Names to Conjure With

by Angus McBride

One aspect of Egyptology that has always caused me slight irritation – and probably many others too, is the continuing confusion over royal names, with one (mainly American) school of thought preferring to call the builder of the Great Pyramid “Khufu”, whilst the other (mainly British) preferring “Cheops”, and so on throughout all the major dynasties. The Khufu school, as one might call it, will refer to a certain 18th dynasty pharaoh as “Amonhotep”, whilst the Cheops school will call the same man “Amenophis”.

The trouble arises because, in most cases, we cannot know how the Egyptians pronounced their names, or  in fact, most of the words in their language. They did not leave us any helpful vowel sounds in hieroglyphic.  A great deal of detective work over the years has only made things more difficult – and we have been driven to various devices to make Egyptian words pronounceable at all; for example, inserting the modern “e” sound where the vowel-sound is unknown.

Sir Alan H. Gardiner tackles the problem head-on in his large and authoritative Egyptian Grammar stating, “Egyptology has … been committed to the classical royal names Menes, Cheops, and Mycerinus; and it is therefore quite reasonable to add to the number Ammenemes, for Imm-m-het, Sesostris for S-n-Wsret, … Ramesses for R’-ms-sw, etc.” Gardiner was British, and it’s the British who have traditionally been ‘committed’ to that approach.  He goes on to describe the difficulties that arise when we try different ways of transliterating Egyptian. Seeing how French and German Egyptologists can differ (not to mention Italian and Polish) one can see that he has a point. At least with the Greek-style  names left to us by Herodotus and Manetho there is some measure of agreement about who we are referring to.

However, many Egyptologists feel that the Greek names are far too removed from the Egyptian original – that even if we cannot be precisely on target with a pronunciation, we should at least try to get as close as we can. Take one example; “Ramesses” in the British tradition is a useful, pronounceable version of a name that  may, I emphasize “may”, have been pronounced “Ria-ma-sse-zu” – and that is how the contemporary Babylonians (who did leave us some guidance to their pronunciation) referred to him. The British version is more convenient – even to the Americans – and is unlikely to give way to a more accurate spelling.

My own preference has always been “Amunhotep” rather than “Amenophis”, and “Amunemhet” rather than “Ammenemes”.  I realise that even with Amunhotep there can be several versions, such as “Amonhotep”, and even “Amonhatpe”. Nevertheless, I feel somewhat closer to the man when using a “near-miss” version than when using what I might almost call a “cop-out” version taken from the Greeks.

It is useful to remember that among both schools of Egyptology there is general agreement that the names of ordinary non-royal Egyptians are usually written in the “Khufu” style, thus keeping the “Cheops” style for kings.  This is a handy way of distinguishing them when dealing with periods when many royal and non-royal people carried the same name. Not everyone called Charles is a Prince of Wales!

A last niggling thought: is Cheops pronounced “Chee-ops” or “Kee-ops”?