Pharaoh (, ; Egyptian: '' pr ꜥꜣ''; Meroitic: 𐦲𐦤𐦧, ;

Biblical Hebrew Biblical Hebrew ( or ), also called Classical Hebrew, is an archaic form of the Hebrew language, a language in the Canaanite languages, Canaanitic branch of the Semitic languages spoken by the Israelites in the area known as the Land of Isra ...

: ''Parʿō'') was the title of the

monarch A monarch () is a head of stateWebster's II New College Dictionary. "Monarch". Houghton Mifflin. Boston. 2001. p. 707. Life tenure, for life or until abdication, and therefore the head of state of a monarchy. A monarch may exercise the highest ...

ancient Egypt Ancient Egypt () was a cradle of civilization concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in Northeast Africa. It emerged from prehistoric Egypt around 3150BC (according to conventional Egyptian chronology), when Upper and Lower E ...

from the First Dynasty () until the annexation of Egypt by the

Roman Republic The Roman Republic ( ) was the era of Ancient Rome, classical Roman civilisation beginning with Overthrow of the Roman monarchy, the overthrow of the Roman Kingdom (traditionally dated to 509 BC) and ending in 27 BC with the establis ...

in 30 BCE. However, the equivalent Egyptian word for "king" was the term used most frequently by the ancient Egyptians for their monarchs, regardless of gender, through the middle of the Eighteenth Dynasty during the New Kingdom. The earliest confirmed instances of "pharaoh" used contemporaneously for a ruler were a letter to

Akhenaten Akhenaten (pronounced ), also spelled Akhenaton or Echnaton ( ''ʾŪḫə-nə-yātəy'', , meaning 'Effective for the Aten'), was an ancient Egyptian pharaoh reigning or 1351–1334 BC, the tenth ruler of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt, Eig ...

(reigned –1336 BCE) or an inscription possibly referring to Thutmose III (–1425 BCE). In the early dynasties, ancient Egyptian kings had as many as three titles: the

Horus Horus (), also known as Heru, Har, Her, or Hor () in Egyptian language, Ancient Egyptian, is one of the most significant ancient Egyptian deities who served many functions, most notably as the god of kingship, healing, protection, the sun, and t ...

, the Sedge and Bee ( ''nswt-bjtj''), and the Two Ladies or Nebty ( ''nbtj'') name. The Golden Horus and the nomen titles were added later. In Egyptian society,

religion Religion is a range of social system, social-cultural systems, including designated religious behaviour, behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, religious text, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics in religion, ethics, or ...

was central to everyday life. One of the roles of the king was as an intermediary between the deities and the people. The king thus was deputised for the deities in a role that was both as civil and religious administrator. The king owned all of the land in Egypt, enacted laws, collected taxes, and served as commander-in-chief of the

military A military, also known collectively as armed forces, is a heavily armed, highly organized force primarily intended for warfare. Militaries are typically authorized and maintained by a sovereign state, with their members identifiable by a d ...

. Religiously, the king officiated over religious ceremonies and chose the sites of new temples. The king was responsible for maintaining Maat ( mꜣꜥt), or cosmic order, balance, and justice, and part of this included going to war when necessary to defend the country or attacking others when it was believed that this would contribute to Maat, such as to obtain resources. During the early days prior to the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt, the Deshret or the "Red Crown", was a representation of the kingdom of Lower Egypt, while the Hedjet, the "White Crown", was worn by the kings of Upper Egypt. After the unification of both kingdoms, the

Pschent The pschent (/pskʰént/; Ancient Greek, Greek ''wikt:ψχέντ, ψχέντ'') was the double Crown (headgear), crown worn by rulers in ancient Egypt. The ancient Egyptians generally referred to it as Pa-sekhemty (''pꜣ-sḫm.ty''), the Two Powe ...

, the combination of both the red and white crowns became the official crown of the pharaoh. With time new headdresses were introduced during different dynasties such as the Khat, Nemes, Atef, Hemhem crown, and Khepresh. At times, a combination of these headdresses or crowns worn together was depicted.

