The Old English Pharaoh: A Neglected ubi sunt Poem

The Old English poem Pharaoh has been largely unconsidered in critical literature owing to its formal and interpretive obscurities, which have led to its relegation to a secondary place in the Old English poetic canon. The text has traditionally been read as an unsuccessful attempt at replicating Latin models of dialogic literature to invite reflection on the typological associations of the crossing of the Red Sea. It has accordingly been read almost exclusively as part of an Easter sequence within the Exeter Book. As a result, the poem has remained unexplored in terms of its artistic quality and potential intertextual connections with other texts and traditions within and beyond the corpus of Old English poetry. This study reassesses the form, function, and interpretation of Pharaoh and provides a new reading of the poem by relocating it within its appropriate contextual background in both Christian doctrine and the Old English poetic corpus. To this end, a new reconstruction of a textual crux is proposed, which reveals that Pharaoh should be read against a new interpretive framework. Drawing from textual parallels in Latin and Old English, this study suggests that Pharaoh is an experiment in textual form and poetic mode that draws inspiration from the common ubi sunt motif and its vernacular adaptation in Old English literature. Ultimately, the interpretive complexity of Pharaoh poses a challenge to modern ideas of intertextuality and literary genre, which prioritise a hierarchical rather than horizontal model of textual influence.

Exeter Book, Pharaoh -or rather, the Old English poem known by the modern editorial name Pharaoh-is, at only eight lines, one of the shortest texts in the corpus of Old English verse. As a brief dialogue involving a question-and-answer exchange about the number of troops in Pharaoh's army, the formal and thematic straightforwardness of the poem has attracted scant critical attention, particularly when compared with other texts from the Exeter Book that, like Wulf and Eadwacer or The Husband's Message, bear a resemblance to Pharaoh in their riddle-like quality and condensed poetic structure.
Earlier scholarship has thus tended to disregard Pharaoh as either 'a mere scrap, largely unconsidered' (Whitebread, 1946: 53) or an isolated fragment of a lost longer poem or unfinished sequence of dialogues on biblical topics (Krapp & Dobbie 1936: lxiii;Whitebread, 1946: 54;Muir 2000: 686). Alternatively, scholars have read Pharaoh in terms of its typological associations with baptism, the Harrowing of Hell, and the destruction of the dammed on Doomsday (Anderson, 1984, Muir 2000, Niles, 2019. In consequence, the poem has consistently been deemed too insignificant and simplistic to be of any artistic relevance or too fragmentary to make sense of without the intervention of an external totalising context. Either approach reduces the form of Pharaoh to an emulation of similar Latin dialogues-such as the Joca monachorum collections that enjoyed wide circulation across Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages-and limits its interpretation to a narrow set of ubiquitous typological references. Hence, the artistic dimension of the text and its potential interrelations with other Old English poems outside the small group of short religious pieces in the Exeter Book have never received due critical attention.
The aim of this study is to provide a new reading of Pharaoh that moves beyond traditional typological interpretations and acknowledges the poem's position within the Old English poetics of incorporation of received learning and adaptation of adjacent literary traditions. As such, this study seeks to fulfil a triple purpose: first, it aims to restore the fragmentary form of the poem through careful philological and metrical reconstruction in a way that is coherent with the textual parallels and interpretive contexts of the poem; second, it relocates Pharaoh within the broader tradition of riddle-like dialogues in the Latin and Old English traditions in order to define its primary textual functions; and, finally, it aligns the poem within some of the main thematic strands that run through the Exeter Book and the entire corpus of Old English poetry, including ideas of transience, fate, and the insignificance of worldly wealth and power.
This reappraisal of the literary case for Pharaoh relies on a series of intertextual connections between Old English and Latin texts, in both prose and verse, traced through the presence of the ubi sunt motif as a meditation on the rise and fall of powerful figures of authority. While some instances of this permutation of the ubi sunt motif are well known in Old English studies, such as the much-quoted passages in The Wanderer (ll. 88-96) and The Seafarer (ll. 80b-88), others, including Pharaoh, make a subtler display of language and imagery to construct a poetic discourse that relies on the evocation of meaning by association rather than direct allusion. These passages, all of which are found in texts that draw from external literary and philosophical traditions, are suggestive of a high degree of sophistication on the Old 1 3

Pharaoh: A Neglected ubi sunt Poem
English poets' part, as they reconcile vernacular conventional diction and imagery with a learned Latinate frame of reference.

