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by a group of intellectuals who took over a medieval craft guild and fostered what they called “enlightened uplift.” They were dedicated to the ideals of charity, equality, morality, and service to God, whom Masons describe as the “Great Architect of the Universe.” The order spread quickly through Enlightenment Europe and included men as diverse as Voltaire, King Frederick II of Prussia, and the Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. As it developed, Freemasonry was viewed as anticlerical and was later thought to be antireligious by conservative Congregationalists in the United States. An anti-Mason movement took hold in the nineteenth century, and the Antimasonic Party became the first significant third party in American politics. But the fact is that Masonry was a voluntary fraternal order—a kind of eighteenth-century spiritual Rotary Club—and not a sinister cult intent on world domination, as it has often been portrayed.

Was the ruler of Egypt always a pharaoh?

The earliest carvings and written references to kings show that the Egyptians long considered the king as the earthly manifestation of the sky god Horus and the son of Re, the sun god. Yet, while all the kings of Egypt are typically thought of as “pharaohs,” the Egyptians did not call the ruler that until around 1550 BCE. The administrative complex around the court at Memphis was known as Per Ao (“the great house”). The word “pharaoh” was attached at first to the royal palace, and only later to the king himself.

In theory, the pharaoh owned all the land and ruled the people and also served as the high priest of Egypt. But in reality, his power was sometimes limited by strong groups, including the priests and nobility, or local provisional ruler of the nomes, called nomarchs. Although remarkable for the relatively few coups or assassinations in its long history—perhaps a tribute to the power of the Egyptian religion as a stabilizing force—Egyptian politics could sometimes be Machiavellian. There are cases of royal wives getting rid of their divine husbands, and there is even unproved suspicion that the young King Tut was murdered. The intrigues of the Egyptian court are best seen in the story of Pharaoh Amenemhet I (1985–1956 BCE), who was one of the few pharaohs definitely known to have been assassinated. He is famed for a set of instructions supposedly written posthumously, but most likely the work of a scribe, in which he advises his son to be on guard for intrigues:

Excelling in thy greatness…Live apart

In stern seclusion, for the people heed

The man who makes them tremble; mingle not

Alone among them; have no bosom friend,

Nor intimate, nor favorite in thy train—

They serve no goodly purpose.

’Ere to sleep

Thou liest down, prepare to guard thy life—

A man is friendless at the hour of trial…

I to the needy gave, the orphan nourished,

Esteemed alike the lowly and the great;

But he who ate my bread made insurrection.

From Egyptian Myth and Legend, Gresham Publishing, 1907; cited in Jon E. Lewis, ed., The Mammoth Book of Eyewitness Ancient Egypt, New York: Carroll & Graf, 2004.

MYTHIC VOICES

Splendid you rise in heaven’s lightland,

O living Aten, creator of life!

When you set in western lightland,

Earth is in darkness as if in death.

How many are your deeds,

Though hidden from sight,

O sole God beside whom there is none!

You made the earth as you wished, you alone.

—The Great Hymn to Aten (c. 1350 BCE)

Did a pharaoh inspire Moses to worship one god?

Even as Egypt became the world’s greatest power, it fell into disarray over religious politics, an intriguing moment in history that might provide a valuable lesson about the volatile combination of belief and government. During his reign, the pharaoh Amenhotep IV (1352–1336 BCE) made a remarkable and radical—if somewhat mysterious and unexplained—decision. Amenhotep severed all links with the traditional religious capital of Egypt in Memphis and its god Amun-Re, chose Aten as the only god of Egypt, and set out to