the Aphrodite worshipped by Cinyras was a common whore.(161) The fruit of their union would rank as sons and daughters of the deity, and would in time become the parents of gods and goddesses, like their fathers and mothers before them. In this manner Paphos, and perhaps all sanctuaries of the great Asiatic goddess where sacred prostitution was practised, might be well stocked with human deities, the offspring of the divine king by his wives, concubines, and temple harlots. Any one of these might probably succeed his father on the throne(162) or be sacrificed in his stead whenever stress of war or other grave junctures called, as they sometimes did,(163) for the death of a royal victim. Such a tax, levied occasionally on the king’s numerous progeny for the good of the country, would neither extinguish the divine stock nor break the father’s heart, who divided his paternal affection among so many. At all events, if, as there seems reason to believe, Semitic kings were often regarded at the same time as hereditary deities, it is easy to understand the frequency of Semitic personal names which imply that the bearers of them were the sons or daughters, the brothers or sisters, the fathers or mothers of a god, and we need not resort to the shifts employed by some scholars to evade the plain sense of the words.(164) This interpretation is confirmed by a parallel Egyptian usage; for in Egypt, where the kings were worshipped as divine,(165) the queen was called “the wife of the god” or “the mother of the god,”(166) and the title “father of the god” was borne not only by the king’s real father but also by his father-in-law.(167) Similarly, perhaps, among the Semites any man who sent his daughter to swell the royal harem may have been allowed to call himself “the father of the god.”