186 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 
king assurued the protection of the land of Egypt. It was a kind of 
coronation festival. On Menes’ mace-head the king is shown assuming 
the Red Crown, while before him is the Princess of the country that he 
had conquered, and below her is a statement of the number of prisoners 
and cattle captured by him in her country. 
Now what were the rules that regulated the succession to the king- 
ship in Ancient Egypt? It is often assumed that the kingship was 
hereditary in the male line, and that the son regularly succeeded his 
father on the throne. But we know that many Egyptian kings were 
not the sons of their predecessors. We also know that at some periods, 
at all events, the sovereign based his claim to the kingship upon the 
fact that he had married the Hereditary Princess. Harmhab, at the 
beginning of the Nineteenth Dynasty, tells us that he proceeded to the 
palace at Thebes, and there, in the Great House (pr-wr), married the 
Hereditary Princess. Then the gods, ‘ the lords of the House of Flame 
(pr-nsrt), were in exultation because of his coronation, and they prayed 
Amon that he would grant to Harmhab the Sed festivals of Re.’ It 
was after his marriage to the princess that Harmhab’s titulary was 
fixed. The reference to the House of Flame is interesting because the 
kindling of fire was an important ceremony at the Sed Festival; it is 
figured at Soleb, and there a priestess called ‘ the Divine Mother of 
Suit’ plays an important réle. This priestess may be compared with 
Vestia, who always bore the official title of ‘ Mother,’ never that of 
‘Virgin.’ It is unnecessary for me to speak of the King’s Fire and 
the Vestal Virgins whose duty it was to keep the perpetual fire burning ; 
the material has been collected by Sir James Frazer. This ceremony 
of kindling fire suggests that the festival may have been a marriage 
festival, and the running men figured on the mace-head of Menes, and 
in later representations, also points to this interpretation of it. There 
can be little doubt that it was a Libyan festival; at all events it is first 
found when Menes assumed the Red Crown of Neith of Sais. When 
Menes had conquered the north-western Delta, he married the 
Hereditary Princess of the country. She was probably the eldest 
daughter, or perhaps the widow, of the Lower Egyptian king whose 
country he had seized. Marriage with the king’s widow or eldest 
daughter carried the throne with it as a matter of right, and Menes’ 
marriage, we can well believe, was.a marriage of policy in order to 
clinch by a legal measure his claim to that crown which he had already 
won for himself in battle. Sir James Frazer has noted that sometimes 
apparently the right to the hand of the princess and to the throne 
has been determined by a race. The Libyan king Antzeus placed his 
daughter Barce at the end of a race-course; her noble suitors, both 
Libyans and foreigners, ran to her as the goal, and the one who touched 
her first gained her in marriage. The Alitemnian Libyans awarded 
the kingdom to the fleetest runner. According to tradition, the earliest 
games at Olympia were held by Endymion, who set his sons to run 
a race for the kingdom. In all the ceremonies connected with the Sed 
Festival I can see no feature that suggests the Osirification of the king. 
When he wears the Red Crown he assumes control of Lower Egypt; 
when he wears the White Crown he assumes control of Upper Egypt. 
