thutmose iii was the first king of egypt to use the title pharaoh.
thutmose iii was the first king of egypt to use the title pharaoh.
who was the first king of egypt to use the title pharaoh?
thutmose iii
sometime during the era of the new kingdom, second intermediate period, "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 akhenaten (reigned c. 1353–1336 bce) which is addressed to "great house, l, w, h, the lord". however, there is a possibility that the title "pr ꜥꜣ" was applied to thutmose iii (c. 1479–1425 bce), depending on whether an inscription on the temple of armant can be confirmed to refer to that king. during the eighteenth dynasty (16th to 14th centuries bce) the title pharaoh was employed as a reverential designation of the ruler. about the late twenty-first dynasty (10th century bce), 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 bce) it was, at least in ordinary usage, the only epithet prefixed to the royal appellative.
pharaoh
the most significant component of the great dakhla stela is its palaeography: the use of the title pharaoh psusennes. a scholar named helen jacquet-gordon believed in the 1970s that the large dakhla stela belonged to shoshenq iii's reign due to its use of the title 'pharaoh' directly with the ruling king's birth name—i.e., "pharaoh shoshenq"—which was an important palaeographical development in egyptian history. throughout the old, middle and new kingdoms of ancient egypt, the word pharaoh was never employed as a title such as mr. and mrs. or attached to a king's nomen such as "pharaoh ramesses" or "pharaoh amenhotep"; instead, the word pr-`3 or pharaoh was used as a noun to refer to the "activities" of the king (i.e., it was "pharaoh" who ordered the creation of a temple or statue, or the digging of a well, etc.). rolf krauss aptly observes that the earliest attested use of the word pharaoh as a title is documented in year 17 of the 21st dynasty king siamun from karnak priestly annals fragment 3b while a second use of the title '[pharaoh] [birth name]' occurs during psusennes ii's reign where a hieratic graffito in the ptah chapel of the abydos temple of seti i explicitly refers to psusennes ii as the "high priest of amen-re, king of the gods, the leader, pharaoh psusennes." consequently, the practice of attaching the title "pr-`3" or pharaoh with a king's royal birth name had already started prior to the beginning of shoshenq i's reign, let alone shoshenq iii. hence, the shoshenq mentioned in the large year 5 dakhla stela must have been shoshenq i while the psusennes mentioned in the same document likewise can only be psusennes ii which means that only 5 years (or 10 years if psusennes ii ruled egypt for 24 years) would separate nysu-bastet from his mother. the additional fact that the large dakhla stela contains a year 5 iv peret day 25 lunar date has helped date the aforementioned king shoshenq's accession to 943 bc and demonstrates that the ruler here must be shoshenq i, not shoshenq iii who ruled a century later. helen jacquet-gordon did not know of the two prior examples pertaining to siamun and psusennes ii.
psusennes ii