The Form of Pharaoh
The comparatively neglected place of Pharaoh in Old English scholarship has resulted in two important obstacles to its interpretation. First, the text is rarely included in modern editions and anthologies of Old English poetry owing to its limited appeal to modern aesthetic and literary sensibilities, being instead consigned to the category of 'minor' religious poems. As a consequence, Pharaoh has not enjoyed the broad circulation that other texts in the Exeter Book have received, resulting in scant critical attention. Second, and arguably because of the former, tentative reconstructions of those sections of the poem that have been damaged (ll. 3b, 6a, and 7b) have seldom been re-evaluated by editors despite some conspicuous metrical and contextual errors. As it appears in folio 122r of the Exeter Book, Pharaoh reads 1 : Saga me hwaet þaer weorudes waere ealles. on Farones fyrde þa hy folc Godes. þurh feondscipe fylgan ongunn […]. Nat ic hit be wihte, butan ic wene þus, þaet þaer screoda waere gescyred rime. siex hun[…]a searohaebbendra; þaet eal fornam yþ […]. wraþe wyrde in woruldrice.
['Tell me how many troops in all were there in Pharaoh's army, when out of enmity they ongunn[…] to pursue God's people.' 'I do not know at all 2 ; but I believe thus: That it was reckoned that siex hun […] a warriors were there, that yþ[…] destroyed all by a cruel fate in this earthly kingdom.'] Lines 1-3 represent a question introduced by a first unnamed speaker, with lines 4-8 providing an answer by a second unidentified voice. Where the mark of a hot iron has burned through and caused irrecoverable damage to the parchment, editors have provided the reading ongunn [on], 'set forth,' for line 3b (Thorpe 1842: 468), now generally accepted, and have variously reconstructed line 6b as yþ[a faergripe], 'the sudden grip of the waves' (Whitbread 1946: 53); yþ[a streamas], 'the waves' currents' (Krapp and Dobbie 1936: 360); yþ[a geblond], 'the mixing of the waves,' in reference to the closing of the waters of the Red Sea (Grein 1858: 351;Assmann 1898: 182;Craigie, 1923: 47); and yþ[a flodas], 'the flow of the waves' (Holthausen, 1894: 386). Of these, Whitbread's suggestion of yþ[a faergripe] has 1 All quotations and references from Old English poems other than Beowulf come from Krapp & Dobbie (1931-1953. Quotations and references from Beowulf come from Fulk et al. (2008). All translations are mine unless otherwise specified. 2 Alternatively, 'I do not know for certain.' gained currency as the standard reading through the parallel faergripe flodes found in Beowulf, l. 1516a.
Line 5a represents an additional challenge: as the key to understanding the answer to lines 1-3, different reconstructions significantly alter the resolution of the short dialogue. Grein (1858: 351) renders merely siex hun[dred]a ('six hundred'), though, as noted by Krapp and Dobbie (1936: 360) this is too short to fill the physical gap in the manuscript. Holthausen (1894: 386) suggests siex hun[dred godr]a searohabbendra, 'six hundred good warriors, ' while Mackie (1934: 184) provides siex hun[d þusend]a ('six hundred thousand'). Holthausen's siex hun[dred godr]a searohabbendra has been generally accepted until now despite some significant metrical and contextual issues, as will be seen below. Since the reconstruction of line 5a is integral to the meaning and interpretation of Pharaoh, and since none of the readings discussed above are entirely satisfactory, it will be analysed in further detail later.
As it stands for now, the poem poses little challenge in terms of its formal aspects: it loosely paraphrases the well-known biblical story of the Israelites' flight from Egypt across the open waters of the Red Sea and their persecution by Pharaoh's army, who are then crushed by the force of the sea as it closes again upon them. Yet for all its apparent formal simplicity, Pharaoh is deceptively complex in terms of its textual function and interpretation. For one thing, the poem defeats its own purpose as a riddle (if read in such way) by providing the very answer it seeks (Anderson, 1984: 79). Alternatively, as a piece of catechumenal instruction, Pharaoh does not sit right within a didactic frame of interpretation; for what does the poem teach its audience? Its focus is not on the Israelite's exodus from Egypt, nor on the typological significance of the waters of baptism or the teleological implications of the drowning of Pharaoh's army. As noted by Anderson, 'besides avoiding a count of the total Egyptian force, Pharaoh also omits the constructive themes of baptism ' (1984: 133).
Instead, the opening lines of the text establish an encyclopaedic problem: hwaet þaer weorudes waere ealles on Farones fyrde? To which the answer is, interestingly, not altogether convincing: nat ic hit be wihte. Here, Pharaoh shifts its focus away from demanding and providing an accurate quantitative answer and towards a different purpose: butan ic wene þus, that all the might and military prowess of Pharaoh's army was no match for the destructive force of fate. The textual function of the poem must therefore be linked to the interlocking threads of multiple thematic foci, from the riddling to the philosophical and typological, presented as an invitation for the audience to figure out the connection between each of these aspects.

