Pharaoh (Hastings' Dictionary)

The term does not occur in the Tel el-Amarna letters, nor perhaps anywhere else in cuneiform literature. In fact, so far as we know, in ancient times it was the Hebrews alone who adopted the term; from Hebrew it into Greek, and from Greek into Arabic. In face of these facts it is almost super- fluous to mention that Renouf has noted that 7375 can, if n , be connected with an Arabic and even with a Hebrew root (PSBA xy. 421).

The word existed in full use in Egyptian, with a purel Egyptian etymology, and there is no need to see it her. The earliest instance of the title in Hebrew is probably in Ex 15‘, generally assigned by critics to about B.c. 950.

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. 830 PHARAOH ance of the feudal system of the Middle Empire before the New Kingdom. See, further, article JOSEPH. 3. 4.

The Pharaohs of the Oppression and the lixodus. On the supposition that these events took place in the 18th or 19th dynasty, ‘Pharaoh’ is a term which might well be a by a contem- porary historian of them.

But Y@6r for the Nile seems to lower the date, and, had the great occur- rences been still fresh in the remembrance of the emigrants or of their immediate descendants at the time of writing down the story, the distinctive names of the Egyptian kings concerned, and other definite information, would meaty have been omitted from the narrative.

If the account is literally true, or alunost so, it presents us with a considerable historical sequence to fit into the Egyptian history of the New Kingdom, a period for which our information is much fuller than usual. Ramses Π. of the 19th dynasty is generally (see Driver’s discussion in Hogarth’s Authority and Archeology, 52 ff.) accounted the Pharaoh of the Oppression, and his son and successor, Merenptah, is considered to be the Pharaoh of the Exodus, which some, however (e.g.

Lieblein, PSB A, 1899, 66), would place in the reign of Amenhotep UI. or Iv. of the 18th dynasty, supporting their argument by the movements of the * Habiri’ (Hebrews ἢ) in Palestine as disclosed by the Tel el-Amarna letters. The name of Raamses given (Ex 1) toastore city built by the Hebrews clearly refers to some city built for one of the kings named Ramses. Of these Ramses I. was the greatest; he was also pre- eminent as a builder.

Several cities were called after his name, and one in the Eastern Delta, in the region of Goshen, retained it till a late date. He was also active at Pithom, as is shown by M. Naville’s excavation there; but it is by no means clear that he was the founder of it: prob- ably the site was already ancient in his day. The Oppression evidently lasted many years. Ramses I.

reigned 67 years, and thus the Exodus may have taken place in the short reign of Merenptah, the son and successor of that aged king. The remarkable fact that the Israelites are named on a monument of Merenptah (see Petrie, Six Temples, pls. xiii., xiv.) as destroyed or harried rm him, apparently in Palestine, does not disprove this theory, as detachments from the main body might have left Egypt from time to time, and settled and multiplied at Hebron, round the tombs of the patriarchs.

Nor is it disproved by the recent discovery of the mummy ae Merenptah in the tomb of Amenhotep Π., for the biblical narra- tive does not distinctly state that Pharaoh himself was drowned in the Red Sea. The Israelites are said to have passed through the desert of Sinai, and wandered 40 years in its neighbourhood ; and it happens that there are no records extant of Egyptian expeditions to the quarries of Sinai during the reigns of Merenptah and his successor.

On the other hand, there is no trace in the Hebrew records of any Egyptian invasion of Palestine be- fore Shishak of the 22nd dynasty ; unless indeed, as some think, ‘the hornet’ of Jos 9413, Ex 2377-%8, Dt 7” refers to the inroad of Ramses. This king of the 20th dynasty certainly harried the country, and, had the Israelites previously entered it in force, it is hardly probable that his invasion would not be mentioned in the Book of Judges.

But it is possible to reconcile the chronology of Judges with a theory that would make the entry of the Israelites into Palestine subsequent to the last campaign of Ramses mI. (Petrie, PSBA, 1896, p. 243). Also, even on the usual theory, the passage of the Egyptian armies along the coast roads into Syria would leave untouched the high- lands of Palestine and the Valley of the Jordan, PHARATHON from which the spread of the Hebrews must, as a matter of fact, have been only gradual.

To sum up, the monuments of Egypt give us no record either of the Oppression or of the Exodus. As the story stands, there are passages in it which are difficult to eredit, but some modifications would enable us to place it in the time of Ramses I. and Merenptah. See, further, art. MOsEs. 5.

In 1 Ch 418 there is mention of a ‘daughter of Pharaoh’ in a genealogy; but not only is her chronological position doubtful, it is even un- certain whether a royal title or a personal name is intended by the expression. 6. In David’s lifetime Hadad the Edomite fled to Egypt and was well received by Pharaoh, who gave him the sister of his queen Tahpenes to wife (1 Καὶ 11), Here the queen’s name offers a clue, but at present no such name has been recognized from Egypt.

At the end of the 110} cent. B.c. Egypt was ruled by two contemporaneousdynasties, one ruling at Thebes and the other at Tanis(Zoan) in the Eastern Delta, the latter, however, having the suzerainty over the whole country. The power of Egypt must have been small, and no large monuments were raised in that period, 7. Solomon’s Egyptian father-in-law (1 Καὶ 2® 31) should likewise be a Tanite king (21st dynasty); according to 1 Καὶ 916 he took Gezer and gave it to Solomon.

It is noticeable that Shishak king of Egypt (the founder of the 22nd dynasty) is never callec Pharaoh, This is the first occasion in the Bible on which a distinctive name is given to an Egyptian king. It seems as if the vague traditions in the earlier stories were now succeeded by more positive knowledge as to later events. As noted above, Shishak was called by the Egyptians ‘Pharaoh Shishak’ (Rec. de Trav. xxi. 13, 1. 1), but the fashion was a new one, and would be little known to foreigners.

8. ‘Pharaoh king of Egypt’ of the time of Sennacherib and Hezekiah. In hoth versions (2 Καὶ 187! and Is 36°) the Rabshakeh addresses Hezekiah with the words, ‘ Behold thou trustest on the staff of this bruised reed, even upon Egypt; whereon if a man lean, it will go into his hand, and pierce it: so is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all that trust Here ‘Pharaoh kin on him.

’ : of Egypt’ is a vague way of designating the king, who appears at that time to have been Tirhakah, in 2 ir 199 rightly called ‘king of Ethiopia.’ In Egyptian documents this conqueror of t is regularly designated ‘Pharaoh Tahraqa.’ It may be ques- tioned whether there is not in the biblical account a confusion between two distinct campaigns of Sennacherib, and whether ‘Pharaoh king of Egypt’ does not refer to another king reigning in B.C. 701; ef. art. HEZEKIAH in vol. li. p. 378°.

Tirhakah probably did not begin to reign before B.C. 685. Ἐς Lu. GRIFFITH.