Etymology

The word ''pharaoh'' ultimately derives from the Egyptian compound ', * "great house", written with the two biliteral hieroglyphs ' "house" and ' "column", here meaning "great" or "high". It was the title of the royal palace and was used only in larger phrases such as '' smr pr-ꜥꜣ'' "Courtier of the High House", with specific reference to the buildings of the court or palace. From the Twelfth Dynasty onward, the word appears in a wish formula "Great House, May it Live, Prosper, and be in Health", but again only with reference to the royal palace and not a person. CairoEgMuseumTaaMaskMostlyPhotographed

Sometime during the era of the New Kingdom, ''pharaoh'' became the form of address for a person who was king. The earliest confirmed instance where ''pr ꜥꜣ'' is used specifically to address the ruler is in a letter to the eighteenth dynasty king,

(reigned –1336 BCE), that is addressed to "Great House, L, W, H, the Lord". However, there is a possibility that the title ''pr ꜥꜣ'' first might have been applied personally to Thutmose III (–1425 BCE), depending on whether an inscription on the Temple of Armant may be confirmed to refer to that king. During the Eighteenth dynasty (sixteenth to fourteenth centuries BCE) the title pharaoh was employed as a reverential designation of the ruler. About the late Twenty-first Dynasty (tenth century BCE), however, instead of being used alone and originally just for the palace, it began to be added to the other titles before the name of the king, and from the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty (eighth to seventh centuries BCE, during the declining Third Intermediate Period) it was, at least in ordinary use, the only epithet prefixed to the royal appellative. From the Nineteenth dynasty onward ''pr-ꜥꜣ'' on its own, was used as regularly as '' ḥm'', "Majesty". The term, therefore, evolved from a word specifically referring to a building to a respectful designation for the ruler presiding in that building, particularly by the time of the Twenty-Second Dynasty and Twenty-third Dynasty. The first dated appearance of the title "pharaoh" being attached to a ruler's name occurs in Year 17 of Siamun (tenth century BCE) on a fragment from the Karnak Priestly Annals, a religious document. Here, an induction of an individual to the Amun priesthood is dated specifically to the reign of "Pharaoh Siamun". This new practice was continued under his successor, Psusennes II, and the subsequent kings of the twenty-second dynasty. For instance, the Large Dakhla stela is specifically dated to Year 5 of king "Pharaoh Shoshenq, beloved of

Amun Amun was a major ancient Egyptian deity who appears as a member of the Hermopolitan Ogdoad. Amun was attested from the Old Kingdom together with his wife Amunet. His oracle in Siwa Oasis, located in Western Egypt near the Libyan Desert, r ...

", whom all Egyptologists concur was Shoshenq I—the founder of the Twenty-second Dynasty—including

Alan Gardiner Sir Alan Henderson Gardiner, (29 March 1879 – 19 December 1963) was an English Egyptologist, linguist, philologist, and independent scholar. He is regarded as one of the premier Egyptologists of the early and mid-20th century. Personal li ...

in his original 1933 publication of this stela. Shoshenq I was the second successor of Siamun. Meanwhile, the traditional custom of referring to the sovereign as, ''pr-ˤ3'', continued in official Egyptian narratives. The title is reconstructed to have been pronounced in the

Late Egyptian language The Egyptian language, or Ancient Egyptian (; ), is an extinct branch of the Afro-Asiatic languages that was spoken in ancient Egypt. It is known today from a large corpus of surviving texts, which were made accessible to the modern world ...

, from which the Greek historian

Herodotus Herodotus (; BC) was a Greek historian and geographer from the Greek city of Halicarnassus (now Bodrum, Turkey), under Persian control in the 5th century BC, and a later citizen of Thurii in modern Calabria, Italy. He wrote the '' Histori ...

derived the name of one of the Egyptian kings, . In the

Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
. '' Elazar Ari Lipinski: "Pesach – A holiday of questions. About the Haggadah-Commentary Zevach Pesach of Rabbi Isaak Abarbanel (1437–1508).
Explaining the meaning of the name Pharaoh." Published first in German in the official quarterly of the Organization of the Jewish Communities of Bavaria: ''Jüdisches Leben in Bayern. Mitteilungsblatt des Landesverbandes der Israelitischen Kultusgemeinden in Bayern.'' Pessach-Ausgabe Nr. 109, 2009, , S. 3–4. from that, in the

Septuagint The Septuagint ( ), sometimes referred to as the Greek Old Testament or The Translation of the Seventy (), and abbreviated as LXX, is the earliest extant Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible from the original Biblical Hebrew. The full Greek ...

, , and then in

Late Latin Late Latin is the scholarly name for the form of Literary Latin of late antiquity.Roberts (1996), p. 537. English dictionary definitions of Late Latin date this period from the 3rd to 6th centuries CE, and continuing into the 7th century in ...

