The dreams of Pharaoh and “his two eunuchs,” however, “the chief butler” and “the chief baker,” were of a strange and novel kind, and there were no books that could explain them. Even the “magicians” and “wise men” of Egypt failed to understand the dream of Pharaoh. And yet, when the Hebrew captive had pointed out its meaning, no doubt remained in the mind of Pharaoh and his servants that he was right. From time immemorial the Nile had been likened to a milch-cow, and the fertilising water which it spread over the soil to the milk that sustains human life. The cow-headed goddess Hathor or Isis watched over the fertility of Egypt. It was said of her that she “caused the Nile to overflow at his due time,” and the “seven great Hathors” were the seven forms under which she was worshipped. In the seven kine, accordingly, which stood “upon the bank of the river” the Egyptian readily saw the life-giving powers of the Nile.
It needed but the word of the Pharaoh to change the Hebrew slave into an Egyptian ruler, second only to the monarch itself. His very name ceased to be Semitic, and henceforth became Zaphnath-paaneah. He even allied himself with the exclusive priesthood of Heliopolis or On, marrying Asenath, the daughter of the priest of Ra. By name and marriage, as well as by position, he was thus adopted into the ranks of the native aristocracy.
Such changes of name are not unknown to the inscriptions. From time to time we meet with the records of foreigners who had settled down in the valley of the Nile and there received new names of Egyptian origin. Thus a monument found at Abydos tells us of a Canaanite from Bashan called Ben-Azan, who received in Egypt the new name of Yu-pa-â and was the father of a vizier of Meneptah, the Pharaoh of the Exodus. The Hittite wife of Ramses II. similarly adopted an Egyptian name, and the tombstones of two Karians are preserved, in which the Karian names of the dead are written in the letters of the Karian alphabet, while a hieroglyphic text is attached which gives the Egyptian names they had borne in Egypt.
The exact transcription in hieroglyphics of the Egyptian name of Joseph is still doubtful. But it is plain that it contains the Egyptian words _pa-ânkh_, “the life,” or “the living one,” which seem to be preceded by the particle _nti_, “of.” The term _pa-ânkh_ is sometimes applied to the Pharaoh, and since Kames, the last king of the seventeenth dynasty, assumed the title of Zaf-n-to, “nourisher of the land,” it is possible that in Zaphnath-paaneah we may see an Egyptian Zaf-nti-pa-ânkh, “nourisher of the Pharaoh.” But the final solution of the question must be left to future research.