[vasco]

We like to think everyone was dumb but I'm pretty sure if those dudes could build pyramids, a lot of them also knew the Pharaoh wasn't a God even if lots of people believed, same as today with religions or cult of personality leaders.

[samirillian]

I think you might be bringing our mindset a little too much into a different context. Religion served a lot of purposes for the ancients.

[soco]

Then there's the crown family of the UK or GB or whatever the proper calling, which claims to believe the same divine touch. You may call them ancients if you want, but they still get to make headlines.

[prox]

You are missing the point here, while you might see a similar concept “divine right of kings” the lived experience was a lot different from modern times vs anything BCE.

That there similar social mechanics might be more appropriate.

[ants_everywhere]

Why "lived experience" isn't all experience lived by definition? And how do you know what their experience was like?

And why are you hypothesizing a completely distinct experience when we're the same biological organism?

[mitchdoogle]

"Lived experience" usually means first hand knowledge and experience, as opposed to the knowledge or information they would gain from external sources.

So, understanding this meaning, I hope it's quite obvious that lived experience is much different for people today than ancient people. Our technology is far more advanced, more information is available to us. And it is all influenced by the vast amount of information that is external to us which puts our first hand experience in different contexts.

[ants_everywhere]

All experience is necessarily firsthand. The word experience describes things that come in through the senses. Lived experience means something, but only if you buy into 20th century phenomenology.

re: changes. Yes things have changed. The point of the discussion is some people have asserted without argument that those differences lead to a fundamentally different concept of gods. There is no real reason to believe that that I've seen, and yet people keep pointing out that things are different as if differences in the world necessarily implies different experiences.

[nkrisc]

They didn’t need to actually believe it to indulge the pharaoh.

[csomar]

The Pharaoh wasn't a god, it was a ruler. I think they had the sun and other elements as "God". Kinda makes sense to praise the sun as it makes their agriculture go.

[lukan]

The pharaos were indeed worshipped as literal gods. Echnaton famously negated them all except for the sun and himself as the incarnation, but after his death all was restored to the normal system of polytheistic theoraty. The sungod Ra was still important, but not the most important. It was a complicated system and very different from our modern thinking.

[MonkeyClub]

They also had the concept of the deification of the Pharaoh, much like the Romans later deified the Augustus.