Abstract
The earliest known religion is a belief in the divinity of kings. I do not say that it is necessarily the most primitive; but in the earliest records known, man appears to us worshipping gods and their earthly representatives, namely kings. We have no right, in the present state of our knowledge, to assert that the worship of gods preceded that of kings; we do not know. Perhaps there never were any gods without kings, or kings without gods. When we have discovered the origin of divine kingship we shall know, but at present we only know that when history begins there are kings, the representatives of gods (HOCART 1969, p. 7). Hocart suggests that not only did kings belong to the sacred sphere but they also were understood to be themselves gods. If that is the case, then, when seen from the viewpoint of their actual magicoreligious role, what kind of beings were these god-kings? Hocart's thoughts on the matter are as follows:
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