<P> In official writings, pharaohs are said to be divine, and they are constantly depicted in the company of the deities of the pantheon . The majority of kings, later called pharaohs, were male . He and his predecessors were considered the successors of the deities who had ruled Egypt in mythic prehistory . Living kings were equated with Horus and called the "son" of many deities, particularly Osiris and Ra; deceased kings were equated with these elder gods . The tradition tended to be similar for women who became pharaohs . They had their own mortuary temples where rituals were performed for them during their lives and after their deaths . Few pharaohs were worshipped as deities long after their lifetimes, and non-official texts portray kings in a human light . For these reasons, scholars disagree about how genuinely most Egyptians believed the king to be a deity . The king may only have been considered divine when performing ceremonies . </P> <P> However much it was believed, the king's divine status was the rationale for a role as Egypt's representative to the deities, forming a link between the divine and human realms . The Egyptians believed the deities needed temples to dwell in, as well as the periodic performance of rituals and presentation of offerings to nourish them . These things were provided by the cults that the king oversaw, with their priests and laborers . Yet, according to royal ideology, temple - building was exclusively the pharaoh's work, as were the rituals that priests usually performed in his stead . These acts were a part of the king's fundamental role: maintaining maat . The king and the entire nation provided the deities with maat so they could continue to perform their functions, which maintained maat in the cosmos so humans could continue to live . </P> <P> Although the Egyptians believed their deities to be present in the world around them, contact between the human and divine realms was mostly limited to specific circumstances . In literature, deities may appear to humans in a physical form, but in real life the Egyptians were limited to more indirect means of communication . </P> <P> The ba of a deity was said to periodically leave the divine realm to dwell in the images of that deity . By inhabiting these images, the they left their concealed state and took on a physical form . To the Egyptians, a place or object that was ḏsr--"sacred"--was isolated and ritually pure, and thus fit for a deity to inhabit . Temple statues and reliefs, as well as particular sacred animals, such as the Apis bull, served as divine intermediaries in this way . Dreams and trances provided a very different venue for interaction . In these states, it was believed, people could come close to the deities and sometimes receive messages from them . Finally, according to Egyptian afterlife beliefs, human souls pass into the divine realm after death . The Egyptians therefore believed that in death, they would exist on the same level as the deities and fully understand their mysterious nature . </P>

Egyptian kings were believed to combine divine and mortal qualities