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© Copyright 1997, Jim Loy
These are some of the
most famous kings of Egypt. These names are all surrounded by cartouches.
Normally, only kings, queens, and sometimes high priests had cartouches around
their names. Inside a cartouche, the signs are mainly phonetic signs, spelling
out the kings name, sometimes followed by a few signs describing the king.
The king has two main names. The first one listed above is called his prenomen. This usually follows a word showing that he is King of the Two Lands (upper and lower Egypt). The other name is his nomen, or given name. This name usually follows the word "son of Ra." We normally know the king by his nomen, or by the Greek version of his nomen.
In this list, we see the king's name, as it is written nowadays, followed by hieroglyphics showing his prenomen, and then his nomen. We know these kings by their nomens. But, monuments and papyruses often give only the prenomen. And the prenomen is normally how you can distinguish two kings with the same nomen.
Here are the two main names of Tutankhamen, with the signs showing that
he is King of Upper and Lower Egypt, then his name (Nebkheperura), and then the
signs showing that he is Son of Ra, then his name Tutankhamen (ending in three
symbols saying that he rules Upper and Lower Egypt):
In some of the above names, the name of a god appears first, but is pronounced later, as in Tutankhamen, which begins with the word for the god "Amun". The two names shown for Augustus are "Autocrator" and "Caesar".