Iry-Hor

Iry-Hor or Ro (as read by the Egyptologist Flinders Petrie) was a predynastic pharaoh of Upper Egypt during the 32nd century BC. Until recently, Iry-Hor's existence was debated, with the Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson contesting the reading and signification of his name. However, continuing excavations at Abydos in the 1980s and 1990s and the discovery in 2012 of an inscription of Iry-Hor in the Sinai confirmed his existence. Iry-Hor is the earliest ruler of Egypt known by name and possibly the earliest historical person known by name.

Name

Iry-Hor's name is written with the Horus falcon hieroglyph (Gardiner sign G5) above a mouth hieroglyph (Gardiner D21). While the modern reading of the name is "Iry-Hor", Flinders Petrie, who discovered and excavated Iry-Hor's tomb at the end of the 19th century, read it "Ro", which was the usual reading of the mouth hieroglyph at the time. Given the archaic nature of the name, the translation proved difficult and, in the absence of better alternative, Ludwig D. Morenz proposed that the literal translation be retained giving "Horus mouth". In the 1990s, Werner Kaiser and Günter Dreyer translate Iry-Hor's name as "Companion of Horus".Toby Wilkinson, who contested that Iry-Hor was a king, translated the signs as "Property of the king". Following the excavations at Abydos and the discovery of an inscription of Iry-Hor in the Sinai in 2012, Wilkinson's hypothesis is now rejected by most Egyptologists and Iry-Hor is widely accepted as a predynastic king of Egypt.

Pharaoh

Pharaoh (/ˈfeɪ.roʊ/, /fɛr.oʊ/ or /fær.oʊ/) is the common title of the Kings of Ancient Egypt until the Macedonian conquest.

Etymology

The word pharaoh ultimately was derived from a compound word represented as pr-3, written with the two biliteral hieroglyphs pr "house" and ꜥꜣ "column". It was used only in larger phrases such as smr pr-aa '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 the person.

During the reign of Thutmose III (circa 1479–1425 BC) in the New Kingdom, after the foreign rule of the Hyksos during the Second Intermediate Period, pharaoh became the form of address for a person who was king.

The earliest instance where pr-aa is used specifically to address the ruler is in a letter to Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten), who reigned circa 1353–1336 BC, which is addressed to 'Pharaoh, all life, prosperity, and health!. During the eighteenth dynasty (16th to 14th centuries BC) the title pharaoh was employed as a reverential designation of the ruler. About the late twenty-first dynasty (10th century BC), however, instead of being used alone as before, it began to be added to the other titles before the ruler's name, and from the twenty-fifth dynasty (eighth to seventh centuries BC) it was, at least in ordinary usage, the only epithet prefixed to the royal appellative.

Pharaoh (novel)

Pharaoh (Polish: Faraon) is the fourth and last major novel by the Polish writer Bolesław Prus (1847–1912). Composed over a year's time in 1894–95 and published in 1897, it was the sole historical novel by an author who had earlier disapproved of historical novels on the ground that they inevitably distort history.

Pharaoh has been described by Czesław Miłosz as a "novel on... mechanism[s] of state power and, as such, ... probably unique in world literature of the nineteenth century.... Prus, [in] selecting the reign of 'Pharaoh Ramses XIII' in the eleventh century BCE, sought a perspective that was detached from... pressures of [topicality] and censorship. Through his analysis of the dynamics of an ancient Egyptian society, he... suggest[s] an archetype of the struggle for power that goes on within any state."

Pharaoh is set in the Egypt of 1087–85 BCE as that country experiences internal stresses and external threats that will culminate in the fall of its Twentieth Dynasty and New Kingdom. The young protagonist Ramses learns that those who would challenge the powers that be are vulnerable to co-option, seduction, subornation, defamation, intimidation and assassination. Perhaps the chief lesson, belatedly absorbed by Ramses as pharaoh, is the importance, to power, of knowledge.

Pharaoh (Book of Abraham)

In Latter-day Saint theology, Pharaoh is the proper name of the first king of Egypt, as found in the Book of Abraham in the Pearl of Great Price.

Enemy of Abraham

Non-Biblical accounts of Abraham's life are replete with stories of his life being in danger. While the story of the Egyptian priest is absent, there are others of Abraham life being sought when he was an infant, of the magicians of the king's court seeking his life, of his life being in danger for preaching against idolatry to Nimrod the king, of his being cast into a fiery furnace and receiving no harm, etc. These stories contain elements common to the Abraham 1 story, including: