SACRED
KINGS
Welcome
to the website of Sacred Kings, an ebook on ideologies of kingship in different cultures, with
particular reference to the ancient world and early Greece.
This
ebook started out as a postgraduate thesis, entitled The Sacred Liminal
King in Early Greece and Elsewhere, which I submitted at
The
theory of kingship which I put forward is summarised in the first chapter as
follows:
I
wish
to show that kings are typically constructed as ambiguous, ambivalent
beings who straddle the boundaries between humanity and divinity, between
Nature and Culture, between good and evil, between time and eternity, between
(all) the social and functional categories within their societies, and between
their societies and the outside world. In particular, I wish to show that kings
were so constructed by the early Greeks.
The Book
Chapter 1 Kingship and Liminality
An
introduction to my theory and a general investigation of the cross-cultural
evidence for it
Chapter 2 The Indo-Europeans
Two
chapters focusing on ancient societies outside Greece
Chapter 4 The Minoans and the Mycenaeans
An
investigation of the Greek evidence from Minoan times to the dawn of the
classical age
sacred kingship, divine kingship, sir james
frazer, golden bough, divine king, greek
kingship, classics, classical studies, ancient history, ancient world, ancient greece