­yal cult appear in the provinces, next to small step pyramids. The image of the King becomes more complex and full of nuances, as shown by the special featu­res of his titles, the emerging of a lot of free royal epithets, the development of a more canonical and exclusive iconogra­phy and the creation of new crowns. All this activity seems to be due to an effort at solarizing intensely the figure of the monarch and making more explicit his sacred nature, maybe as a response to a period of troubles and as a result of the dynamics of several African divine kingships.