The Textual Function of Pharaoh
As is well noted in scholarship, Pharaoh belongs-from a formal point of view, at least-in the didactic dialogue tradition that stretches as far back as Socratic models and becomes ubiquitous during the Middle Ages in the form of dramatised arguments fulfilling various purposes, ranging from general knowledge and basic literacy to rhetorical and theological education, catechumenal instruction and philosophical disputations, or intellectual entertainment (Dally and Suchier 1939;Novikoff 2013; 1 3 Pharaoh: A Neglected ubi sunt Poem Tóth, 2022). In early medieval England, the Old English dialogues of Adrian and Ritheus and Solomon and Saturn provide illuminating examples of this tradition and serve as potential analogues for the poetic form employed by the Pharaoh poet. The prose dialogue Adrian and Ritheus (London, British Library, Cotton Julius A. ii, fols 137v-140), which contains forty-eight question-and-answer exchanges on various pieces of biblical and quasi-scientific miscellanea, follows the model of the secondor third-century Altercatio Hadriani Augusti et Epicteti Philosophi, although it contains passages that likely draw inspiration from other sources (Cross & Hill, 1982). The dialogues of Solomon and Saturn, contained in two separate manuscripts, are, however, more complex in design, scope, and provenance. A first group of texts, found in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 422, Part A, includes a verse dialogue on the properties of the Pater Noster, commonly known as Solomon and Saturn I, which is also rendered in prose as a separate text; a second poetical dialogue on various philosophical matters, known as Solomon and Saturn II; and a poetic dialogue fragment whose relation to Solomon and Saturn II is unclear. A second manuscript, Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 41, contains the first 95 lines of Solomon and Saturn I (Anlezark 2009).
These dialogues feature similar questions ranging from the short and simple to the enigmatic and obscure, and from the testing of miscellaneous biblical knowledge to the exploration of philosophical learning. In some cases, questions succeed one another in a sequential order, providing a progressive exposition of how an initially straightforward point of departure can lead to the exploration of and more complex aspects of natural law, Christian doctrine, and natural philosophy. Indeed, it is possible that one question, like the one proposed by Pharaoh, results in a multi-layered answer that involves both a literal answer and an underlying invitation to further enquiry and reflection. From a formal point of view, the opening Saga me formula that appears in Pharaoh is also consistently used in Adrian and Ritheus and Solomon and Saturn II as a vernacular equivalent of the Latin dic mihi, which features prominently in the medieval Latin aenigmata tradition and, in its vernacular form, in many of Old English Riddles contained in the Exeter Book. All these texts share a conversational form and, in the case of the Riddles, acquire a participatory nature since there are no answers provided, leaving it to the audience to come up with their own solutions. However, even if they are arguably similar from a formal point of view, these traditions markedly differ in terms of their textual functions.
While both the dialogue and riddle traditions focus on the transmission of various forms of learning, the Riddles are primarily encyclopaedic in scope and arrangement, and they exploit the shaping agency of language though the coexistence of multiple layers of meaning (Salvador-Bello, 2015). As such, the function of the Riddles is to challenge the audience's knowledge and test their ability to adapt to linguistic and conceptual mystification as much as to entertain and instruct. The dialogues of Solomon and Saturn, particularly Solomon and Saturn I and the prose fragment, also focus heavily on language through the exploration of the symbolic properties of each letter of the Pater Noster, whereas Solomon and Saturn II combines questions on Christian faith and biblical learning with a broader treatment of philosophical themes such as natural law, free will, fate, fortune, and providence. Hence, their function is both instructional and sapiential: they provide their audience with answers while inviting them to reflect on matters of spiritual life, the nature of the world, and the mysteries of the divine.
