Because he was considered the son of Poseidon, Temu/Proteus was thought to live on the Island of Pharos not terribly far from Canopus (this being named for the Homeric character who was the pilot of Menelaus) but it is doubtful that can have been the actual place of residence of Setnakht.. The wife of Proteus was described thus: "He married one of the girls from the deep - a sea-nymph, Psamathe - when Aeacus had finished with her. " The implication is that the king married a widow. Setnakht/Proteus took over the tomb of Tawosret, who had briefly ruled in her own right after Siptah, both having been deemed "illegal" kings by his new dynasty. Tawosret is doubtless the Thuoris of the Greeks, she being confused with her husband, Seti II, called Polybos, the reason being that both royals contained the word "wsr" in their names (the prenomen of Seti II was Userkheperure) which, in the Late New Kingdom, had taken on the meaning of "rich". Polybos means "rich in cattle" and, if one can judge by the Great Harris Papyrus, the rulers of Egypt certainly were wealthy in that respect. There is some reason to believe that Setnakht was the enemy of Tawosret. At any rate, he usurped her tomb, even though she may have remained buried in it. Since there were beautiful objects of silver and gold belonging to queen Tawosret and a member of her household, the butler Atum-em-ta-neb, found at Bubastis, perhaps these were some of the items alluded to in the Elephantine Stela, which were hidden from Setnakht and his followers, not to be discovered until modern times.
Proteus supposedly had a wife named Gorgophone and, of course, those twin sons, Polygonus and Telegonus, one of whom later became king, presumably after something happened to King Theoclymenus. The only queen we know of for Setnakht was called Tiye Merenese, the mother of Ramesses III. According to Homer, gifts were given to Helen by "Alcandra". The identification of "Alcandra" with Akhenre Siptah, called a "wife" of Thouris a.k.a. Polybos a.k.a. Tawosret because of the subordinate position Siptah apparently had to assume with regard to this lady, something inconceivable to the Greeks.) Manetho says that Troy was taken in the time of this Thuoris (Tawosret), making him/her the last monarch of his 19th Dynasty. Siptah's mother
is unknown and his father may have been none other than King Amenmesse. However, Herodotus mentions that "Archander the son of Pthius" --possibly Siptah--was a son-in-law of Danaus, the toppled rival of Aegyptus who was forced to flee to Argos in the Aegean. There is no known wife of King Siptah, even though Egyptologists of the past tended to believe that he was married to Queen Tawosret for a time.
At some point Herodotus may have been shown the tomb of Seti II in the Valley of the Kings [KV15], in which he saw a crude drawing of the pharaoh standing in a papyrus skiff, depicted as a harpooner, an unusual kingly image even in the time of Seti II. Of course, he also got the story connected with the picture and heard the name of the king pronounced, which he ultimately wrote down as "Pheros", which may be nothing more than Greek for "pharaoh". But, in a kinglist, perhaps compiled by Eratosthenes from some older source, there is a "Sipthas, also called Hermes", who ruled for five years. He is followed by a "Phruoro", with an uncertain duration, which could be five or 19 years. The compiler evidently believed that the name, "Phruouro" meant "the Nile" [p-yeor-o]. However, it seems quite likely that this ruler is identical with "Pheros" and amounts to "UserkhePERURE", the prenomen of Seti II.
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