Pharaoh (Egypt. Par-ō [pr-ʕo] « elevated house », i.e. the palace; Heb. Par'ōh, Gr. Φαραώ, Lat. Pharao[n]) (FARAONE (EGIZ. PAR-Ō [PRƩʰIƩ] « CASA ELEVATA », CIOÈ LA REGGIA; EBR. PAR'ŌH, GR. ΦΑΡΑΏ[Ν], LAT. PHARAO[N]))

Machine translation of the 1948–1954 Italian original. The original text is authoritative.

FARAONE (Egyptian Par-ō [prʃʰiʃ] “elevated house,” that is, the royal palace; Heb. par'ōh, Gk. Φαραώ[ν], Lat. Pharao[n]). — Term used to designate the king’s house in Egypt and, from the Eighteenth Dynasty onward, the person of the king; from 900 B.C. the term regularly precedes, as a title, the king’s name; hence Flavius Josephus (Antiq. Ind., VIII, 6, 2): ὁ Φαραὼν κατ' Αἰγυπτύκῳ βασιλέα σημαίνει. In the Bible, from Gen. 12:15–20 onward, with reference to the times of Abraham, Moses, and the Exodus, the king of Egypt is always impersonally called f.

Rationalist criticism has used, among other things, this argument to deny the validity of the Sacred Books. In reality, the documents of the Old Kingdom already admit the use of the term to designate the person of the king, although it is also applied to the royal palace.

BIBL.: F. Vigouroux, Les Lèvres Saints et la critique rationaliste, IV, 5e ed., Paris 1902, p. 375 sq.; C. Lagier, Pharaon, in DB, V, coll. 190-93; A. Ermon-H. Hanke, Ägypten und ägyptisches Leben, 2e ed., Tübingen 1923; A. Moret, Le Nil et la civilisation égyptienne, Paris 1926, pp. 158-59; A. Ermon-H. Grapow, Wörterbuch d. ägyptischen Sprache, I, Limia 1926, p. 516 sq.; Hors Apollinis Hieroglyphica, essay by F. Sbordone, Naples 1940, pp. 124-25, § 61; III. van De Walle - J. Vergoes, Traduction des Hieroglyphica d'Homopallon, in Chron. d'Egypte, 17 (1943), pp. 84-87. Aristide Calderini