In inscriptions of the Old Kingdom an expression Pr-‘o, ‘ great house,’ is found, and signifies the royal house or estate, especially in titles such as ‘ super- intendent of the gardens of Pr-o’; but there is nothing to show that it was then applied to the person of Pharaoh. In the Middle Kingdom, from
ynasty 12-16 it still designated strictly the palace and royal establishment rather than the king, yet it is y often followed in writing by the Vivat ! ‘Life, Prosperity, Health.’ In the New Kingdom it became at once personal, and was soon 8 common term for the king: e.g. a letter is ad- dressed to Amenhotep Iv. (18th dynasty) as ‘Pharaoh the Lord.’ the 19th dynasty it is the usual expression for the king in unarchaistic narrative and in the stories, and is followed by the royal personal determinative. Certain hieratic documents show that in the 22nd dynasty it pre- ceded the personal name of the king in dates, thus: ‘the Stn (king) Pr-‘o (Pharaoh), Shashaqa.’ In formal pecdpiaons the older royal titles per-
,
sisted to the end, but in demotic the new style alone was used (at least from the 25th dynasty, the period of the Assyrian invasion), and docu-
ments exist naming the Pr-‘o Nk’w, the exact equivalent of ‘Pharaoh-Necho.’ At the same time the rs alana referred to in narrative as Pr-o. Probably not much later than this the 'Ayin was lost. In Old Coptic (of the 2nd cent. A.D.) the descendant of Pr-'o is simply trepo, ‘ the king,’ and the π᾿ being misinterpreted as the def. article, left only €po as the word for king in Coptic. Φερών, given as the name of an Egyptian king in Hat. 1. exi., is evidently only the royal title Pro.
The phrase ‘ Pharaoh king of Beypt,’ so common in the OT, is not taken from the Egyptian. In Assyrian, ‘Pir’u king of Musri,’ named in an in- scription of Sargon, seems at first the precise
nivalent to it, but Winckler (Jitth. d. vorderas.
65. 1898, i. 3) distinguishes Musri, a north-Arabian land, from Misri, Egypt ; so this equation is at least Mar d doubtful.
ishak is the first king of Egypt whom the Bible definitely names; and it is a guarantee of comparatively early date and a non-Egyptian source for the record in 1K 14”, that his name receded by the title ‘Pharaoh.’ The haraoh-Necho and Pharaoh-Hophra
is not there Saite kings
are accurately entitled as in contemporary Egyp- tian. The Ethiopian conqueror Tirhakah is regu-
PHARAOH 819 larly called ‘Pharaoh Tirhakah’ in Egyptian docu- ments, but in the Hebrew (2 K 19%) his true position is more accurately defined as ‘ king of Cush.’
1. The first Srpeteiee of the title according to the canonical scheme of the biblical books is in Gn 12°, As Abram is to be placed long before the 18th dynasty, the title here seems an ana- chronism such as is met with in the late Egyptian stories. Another difficulty in the narrative is the mention of Abram’s having camels in Egypt. Herodotus refers to camels on the borders of Egypt in the time of Cambyses, which at least testifies to their presence in the writer’s own day (5th cent. B.C.), and this, except for the passage in Genesis, is the earliest mention of the animal in connexion with Egypt ; it would, however, be easy to believe that camels were known throughout the Persian period and as far back at least as the Assyrian Invasions in the 7th cent. (25th dynasty). As the narrative presents no clear feature—famines being frequent — by which Abram’s Pharaoh may be distinguished from others, and since Egyptian, as well as Hebrew, chronology is at present exceed- ingly obscure for the earlier periods, it is obviously useless to attempt his identification.
2. The Pharaoh of Josepa. Thelong and elabor- ate story of Joseph presents some very interesting data for consideration, but they are not favourable to the view that it is historically true. Its use of the title ‘Pharaoh,’ and of Y#’ér, the late Egyptian name of the Nile, which is derived from the old form Yér, alike preelude an early date for its redaction. Far weightics is the evidence of the names Potiphera (P-ti-p-R’, ‘the gift of the Sun’), Asenath ([NV Jes-Neith, " belonging to Neith’), Zaphe- nath-paaneah (Zt-p-ntr-ef-nkh, ‘Saith the god, ‘the liveth” !’), which are of forms common after the 2lst dynasty, and not occurring at all before it. The name Asenath strongly suggests the times of the Saite dynasties, when the worship of Neith Akl aa and all these types of names were in full sumrency: A genuine Egyptian name vf the type of Zaphenath-pa‘aneah would have in- cluded the name of a specific deity, but at any rate the Hebrew author was so familiar with the formation of Egyptian names that he could intro- duce appropriately into the formula a new element p-ntr, ‘the god,’ instead of a god’s name, without committing a solecism. The relations of Egypt with Palestine from the 10th cent. B.c. onward, and especially in and after the period of the Assyrian invasions, may explain this.
In a priestly inscription of the latest period, at the Cataracts, there is a record, that can scarcely be historical, of a 7 years’ famine under one of the earliest kings, perhaps B.C. 3000, but we have no other record of any famine of like duration until Arab times. Our knowledge of Egypt is still very limited. Of the tenure of land in Egypt we know little; of the buying up of the people and their land, and the ultimate arrangement for pay ing }th of the produce as a tax to Pharaoh, not 1ing is known. To seek the prototype of the Pharaoh of Joseph seems a rather thankless task. The chariot may or ΤΟΥ not be an anachronism; its employment probably began under the Hyksos It is usually conjectured that the Pharaoh who raised Joseph to the highest place in the realm and treated his shepherd brethren so well was a Hyksos, ‘Shepherd,’ king of the 15th or 16th dynasty. But of the Hyksos kings we know practically nothing except that some of them ruled the whole of Egypt, that they riper | me mur ticularly or exclusively the god Set, and that their principal residences were On (Heliopolis) and Avaris (most likely Zaru) in the N.E, of Lower Egypt. Probably other events than those re counted in Genesis brought about the disappear.