''pharaō'', both ''-n'' stem nouns. The

Qur'an The Quran, also romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation directly from God ('' Allāh''). It is organized in 114 chapters (, ) which consist of individual verses ('). Besides ...

likewise spells it ''firʿawn'' with ''n'' (here, always referring to the one evil king in the

Book of Exodus The Book of Exodus (from ; ''Šəmōṯ'', 'Names'; ) is the second book of the Bible. It is the first part of the narrative of the Exodus, the origin myth of the Israelites, in which they leave slavery in Biblical Egypt through the strength of ...

story, by contrast to the good king in surah Yusuf's story). The Arabic combines the original ayin from Egyptian along with the ''-n'' ending from Greek. In English, the term was at first spelled "Pharao", but the translators for the King James Bible revived "Pharaoh" with "h" from the Hebrew. Meanwhile, in Egypt, evolved into Sahidic Coptic ''pərro'' and then ''ərro'' by

rebracketing Rebracketing (also known as resegmentation or metanalysis) is a process in historical linguistics where a word originally derived from one set of morphemes is broken down or bracketed into a different set. For example, '' hamburger'', originally ...

''p-'' as the

definite article In grammar, an article is any member of a class of dedicated words that are used with noun phrases to mark the identifiability of the referents of the noun phrases. The category of articles constitutes a part of speech. In English, both "the" ...

"the" (from ancient Egyptian '' pꜣ''). Other notable epithets are '' nswt'', translated to "king"; '' ḥm'', "Majesty"; '' jty'' for "monarch or sovereign"; '' nb'' for "lord"; and '' ḥqꜣ'' for "ruler".

Functions

As a central figure of the state, the pharaoh was the obligatory intermediary between the gods and humans. To the former, he ensured the proper performance of rituals in the temples; to the latter, he guaranteed agricultural prosperity, the defense of the territory and impartial justice. In the sanctuaries, the image of the sovereign is omnipresent through parietal scenes and

statue A statue is a free-standing sculpture in which the realistic, full-length figures of persons or animals are carved or Casting (metalworking), cast in a durable material such as wood, metal or stone. Typical statues are life-sized or close to ...

s. In this iconography, the pharaoh is invariably represented as the equal of the gods. In the religious speech, he is however only their humble servant, a zealous servant who makes multiple offerings. This piety expresses the hope of a just return of service. Filled with goods, the gods must favorably activate the forces of nature for a common benefit to all Egyptians. The only human being admitted to dialogue with the gods on an equal level, the Pharaoh was the supreme officiant; the first of the priests of the country. More widely, the pharaonic gesture covered all the fields of activity of the collective and ignored the separation of powers. Also, every member of the administration acts only in the name of the royal person, by delegation of power. From the '' Pyramid Texts'', the political actions of the sovereign were framed by a single maxim: "Bring Maat and repel Isfet", that is to say, promote harmony and repel chaos. As the nurturing father of the people, the Pharaoh ensured prosperity by calling upon the gods to regulate the waters of the

Nile The Nile (also known as the Nile River or River Nile) is a major north-flowing river in northeastern Africa. It flows into the Mediterranean Sea. The Nile is the longest river in Africa. It has historically been considered the List of river sy ...

, by opening the granaries in case of famine and by guaranteeing a good distribution of arable land. Chief of the armies, the pharaoh was the brave protector of the borders. Like Ra who fights the serpent Apophis, the king of Egypt repels the plunderers of the desert, fights the invading armies and defeats the internal rebels. The Pharaoh was always the sole victor; standing up and knocking out a bunch of prisoners or shooting arrows from his battle chariot. As the only legislator, the laws and decrees he promulgated were seen as inspired by divine wisdom. This legislation, kept in the archives and placed under the responsibility of the vizier, applied to all, for the common good and social agreement.

Regalia

Scepters and staves

Khasekhemwy-BeadedScepter MuseumOfFineArtsBoston

Sceptres and staves were a general symbol of authority in

.Wilkinson, Toby A. H. ''Early Dynastic Egypt''. Routledge, 2001, p. 158. One of the earliest royal scepters was discovered in the tomb of Khasekhemwy in Abydos. Kings were also known to carry a staff, and Anedjib is shown on stone vessels carrying a so-called ''mks''-staff.Wilkinson, Toby A. H. ''Early Dynastic Egypt''. Routledge, 2001, p. 159. The scepter with the longest history seems to be the ''heqa''-sceptre, sometimes described as the shepherd's crook.Wilkinson, Toby A. H. ''Early Dynastic Egypt''. Routledge, 2001, p. 160. The earliest examples of this piece of regalia dates to

prehistoric Egypt Prehistoric Egypt and Predynastic Egypt was the period of time starting at the first human settlement and ending at the First Dynasty of Egypt around 3100 BC. At the end of prehistory, "Predynastic Egypt" is traditionally defined as the period ...