On the other hand, the prose dialogue Adrian and Ritheus displays a lighter recreational mode likely derived from the Latin Joca monachorum tradition, which in turn draws from the Altercatio Hadriani et Epicteti as a structural model. The Joca monachotum were miscellaneous collections of question-and-answer dialogues and riddles primarily aimed at testing one's familiarity with biblical minutiae and wit at deciphering puzzling statements rooted on Christian learning that enjoyed wide circulation throughout the Middle Ages and became part of the programme of catechumenal instruction in monastic schools (Wright, 2013). The function of the Joca monachorum was therefore recreational in only part, as its main purpose was didactic. This is not to say that these texts did not pose an intellectual challenge; on the contrary, while some of these questions could range from relatively basic knowledge, such as Quid est mortus et non est natus?-Adam. Quid est natus et non est mortus?-Helias et Enoc ("'Who died but was not born?'-'Adam.' 'Who was born but did not die?'-'Elijah and Enoch'"), other riddling and deliberately bewildering pieces were clearly aimed at testing their audience's sagacity, such as Quis avam suam virginem inviolavit? -Cain terram ("'Who robbed his grandmother of her virginity?'-'Cain [did this] to the earth'"). The answers to the first two questions are rooted in common biblical knowledge: Adam died but was not born, since he was created from the dust of the earth (Gen. 2.4-8); Elijah and Enoch were born but did not die, as both were taken by God before their time (Gen. 5.21-24 and Kings 2.1-12, respectively). The remaining question, however, requires intellectual sagacity beyond strict biblical knowledge, as it demands that the audience solve an apparent paradox, the answer to which lies in Cain's shedding the blood of Abel upon the earth from which Adam was born, hence robbing his own 'grandmother' of her virginity (Wright, 2013:199).
In this tentative mapping of textual functions, Pharaoh appears to align itself most clearly with Andrian and Ritheus and the Ioca Monachorum tradition. Indeed, the poem has often been considered an attempt at reproducing this form of instructional dialogue form: Krapp and Dobbie associate it with both Solomon and Saturn II and Adrian and Ritheus (1936: lxiii), while Whitebread considers it 'an isolated first experiment for a projected series of questions and answers on Biblical features ' (1946: 54). The association of Pharaoh with the didactic element in the dialogues of Solomon and Saturn, Adrian and Ritheus, and occasionally with AElfric's Colloquy, is echoed by Muir (2000: 686) and Niles (2019: 30), while its relationship to the Ioca Monachorum tradition was first addressed in detail by Trahern (1970). Specifically, Trahern identifies an eighth-century St. Gall manuscript containing a copy of the Altercatio and a sequence of Joca monachorum as a potentially relevant for our reading of Pharaoh. Within the sequence of questions on biblical trivia included in the manuscript, the following provides a close analogue: Quod mille Egyptii persecute sunt filiis Israel? -Xdccc ('How many thousand Egyptians prosecuted the children of Israel?' -One thousand eight hundred'). Like Pharaoh, this piece of biblical trivia derives from Ex. 14.5-7: [And the king of Egypt was told that the people had fled: and Pharaoh and his officials changed their minds about them, and said: 'What did we mean to do by letting Israel go from serving us?' And so, he readied his chariot and took all his people with him. And he took six hundred chosen chariots, and all the chariots that were in Egypt, and the captains of the whole army.] The discrepancy between the six hundred chariots in Ex. 14.7 and the eighteen hundred warriors mentioned in the St. Gall manuscript is resolved through the intervention of the Canticum Exodi (Ex. 15.4 in the Roman Psalter), which reads: electos ascensores ternos statores dimersit in rubro mare, 'he submerged three chosen charioteer officers into the Red Sea' (Sisam and Sisam 1959;Trahern, 1970: 166). Therefore, if each of the six hundred chariots in Pharaoh's army carried three officials, the total number of Egyptians drowned in the Red Sea would amount to eighteen hundred. As a result, the question turns out to be trickier than it seemed, as it demands that its audience is familiar with both the passage from Exodus and the Roman Psalter version or, alternatively, patristic commentary on it. 3 Applied to the study of Pharaoh, this bit of arithmetic gymnastics introduces a new obstacle for our understanding of the poem: the answer provided by the second speaker is arguably erroneous if we follow the account of Ex. 14.7 and most reconstructions of line 5a as siex hun [dred]. While one could argue that the Pharaoh poet might have been unfamiliar with the Canticum Exodi or the body of commentary surrounding it, thus making this mathematical mistake an innocent one-strictly speaking, Ex. 14.7 does state that Pharaoh took six hundred chariots with himwhere tentative reconstructions of damaged texts and informed contextualised readings differ, we should always assume scholarly error rather than authorial or scribal ignorance, as the most likely cause of this discrepancy, unless we have solid evidence to suggest otherwise. Indeed, the significant emphasis placed on the Canticum Exodi and its potential exegetical implications by patristic commentary and the extensive circulation and availability of these in early medieval England make this an unlikely scenario. Therefore, an alternative reading of line 5a must be supplied to reconcile the poem's form with its contextual and interpretive background.
