Author(s):
Auffarth, Christoph
[German Version] Kingship as a pre-state and proto-state form of rule is at first confined to the person of the ruler; with his death, the order that he had guaranteed goes under. In order to avoid this anarchy, the ruling families first attempt to find procedures that guarantee the stability of the community beyond the life of the person, for instance through establishing the successor early on, or restricting eligibility of possible successors to the royal family or to a small number of aristocratic families, or through imposing limitations on executive power by means of the regulative influence of a council of elders. Secondly, a representation of the king is sought that does not perish with the death of the individual: “the two bodies of the king,” the corruptible body of the person and the incorruptible body of office, can represent such a transpersonal conception. This requires cosmological images such as the sun rising anew every day, the Tree of Life, God as the eternal representative of mortal earthly kingship, and so on. The link between the ruler of the cosmos and the earthly ruler of the land can be established through the daily cult of the god, without whom the cosmos would stop existing, and also through divination between king and god. Although the various forms of sacral kingship exhibit different characteristics, the following typical features can be abstracted from them: (a) the filiation relationship of the king to a divinity via a (fictitious) line of ancestors; (b) the interpretation of the incontestable earthly power as an integral part of a dominion that encompasses the entire c…