. A scepter was found in a tomb at Abydos that dates to

Naqada III Naqada III is the last phase of the Naqada culture of ancient Prehistoric Egypt, Egyptian prehistory, dating from approximately 3200 to 3000 BC. It is the period during which the process of state formation, which began in Naqada II, became ...

. Another scepter associated with the king is the ''was''-sceptre. This is a long staff mounted with an animal head. The earliest known depictions of the ''was''-scepter date to the First Dynasty. The ''was''-scepter is shown in the hands of both kings and deities. The flail later was closely related to the ''heqa''-scepter (the

crook and flail Crook is slang for criminal. Crook or Crooks may also refer to: Places Canada * Crooks Inlet, former name of Kangiqturjuaq, Nunavut England * Crook, County Durham, a town * Crook, Cumbria, a village and civil parish * Crook Hill, Derbys ...

), but in early representations the king was also depicted solely with the flail, as shown in a late pre-dynastic knife handle that is now in the Metropolitan museum, and on the Narmer Macehead.Wilkinson, Toby A. H. ''Early Dynastic Egypt''. Routledge, 2001, p. 161.

The Uraeus

The earliest evidence known of the Uraeus—a rearing cobra—is from the reign of Den from the first dynasty. The cobra supposedly protected the king by spitting fire at its enemies.Wilkinson, Toby A. H. ''Early Dynastic Egypt''. Routledge, 2001, p. 162.

Crowns and headdresses

Deshret

The red crown of Lower Egypt, the Deshret crown, dates back to pre-dynastic times and symbolised chief ruler. A red crown has been found on a pottery shard from

Naqada Naqada (Egyptian Arabic: ; Coptic language: ; Ancient Greek: , Ancient Egyptian: ''Nbyt'') is a List of cities and towns in Egypt, town on the west bank of the Nile in Qena Governorate, Egypt, situated ca. 20 km north of Luxor. It include ...

, and later, Narmer is shown wearing the red crown on both the Narmer Macehead and the Narmer Palette.

Hedjet

The white crown of Upper Egypt, the Hedjet, was worn in the Predynastic Period by Scorpion II, and, later, by Narmer.

Pschent

This is the combination of the Deshret and Hedjet crowns into a double crown, called the

crown. It is first documented in the middle of the First Dynasty of Egypt. The earliest depiction may date to the reign of Djet, and is otherwise surely attested during the reign of Den.Wilkinson, Toby A. H. ''Early Dynastic Egypt''. Routledge, 2001

Khat

IvoryLabelOfDen-BritishMuseum-August19-08

The ''khat'' headdress consists of a kind of "kerchief" whose end is tied similarly to a ponytail. The earliest depictions of the ''khat'' headdress comes from the reign of Den, but is not found again until the reign of Djoser.

Nemes

The Nemes headdress dates from the time of Djoser. It is the most common type of royal headgear depicted throughout Pharaonic Egypt. Any other type of crown, apart from the Khat headdress, has been commonly depicted on top of the Nemes. The statue from his Serdab in Saqqara shows the king wearing the ''nemes'' headdress.

Atef

Osiris Osiris (, from Egyptian ''wikt:wsjr, wsjr'') was the ancient Egyptian deities, god of fertility, agriculture, the Ancient Egyptian religion#Afterlife, afterlife, the dead, resurrection, life, and vegetation in ancient Egyptian religion. He was ...

is shown to wear the Atef crown, which is an elaborate Hedjet with feathers and disks. Depictions of kings wearing the Atef crown originate from the Old Kingdom.

Hemhem

The Hemhem crown is usually depicted on top of Nemes,

, or Deshret crowns. It is an ornate, triple Atef with corkscrew sheep horns and usually two uraei. The depiction of this crown begins among New Kingdom rulers during the Early Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt.

Khepresh

Also called the blue crown, the Khepresh crown has been depicted in art since the New Kingdom. It is often depicted being worn in battle, but it was also frequently worn during ceremonies. It used to be called a war crown by many, but modern historians refrain from defining it thus.

Physical evidence

Egyptologist Bob Brier has noted that despite their widespread depiction in royal portraits, no ancient Egyptian crown has ever been discovered. The tomb of Tutankhamun that was discovered largely intact, contained such royal regalia as a

, but no crown was found among his funerary equipment. Diadems have been discovered. It is presumed that crowns would have been believed to have magical properties and were used in rituals. Brier's speculation is that crowns were religious or state items, so a dead king likely could not retain a crown as a personal possession. The crowns may have been passed along to the successor, much as the crowns of modern monarchies.

