| In another text, Proteus was said to have had twin sons, as well--Polygonus and Telegonus--and he is mentioned in the classics in the following references: of Memphis, king of Egypt, receives Dionysus: Apollod. 3.5.1; receives Helen from Hermes to guard: Apollod. E.3.3; Menelaus discovers her at the court of: Apollod. 2.8; his speech to Menelaus in Homer: Paus. 8.53.5 king of Egypt: Hdt. 2.112; his reception of Paris and Helen: Hdt. 2.115; represented on throne of Apollo at Amyclae: Paus. 3.18.16; Proteus son of Egyptus, husband of Gorgophone: Apollod. 2.1.4; Proteus, son of Poseidon, father of Polygonus and Telegonus: Apollod. 2.5.9; Proteus, who lived at the time of the war about Ilium, Diod. 1.62. Obviously, few pharaohs captured the Hellenic imagination to the extent of Proteus. Some of their ideas about this king are explained by the "Elephantine Stela", which leaves little doubt that Proteus can only be Setnakht, the first ruler of the 20th Dynasty. The "Elephantine Stela" relates how Setnakht restored order in Egypt, telling much the same story with regard to this as the Great Harris Papyrus. The reason the Greeks regarded Proteus as being the son of Poseidon is there on the Elephantine Stela, too. It says that Setnakht was "Amun-Ra in his divine state in his journeying, being in his likeness of him an image of Temu, one says, of the Great Ennead of the Nine Gods..." Setnakht equating himself with Temu (Atum) is a clever and almost necessary device, on a par with Akhenaten styling himself as the embodiment of the god, Shu, who sprang directly from Ra, thereby allowing himself and Nefertiti (as Tefnut) to be deities in a kind of holy trinity with the sun-god, thereby preserving his brand of monotheism. These are the words of Diodorus Siculus: "A man of obscure origin was chosen king, whom the Egyptians call 'Ketes', but who among the Greeks is thought to be that Proteus who lived at the time of the war about Ilium." "Obscure" is the proper term, as the Elephantine Stela corroborates. "He was chosen, His Majesty, l.p.h., as the "Khenty-Heh", the "First One of Millions". King Setnakht may have been a commoner or a prince of the royal blood somehow connected to the 19th Dynasty. Or, following the information of Apollodorus, perhaps Setnakht can be equated with Prince Sety-Merenptah II, a son of Seti II, depicted with his father at Karnak. There can be little question that "Aegyptus", the king who lost his throne only to reclaim it later, must refer to Seti II, even though some historians of antiquity decided otherwise. If Setnakht identified himself with Temu it may have been not because he saw himself as affiliated with no royal house [as the 20th Dynasty deemed Seti II to be the only legitimate ruler among those who participated in the "feud of the Ramessides"] but due to having emerged as king literally out of the dark void that Egypt had become within recent memory on account of civil wars and foreign influence behind the throne. Another name for Temu was "Neb-r-Djer" or "The All-Lord". Wallis Budge, in his "From God to Fetish In Ancient Egypt", wrote: "When Neb-r-Djer took the form of Khepri nothing existed except a vast mass of watery matter, or an abyss of slime, the 'ultimate slime', which, as we learn from older texts of the cosmogony, was shapeless, black with the blackness of the blackest night. The bulk of this mass was agitated or heaved from time to time and became billowy, and above it there was a sort of vapour or wind. The god of this mass was Nunu..." (a water deity called just "Nu" by modern Egyptologists). Neb-r-Djer says: "...I formed a spell in my heart, I laid a foundation by Maat, I made forms of every kind" And so, Setnakht arose like Temu or Neb-r-Djer, fashioning himself out of the very divine protoplasm of which the gods were made, a divinity where formerly there had been only a mere mortal without status. Since Nu was the god of the primeval water, the Greeks equated him with Poseidon as they recognized that Nu was the father of Temu, the alter ego of Setnakht/Proteus. This is echoed in the words of Diodorus Siculus: "Some tradition records that Proteus was experienced in the knowledge of the winds and that he could change his body, sometimes into the form of different animals, sometimes into a tree or fire or something else, and so it happens that the account which the priests give of Ketes is in agreement with this tradition." The animal that Temu sometimes took the form of was the ichneumon, the mongoose. The terms "Khenty Heh" are also fraught with meaning outside of the literal one. The glyph, Gardiner C11, phonetic "HH" (hah) is associated with large numbers. In this instance "Khenty Heh" indicates "millions" by the addition of the three slashes that denote plurality and seems to be saying that Setnakht was not only the Chosen One out of a great multitude of Egyptian males but, indeed, it can also have the connotation of "prototype"--the first one of millions (yet to come), a god-king who fashioned or "established" himself in hopes that a renaissance of former greatness would occur. Temu is usually represented as a man. He was the god of "Per Atum" or the Biblical "Pithom", where a temple to him stood. "...It was thought that he was the first man among the Egyptians who was believed to become divine, and that he was the first living man-god known to them." (Budge) Oddly enough, Herodotus mentions a certain "Alexander" (Paris) who captured Helen from her husband, Menelaos, and then got blown off course and landed near the Canopic mouth of the Nile. There he was taken captive by the local "warden", Thonis, who turned him over to the pharaoh, called Proteus, who relieved this Alexander of both captive and wealth and sent him away. It appears that "Thonis" may have been just another manifestation of "Temu, Thom, Atum", the fictitious alter-ego of Proteus, who would have to be waiting on the Island of Pharos (at the future city of Alexandria on the Canopic mouth of the Nile) for any straggling vessels. But "Thonis" may have been an actual servant of the Egyptian royal family. GO TO NEXT PAGE |