When discussing the various possibilities suggested by earlier scholarship, I advanced that Mackie's siex hun[d þusend]a presents an important problem: the only instance where the number six hundred thousand appears in relation to the prosecution of the Israelites is Ex. 12.37: Profectique sunt filii Israel de Ramesse in Socoth, sexcenta fere millia peditum virorum, absque parvulis, 'And the children of Israel set forth from Ramesse to Socoth, being about six hundred thousand men on foot, excluding children.' Six hundred thousand refers here not to the numbers in Pharaoh's host, but to the Israelites leaving the land of Egypt, which renders Mackie's suggested reconstruction inaccurate by the source material from which the poem draws. On the other hand, maintaining siex hundred still leaves the issue of mathematical and exegetical error unsolved. Moreover, accepting Holthausen's reconstruction of the half-line as siex hun[dred godr]a requires that we ignore an ostensible metrical issue: this reading presents three lifts in the on-verse (siex, hun-, god-), thus forcing an anomalous or unmetrical structure on the text. Even if we forcibly read hundred as unstressed, this would still require the presence of double alliteration to be an acceptable Type A2, which is not the case (Terasawa 2011: 37).
To  respectively (1970: 167, esp. n. 9). However, this would involve the coinage of a new hapax legomenon and the construction of an awkwardly expanded Type D, which the absence of double alliteration makes unfeasible (Terasawa 2011: 40-42). On the other hand, siex hun[d þriw]a would be a perfectly acceptable as a Type A2 (/ \ / x) where resolution on þriwa is suspended following a short, stressed syllable (Terasawa 2011: 31, 37, 55-56). Were this reconstruction deemed too short in relation to the gap in the manuscript, siex hund[dred þriw]a would still work as a Type E with resolution on þriwa (/ \ x /) (Terasawa 2011: 42-43), hence maintaining metrical balance without altering the meaning of the half-line. In terms of the overall sense of the line, that searohaebbendra refers to 'those who carry weapons' in a literal sense (i.e., the actual armed warriors in Pharaoh's army) seems more logical than imposing a metonymical value that sees the chariots reconceptualised as a single armed unit, which further reinforces the reading 'three times six hundred,' based on the Canticum Exodi. Hence, the reconstructed answer would thus read siex hun[d þriw]a searohaebbendra, 'thrice six hundred warriors:' namely, eighteen hundred.
Line 5a is therefore important not just to restore the poem to its original form, but also to adequately represent some of the textual functions associated with medieval dialogue literature. By following the account of Ex. 14.7 alone, earlier reconstructions missed the riddling element of the opening question and narrowed the range of textual functions of Pharaoh to a fundamentally didactic purpose. However, as mentioned above, Pharaoh stands at the crossroads of catechumenal instruction and intellectual challenge or entertainment. It shares features with the dialogic Solomon and Saturn and Adrian and Ritheus, and the Latin Ioca Monachorum, but its inclusion in the Exeter Book, where several Riddles share the Saga me formula and invite their audience to engage in complex conversation with the texts and their use of language, suggests a conversational rather than strictly unidirectional didactic function. And yet, Pharaoh diverges from the Riddles in one fundamental aspect: it provides the answer to its own question and does so even at the cost of sacrificing any potential challenge it may pose to its audience. As a result, we cannot immediately identify Pharaoh with a specific textual function, unless we contextualise it within 1 3 Pharaoh: A Neglected ubi sunt Poem an alternative frame of reference that might provide further information about the poem's meaning and how it relates to its formal and functional aspects.
However, Pharaoh is striking for its lack of narrative and contextual detail. Despite alluding to a well-known biblical episode-or perhaps precisely because it is so well known-the poet does not elaborate either on the details of the Israelites' flight from Egypt or on its typological significance. Consequently, scholars have often provided a wealth of supplementary information that the Old English poet might have had in mind but chose to omit from the text, including the importance of the crossing of the Red Sea within Salvation History, its place in the liturgy, and the potential implications of Pharaoh being part of a self-contained textual sequence within the Exeter Book. Reading Pharaoh against its typological, liturgical, and doctrinal background is a valuable approach that contributes to locate the poem within a larger supra-textual structure, but it falls short of providing an interpretation of the poem qua poem. In other words, Pharaoh becomes a codified verse rendering of a piece of Christian doctrine, so that its form, function, and interpretation are inevitable channelled through its strictly instructional dimension: the poem is a didactic/catechumenal dialogue aimed at reminding its audience about the importance of baptism, the Harrowing of Hell, and the Judgement of the Doomed, and should therefore be read as a 'fragment' of a liturgical poetic sequence.