Titles

During the Early Dynastic Period kings had three titles. The Horus name is the oldest and dates to the late pre-dynastic period. The Nesu Bity name was added during the First Dynasty. The Nebty name (Two Ladies) was first introduced toward the end of the First Dynasty. The Golden falcon (''bik-nbw'') name is not well understood. The prenomen and nomen were introduced later and are traditionally enclosed in a cartouche. By the Middle Kingdom, the official titulary of the ruler consisted of five names; Horus, Nebty, Golden Horus, nomen, and prenomen for some rulers, only one or two of them may be known.

Horus name

The Horus name was adopted by the king, when taking the throne. The name was written within a square frame representing the palace, named a serekh. The earliest known example of a serekh dates to the reign of king Ka, before the First Dynasty. The Horus name of several early kings expresses a relationship with

. Aha refers to "Horus the fighter", Djer refers to "Horus the strong", etc. Later kings express ideals of kingship in their Horus names. Khasekhemwy refers to "Horus: the two powers are at peace", while Nebra refers to "Horus, Lord of the Sun".

Nesu Bity name

The ''Nesu Bity'' name, also known as prenomen, was one of the new developments from the reign of Den. The name would follow the glyphs for the "Sedge and the Bee". The title is usually translated as king of Upper and Lower Egypt. The ''nsw bity'' name may have been the birth name of the king. It was often the name by which kings were recorded in the later annals and king lists.

Nebty name

The earliest example of a ''Nebty'' ( Two Ladies) name comes from the reign of king Aha from the First Dynasty. The title links the king with the goddesses of Upper and Lower Egypt, Nekhbet and

Wadjet Wadjet (; "Green One"), known to the Greek world as Uto (; ) or Buto (; ) among other renderings including Wedjat, Uadjet, and Udjo, was originally the ancient Egyptian Tutelary deity, local goddess of the city of Dep or Buto in Lower Egypt, ...

. The title is preceded by the vulture (Nekhbet) and the cobra (Wadjet) standing on a basket (the neb sign).

Golden Horus

The Golden Horus or Golden Falcon name was preceded by a falcon on a gold or ''nbw'' sign. The title may have represented the divine status of the king. The Horus associated with gold may be referring to the idea that the bodies of the deities were made of gold and the pyramids and obelisks are representations of (golden) sun-rays. The gold sign may also be a reference to Nubt, the city of Set. This would suggest that the iconography represents Horus conquering Set.

Nomen and prenomen

The prenomen and nomen were contained in a cartouche. The prenomen often followed the King of Upper and Lower Egypt (''nsw bity'') or Lord of the Two Lands (''nebtawy'') title. The prenomen often incorporated the name of Re. The nomen often followed the title, Son of Re (''sa-ra''), or the title, Lord of Appearances (''neb-kha'').Dodson, Aidan and Hilton, Dyan. ''The Complete Royal Families of Ancient Egypt''. Thames & Hudson. 2004. S F-E-CAMERON EGYPT 2005 RAMASEUM 01360

Divinity

Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egypt Ancient Egypt () was a cradle of civilization concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in Northeast Africa. It emerged from prehistoric Egypt around 3150BC (according to conventional Egyptian chronology), when Upper and Lower E ...

, the Pharaoh was often considered to be divine. This precept originated before 3000 BCE and the Egyptian office of divine kingship would go on to influence many other societies and kingdoms, surviving into the modern era. The Pharaoh also became a mediator between the gods and man. This institution represents an innovation over that of Sumerian city-states where, though the clan leader or king mediated between his people and the gods, did not himself represent a god on Earth. The few Sumerian exceptions to this would post-date the origins of this practice in ancient Egypt. For example, the legendary king Gilgamesh, thought to have reigned in Uruk as a contemporary of the Egyptian ruler Djoser, was cast as having had his mother as the Mesopotamian goddess Ninsun alongside his father, the previous human ruler of Uruk. Another Mesopotamian example of a god-king was Naram-Sin of Akkad. During the Early Dynastic Period, the Pharaoh was represented as the divine incarnation of

