/lit/ - Literature

>As to the origin of the king's unconditional supremacy and his special technical facilities, there is no room for doubt: it was hunting that cultivated the initiative, the self-confidence, the ruthlessness that kings must exercise to achieve and retain command; and it was the hunter's weapons that backed up his commands, whether rational or irrational, with the ultimate authority of armed force: above all, the readiness to kill.

>The efficacy of kingship, all through history, rests precisely on this alliance between the hunter's predatory prowess and gift of command, on one hand, and priestly access to astronomical lore and divine guidance. In simpler societies these offices were long represented separately in a war chief and a peace chief. In both cases the magical attributes of kingship were grounded on a special measure of functional efficiency-a readiness to take responsibility and make decisions in government. This was fortified by the priesthood's observation of natural phenomena, along with the ability to interpret signs, collect information, and ensure the execution of commands. The power of life and death over the whole community was arrogated by the king, or imputed to him. This mode of ensuring cooperation over a wider area than was ever ordered before contrasts with the petty ways of the farming village, whose ordinary routine is carried on by mutual understanding and consent, guided by custom, not command.

>In so far as kingship was in time somewhat humanized, moralized, reduced to more modest dimensions, this came about largely through the stubborn resistance of village communities, many of whose ways and modes of life had spread, along with the migrant villagers themselves, into the new cities. Under the surface, we shall find that this struggle between a democratic and an authoritarian technics has been going on all through history.

>Yet the claim of universality itself, from Naram-Sin to Cyrus, from Alexander to Napoleon, was repeatedly made: one of the last of the 'all powerful' monarchs, Genghis Khan, proclaimed himself the sole ruler of the entire world. That boast was at once an aftermath of the myth of divine kingship and a prelude to the new myth of the machine.

>In doing justice to the immense power and scope of Divine Kingship both as myth and active institution I have so far left one important aspect for closer examination, its greatest and most durable contribution-the invention of the archetypal machine. This extraordinary invention proved in fact to be the earliest working model for all later complex machines, though the emphasis slowly shifted from the human operatives to the more reliable mechanical parts. The unique act of kingship-was to assemble the man power and to discipline the organization that made possible the performance of work on a scale never attempted before.