54 THE PHARAOH OP THE EXODUS 



the latter becoming strong and guttural, as in the case of the Hebrew 

 Heth,^^^* which is almost invariably rendered by Chi in the Septuagint. 

 Mencheres was the last king of any note of the line that preceded the 

 Shepherds, a line to which the new race pretended to belong, and was held 

 in high honour by them. Men with terra^ teru-ra and ra affixed to it, 

 appears in the 44th, 46th and 49th places of the tablet of Abydos, Rame- 

 ses Miamun occupying the 51st and last; and the name Mencheres was 

 even adopted as a title, either in the original form or as Menophres.^^^** 

 Mencarus, the name of a god or hero, mentioned by Strabo, may pos- 

 sibly connect, since the Men which enters into its composition stands 

 for the moon, as does the Men of Mencheres, and no satisfactory deriva- 

 tion can be proposed for the cams, while Mencheres was certainly made 

 a god in Egypt. ^^^ Nuncoreus, whom Pliny makes the son of Sesoosis 

 and the same as Pheron, who lost his sight, is but another form of 

 Mencheres, the N taking the place of the M, as in the case of Memphis, 

 which in Hebrew is Moph or Noph.^^' The form Menophres, in which 

 phre, or the sun, takes the place of cJieres, which I believe must connect 

 with Horus in some such way as the Charites and the Horae connect, 

 is an interesting and suggestive one. It may be the same as the 

 Mainphre of Mainphre Siphthah, whose name appears in connection 

 with Rameses III, and whom Mr. Osburn makes the guardian of the 

 Pharaoh of the Exodus."® It is worthy of remark that Ovid, in the 

 7th book of his Metamorphoses, speaks of one Menephron, called 

 Menophrus by Hyginus, as guilty of a crime equal in turpitude to that 

 which the father of the Pharaoh of the Exodus, whether Thothmosis 

 or Rameses, committed.^^^ A still more remarkable connection of the 

 name is found in the statement of Theon, the astronomer, that a Sothiae 

 cycle began in the reign of a king Menophres, whom Bunsen has given 

 very strong reasons for making the same as Setei Menephthah II, who 

 is generally supposed to be the drowned Pharaoh."" If with this we 

 connect Sir J. Gr. Wilkinson's statement, given above, that Sothis rose 



135* Maneros may not be Mencheres, but Meni-a. If this be the case, the diflfereuce between 

 Maneros and Menophres arises simply from the insertion of the Coptic article Ph, Phre and Be 

 or Ea being the same word with and without the article. 



135** Osburn's Monumental History of Egypt, i, 334, &c. 



130 Strabo, L. xii, p. 31, c. viii, p. 20 ; vide»note 135. 



137 Pliny, N. H. xxxvi, 15. 



133 Osburn's Monumental History of Egypt, ii, 553, &e. Mr. Osburn plainly identifies Main- 

 phre Siphthah with tlie king called Chenephres or Knaphra by Artapanus and Bar Hebraeus. 



139 Ovid, Metamorphoses, L. vii, 386 ; Hyginus, 253. 



iM Kenrick's Ancient Egypt, ii, 247-8. 