Pharaoh thus stands somewhat isolated from the rest of the Old English poetic corpus insofar as the stylistic qualities, intertextual connections, and use of associative reading strategies that we usually find in virtually every Old English poem have remained unexplored. This lack of a detailed stylistic analysis of Pharaoh has much to do with the need to reappraise its formal elements and secondary textual functions. In so short a poem as Pharaoh every word acquires individual significance, so that what the poet chooses not to say, what information he deliberately omits, is just as important as what is said. Pharaoh opens with a question-a deceptively straightforward one-and closes with an intentionally ambiguous and somewhat insincere answer that not only denies its own accuracy but goes on to comment on matters beyond the strict scope of the question. These are aspects of fate, transience, and the demise of worldly power; topics that are familiar to Old English poets and audiences, and which provide the key to solving Pharaoh's riddle.

The Interpretation of Pharaoh
The first and most extensive treatment of Pharaoh's typological implications is Anderson's study of an 'Easter Riddle' sequence in the Exeter Book, which would run from The Wife's Lament through The Ruin. Anderson considers this long concatenation of twelve poems as a highly symbolic and allusive set that 'may be read as a riddlic exercise in the divine mysteries which free man from the strife, decay, and wavering fortunes of this world ' (1984: 84). Pharaoh's tangential allusion to the crossing of the Red Sea reflects, according to Anderson, 'the centuries-old typology of baptism from the readings of the Easter Vigil,' and reminds its audience of 'the divine rescue by water and the spirit as it was foreshadowed at the Red Sea ' (1984: 81). While Anderson later concedes that Pharaoh does not exploit the potential symbolism of the crossing of the Red Sea in a constructive way by omitting any reference to its ties with baptism, the Harrowing of Hell and the destruction of the Damned at Doomsday, he concludes that Pharaoh 'is intended to riddle on that suspended moment before the vigil service begins…when the vast communion of the faithful, numberless as Pharaoh's army or the saved throng of Israelites, anticipates Easter joy ' (1984: 133).
A similar reading is offered by Bernard Muir in his critical edition of the Exeter Book, as he detects 'a strong thematic link in the series of poems from Judgment Day I to Homiletic Fragment II, all of which are concerned with aspects of the Easter liturgical season ' (2000: 23). Muir sees the strategic placement of these texts as 'the work of an anthologist with a purpose-it recalls that, throughout Salvation History, for Christians life has been renewed repeatedly through water ' (2000: 24). Within this contextual environment, Pharaoh represents 'a central element in Salvation History, the beginning of the history of Israel as God's Chosen People,' and its typological significance 'extends and develops themes introduced in poems which precede and follow it', including aspects of destruction, rebirth, and renewal (2000: 686). Finally, John Niles draws attention to how the Exeter Book is 'ordered in part, though not throughout, according to the shape of the liturgical year,' and how Pharaoh 'calls to mind the Christian exegetical tradition that associates the drowning of Pharaoh's army with the fate of the damned at Doomsday [and] the rite of baptism seen as a means of salvation' (2019: 73-74). Niles later associates Pharaoh with The Ruin in terms of 'the widespread medieval belief' that civilisations 'perished because divine wrath had descended on them,' and how this belief was 'rooted in biblical authority, as attested by such events as the drowning of Pharaoh's army in the Red Sea ' (2019: 190). This parallel will acquire greater relevance in the context of the analysis provided below.
The rich interpretations provided by Anderson, Muir, and Niles nonetheless oversee a fundamental aspect of Pharaoh: the poet never focuses on either the miraculous salvation of the Israelites or its teleological significance, nor is there any further elaboration on the eschatological resonances of the drowning of Pharaoh's army. Instead, the poet emphasises the very act of destruction and its crushing, absolute quality: Pharaoh's troops were not just overcome by the closing of the Red Sea, they were destroyed, devoured by fate, obliterated. The semantic range of the verb forniman therefore deserves closer scrutiny, particularly since it is the only verb indicating action in the second half of the poem (the remaining three being witan, wenan, and wesan, all of which refer to mental exercise or static states of matter), so that it carries exceptional semantic and syntactical force.
In a general sense, forniman takes the meaning of 'to seize,' 'to carry off,' 'to take away,' or 'to do away [with]'. 4 Throughout the Old English poetic corpus, however, forniman consistently takes the latter meaning in an absolute sense, and is often used as an indicator of destruction through God's wrathful intervention, whether as a result of direct agency, as in the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis, l. 2550b), the drowning of Pharaoh and the pagan Eleusius (Psalm 77, l. 53; Juliana, l.

