The protesters at Tahrir Square in Cairo, by asking for an end to their president’s 30-year rule, are perpetuating a practice that originated in Egypt sometime at the beginning of civilisation. The Egyptian myths about kings and pharaohs tell us that a ruler could rule for a maximum of 30 years; interestingly, the same number of years that Mubarak has been in power.
According to Donald Mackenzie (Egyptian myth and legend) Egyptian rulers were considered to be representatives of the god Osiris. During their reign, their word was law and their acts divine. But every 30 years the kings had to step down. They were then killed and in a gruesome cannibalistic tradition, feasted upon.
The belief, as we find in many myths, was that all that is old must die to create the new. Death was not seen as the end of a life but as a necessary requirement for a new one. Thus ingesting the old king was a way to ensure that his spirit lived on among his people and in the new king.
The ritual came to an end under the reign of King Zaru who said that killing the king was disrespectful of the god he represented. It would be far more effective, he said, if a representative of the king in the form of cattle or goat was sacrificed. And therein probably lies the origin of animal sacrifice and as anecdotal evidence suggests, the term 'scapegoat'. (The latter may be completely off track as I have found no etymological proof for this.)
However to come back to the point, no king lasted more than thirty years. If he did not voluntarily make way for his successor, he was forced to do so. King Mubarak may be spared the fate of the ancient kings but he may not be able to escape Egypt’s 30-year jinx.
