288 



THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS. CHAP. XIII. 



instead of *Apollo, ' the sense would have been 

 much better. 



2 3 



No. 448. Thebes and yfemphis. 



1. 3. King under the form of a hawk, and of a sphinx. 



2, in his usual form, before the God. 



*' It is singular that the Greeks never mention 

 the title Phre (or Pharaoh, as we term it) ; and I 

 can only account for this hy supposing that they 

 translated it wherever it occurred, as is the case 

 in Hermapion's translation of the Obelisk, where 

 in the third column, instead of ' the powerful 

 Apollo,* we ought to read * the powerful Phre 

 (Pharaoh *), the all splendid Son of the Sun.' "t 

 This adoption of the name of the Sun as a regal 

 title was probably owing to tlie idea that, as the 

 Sun was the chief of heavenly bodies t, he was a 

 fit emblem of the King, who was the ruler of all on 

 earth ; and it is one of the many instances of ana- 

 logies which occur in the religious system of the 

 Egyptians. The importance attached to this Deity 

 may be readily inferred from the fact of every 

 Pharaoh having the title *' Son of the Sun ,* pre- 

 ceding his phonetic nomen, and the first name of 



* Josephus supposes this name to be taken from Phoiiro, " the 

 King," in Egyptian ; but though Phouro has this meaning, it is not the 

 word used for Pharaoh either in Hebrew or Egyptian. 



\ Hierog. Extracts, p. 8. 



j Conf. Porphyry de Abstin. " Quorum ducera esse Solem." Vide 

 supra, p. 210. 