3
Pharaoh: A Neglected ubi sunt Poem 675b), and the general destruction of God's enemies (Psalms 72,l. 16;77,l. 47;80,l. 13;and 135,l. 20), or through the intervention of the Saints, as in Andrew's flooding and harrowing of Mermedonia (Andreas 1531b). The use of forniman in Pharaoh should thus be read as a veiled allusion to God's destructive agency that would have been recognisable to audiences familiar with the representation of divine punishment in Old English verse.
And yet, God is notably absent in Pharaoh except for the poet's succinct reference to the Israelites as the Chosen People; moreover, no explicit condemnation of Pharaoh is provided, unlike in the lengthier poetic account of the biblical episode: the Junius 11 poem Exodus. It is startling that Pharaoh has never been discussed in relation to Exodus, particularly considering how both texts share a common theme and cover the same source material yet greatly differ in terms of form, scope, and poetic mode. In Exodus, Pharaoh is referred to as Godes ansacan, 'God's enemy,' (ll. 15a, 503b) a title that in Old English poetry is otherwise reserved to Satan (Genesis, l. 442b; Christ and Satan,ll. 190a,268b,279b,339b,717b) and Grendel (Beowulf, ll. 786b, 1682b). He and the Egyptians are said to be synfullra sweot, 'a sinful host' (l. 497a), wið God wunnon, 'contending against God,' (l. 515b), and their drowning is handweorc Godes, 'God's handiwork' (l. 493b). In addition to this, in Exodus the crossing of the Red Sea and the drowning of the Egyptians are presented as both a renewal of God's Covenant with Israel and as a prefiguration of Doomsday (cf. ll. 526-564). This double placement is consistent with the construction of Junius 11 as a versified narrative of Salvation History that repeatedly points backward to previous Covenants between God and man from Adam to Christ, and forward to Judgment Day, from the Fall of Angels to the Judgement of the Damned. 5 By contrast, Pharaoh stands in apparent contextual isolation since, as indicated above, it does not elaborate on the typological significance of the biblical episode.
A significant point of contact between these two texts that helps us elucidate the textual function and meaning of Pharaoh is the Exodus poet's unique use of the collocation wyrd mid waege as part of the phrase ac behindan beleac / wyrd mid waege, 'but fate enclosed them from behind with the wave' (ll. 457b-458a). Joined through alliteration and syntax, fate and flood are seen here as intrinsically linked, thereby echoing Pharaoh's yþa faergripe / wraþe wyrde, 'the sudden grip of waves [destroyed them] by a cruel [act of] fate (ll. 7b-8a). In Exodus, then, fate, divine punishment, and the destructive force of the sea are seen as part of the same act of God's retribution against the Egyptians; in Pharaoh, on the other hand, this triad is brought together by forniman as indicative of God's punitive intervention. Beyond its associations with the destructive agency of God, forniman is commonly used in reference to death caused by external agency, whether killed by sword (mostly in Beowulf) or drowned in battle, or as part of one's allotted fate. 6 The boundaries of this semantic range are often permeable and deliberately ambiguous, so that, for example, the drowning of the Mermedonians is described in terms of how guðraes fornam / þurh sealtne weg,' 'the rush of battle took them away by use of the salty wave' (ll. 151b-32a), equating the violence of the flood with the tumult of battle while implying its divinely ordained origin. Similarly, in Elene, after Constantine has a vision of the Cross, his enemies are defeated, sume wig fornam, 'strife took some' (l. 131b), sume frinc fornam, 'drowning took some' (l. 136), and victory is achieved by divine intervention. Later, when Elene threatens the Jews þaet eow in beorge bael fornimeð, 'that a pyre will consume you on the hill' (l. 578) if they do not reveal the site of the Cross, thereby echoing the burning of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis and James and John's threat to the Samaritans ðaet fyr cume of heofone, and fornime hig, 'that fire might come down from heaven and consume them' (Lk. 9.54), again indicating that their punitive agency carries divine authority. 7 Similarly, forniman can refer to the decay and extermination of civilisation as part of man's fate. In The Wanderer, The Ruin, and Beowulf, forninam appears in collocation with swylt, wig, deað, and guð (or compounds thereof) to describe the fall of kings and noblemen of old whose deaths are attributed to armed conflict but are presented as part of the workings of fate (The Wanderer, l. 80b; The Ruin, l. 26a; Beowulf, ll. 2236b and 2249b). The association between conflict and fate is implied in l. 99 of The Wanderer, as the speaker reflects on eorlas fornoman asca þryþe, 'the hosts of spears took the noblemen away' immediately following the ubi sunt passage on the mutability of worldly prosperity and the sweeping force of fate, and once in Beowulf, where Hygelac's death during the Frisian raids is presented as hyne wyrd fornam / syþðan he for wlenco wean ahsode, 'fate carried him off after he sought conflict out of pride ' (ll. 1205b-1206). The semantic range of forniman thus brings together fate, armed conflict, and divine retribution, all of which are central thematic concerns in the Old English Exodus. Through strategic use of highly allusive poetic diction, the Pharaoh poet condenses the narrative and symbolic weight of Exodus and integrates it within a complex web of meanings and intertextual connections that brings it close to textual traditions beyond the scope of religious didacticism, from Beowulf to The Ruin.