, and the unifier of Upper and Lower Egypt. By the time of Djedefre (26th century BCE), the Pharaoh also ceased to have a father, as his mother was magically impregnated by the solar deity Ra. According to Pyramid Text Utterance 571, "... the King was fashioned by his father Atum before the sky existed, before earth existed, before men existed, before the gods were born, before death existed ..." According to an inscription on the statue of Horemheb (14th–13th centuries BCE): "he oremhebalready came out of his mother's bosom adorned with the prestige and the divine color ..." Inscriptions regularly described the Pharaoh as the "good god" or "perfect god" (''nfr ntr''). By the time of the New Kingdom, the divinity of the king was imbued as he possessed the manifestation of the god Amun-Re; this was referred to as his 'living royal ''ka''' which he received during the coronation ceremony. The divinity of Pharaoh was still held to during the period of Persian domination of Egypt. The Persian emperor

Darius the Great Darius I ( ; – 486 BCE), commonly known as Darius the Great, was the third King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire, reigning from 522 BCE until his death in 486 BCE. He ruled the empire at its territorial peak, when it included much of West A ...

(522–486 BCE) was referred to as a divine being in Egyptian temple texts. Such descriptions continued and were designated to

Alexander the Great Alexander III of Macedon (; 20/21 July 356 BC – 10/11 June 323 BC), most commonly known as Alexander the Great, was a king of the Ancient Greece, ancient Greek kingdom of Macedonia (ancient kingdom), Macedon. He succeeded his father Philip ...

after his conquest of Egypt, and later still for the rulers of the

Ptolemaic Kingdom The Ptolemaic Kingdom (; , ) or Ptolemaic Empire was an ancient Greek polity based in Ancient Egypt, Egypt during the Hellenistic period. It was founded in 305 BC by the Ancient Macedonians, Macedonian Greek general Ptolemy I Soter, a Diadochi, ...

that succeeded Alexander's rule.

Classical Greece

Descriptions of the divinity of the Pharaoh are much more infrequent in sources from Classical Greece. One Ptolemaic-era hymn describes the divinity of the Pharaoh, though this may reflect Greek notions of divine kingship just as much as it could reflect Egyptian ones. The historian

explicitly denies this, claiming that Egyptian priests rejected any notion of the divinity of the king. The only explicit classical Greek source which describes the divinity of Pharaoh is contained in the writings of Diodorus Siculus in the 1st century BCE, who in turn relies on Hecataeus of Abdera as his source of information. Diodorus slightly contradicts himself in a different passage where he asserts that Darius I was the first ruler of Egypt to be honored as a king.

Rabbinic literature

Even after the reign of the Egyptian kings and pharaohs, the notion of Pharaoh's self-notion as a divine being survived and is described in rabbinic literature. In these sources, the Pharaoh is described as hubristically asserting his own divinity and yet, compared to the one true God, is no more than an impotent human. '' Mekhilta of Rabbi Ishmael'', Shirah 8:32 names Pharaoh among those who proclaimed themselves as gods, alongside

Sennacherib Sennacherib ( or , meaning "Sin (mythology), Sîn has replaced the brothers") was the king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from 705BC until his assassination in 681BC. The second king of the Sargonid dynasty, Sennacherib is one of the most famous A ...

and Nebuchadnezzar. '' Genesis Rabbah'' 89:3 invokes Pharaoh describing himself as the god over the

river. In '' Exodus Rabbah'' 10:2, Pharaoh boasts that he is the creator and owner of the Nile. God is then said to have responded to this statement by challenging the Pharaoh over who owns the Nile, as God proceeds to create a disaster by bringing forth frogs from it that consume Egypt's agriculture. In other midrashic texts, Pharaoh asserts himself as the creator of the universe and even of himself. In the '' Tanhuma'', in commentary on Ezekiel 29:9, Pharaoh is said to have proclaimed himself as lord of the universe. Pharaoh is represented as a heretical figure who presents himself as divine, and these texts then claim that his claims were exposed when he had to go to the Nile to relieve himself.

Notes

References

Bibliography

* Shaw, Garry J. ''The Pharaoh, Life at Court and on Campaign'', Thames and Hudson, 2012. * Sir

''Egyptian Grammar: Being an Introduction to the Study of Hieroglyphs'', Third Edition, Revised. London: Oxford University Press, 1964. Excursus A, pp. 71–76. * Jan Assmann, "Der Mythos des Gottkönigs im Alten Ägypten", in Christine Schmitz und Anja Bettenworth (hg.), ''Menschen – Heros – Gott: Weltentwürfe und Lebensmodelle im Mythos der Vormoderne'' (Stuttgart, Franz Steiner Verlag, 2009), pp. 11–26.

External links

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