The king and the god (H₃rḗḱs dei̯wós-kwe) is the title of a short dialogue composed in the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language.
S. K. Sen asked a number of Indo-Europeanists (Y. E. Arbeitman, Eric P. Hamp, Manfred Mayrhofer, Jaan Puhvel, Werner Winter, Winfred P. Lehmann) to reconstruct the PIE "parent" of the text.
Hamp's/Sen's version from the EIEC (1997:503), which differs from Hamp's original version in replacing Hamp's Lughus with Sen's Werunos:[citation needed] The EIEC spelling largely corresponds to that used in the Proto-Indo-European language article, with hₐ for h₂ and hₓ for unspecified laryngeals h. Lehmann attempts to give a more phonetical rendering, with x (voiceless velar fricative) for h₂ and ʔ (glottal stop) for h₁.
Altogether, Lehmann's version can be taken as the reconstruction of a slightly later period, after contraction for example of earlier pótnix to pótnī, say of a Centum dialect, that has also lost (or never developed) the augment.
The EIEC spelling is a more direct result of the reconstruction process, while having typologically too many marked features to be a language really spoken some time in that form, whereas Lehmann represents the position to attain the most probable natural language to show up in reconstruction the way PIE is.