However, the poetic density of the second half of Pharaoh still seems disconnected from the otherwise straightforward opening question. How is the number of troops in Pharaoh's army relevant in any way to the subtle exploration of the themes introduced by the second speaker, and how do the two clearly differentiated sections of Pharaoh construct a coherent discourse that might lead its audience to reflect on such themes? The key to reconstructing Pharaoh as a formally cogent text that relies Footnote 6 (continued) took him away' (line 2772b), and irenna ecgas fornamon, 'the iron blades had taken him away' (line 2828b) in relation to the dragon's death. It is interesting to consider the implications of Grendel's actions and death, as he godes yrre baer, 'carried God's anger' (line 711b), and the dragon's death as part of a macrocosmic conflict with eschatological overtones as implied by the semantic range of forniman. 7 All quotations and references from the Old English Gospels come from Liuzza's edition (1994).

3
Pharaoh: A Neglected ubi sunt Poem on sophisticated intertextual allusion to fulfil a conversational, riddling, instructional, and philosophical function lies in recognising its affinities with a common medieval motif: the ubi sunt lament. Reduced to its essential constituents, the ubi sunt motif displays a rhetorical question about the fate of a significant historical figure or cultural reference long departed, to then engage in a meditative lament on mortality, life's transience, and the destructive agency of fate. The use of forniman brings together, as we have seen, recurrent ideas in the treatment of fate and mortality in Old English literature, including the decisive influence of divine will. As such, all the fundamental elements of the ubi sunt motif are present in Pharaoh, if only in an ingeniously reconfigured form.
The origins of the ubi sunt motif are found in two biblical passages. The first of these, Bar. 3.16-19, focuses on the disappearance of kings and princes and the fleetingness of worldly power: [Where are the princes of nations, and those who hold power over the beasts that are on the earth, who frolic with the birds up in the air, who hoard up the gold and silver in which men put their trust, and whose amassing knows no end? The biblical passage goes on to provide several similes that convey the fleetingness of human existence, such as the passing of a ship through the waves or the flight of a bird through the air that leave no trail or trace behind, followed by an exhortation to dwell in the protection of the Lord in the hope obtaining eternal stability and security in Heaven. The motif was expanded upon and popularised by Isidore of Seville in Book II of his Synonyma, or De lamentationum animae peccatricis libri duo (The Lamentations of a Sinful Soul, in Two Books). The Synonyma were particularly influential because they provided a fruitful source for variation and reworking of familiar biblical formulae and imagery for their incorporation into homilies and sermons, as well as a variety of other forms and genres. The first book of the Synonyma consists of three sections: a series of lamentations voiced by a sinner despairing of redemption; a dialogue between the sinner and Reason, in which the latter shows the value of guilt and regret to seek redemption; and a second monologue in which the sinner expresses a renewed hope for salvation. The second book provides a set of norma vivendi for the penitent sinner, voiced again by Reason. These precepts include, among other topics, a series of reflections on the fleetingness of worldly joys and an admonition to detach ourselves from love of this world. It is in this last section that we find the following ubi sunt passage: 91. Brevis est huius mundi felicitas, modica est huius seculi gloria, caduca est, et fragilis temporalis potentia. Dic, ubi sunt reges, ubi principes, ubi imperatores, ubi locupletes rerum, ubi potentes seculi, ubi divites mundi; quasi umbra transierunt, velut somnium evanuerunt. Quaeruntur, et non sunt.
[91. Fleeting is the bliss of this world, insignificant is the glory of this age, passing and frail is temporal power. Say, where are the kings? Where the princes, where the emperors? Where are those replete with riches? Where are the powerful people of the age, where the wealthy of the world? They have passed on like a shadow, vanished like a dream. They are sought and exist not.] Isidore significantly elaborates on the list of potentes seculi, taking the original principes from the book of Baruch and including other political authorities and influential figures, including emperors and kings, and anyone deemed worthy of renown. The opportunity for variation and improvisation provided by the Synonyma is crucial to understand the development of the ubi sunt motif as a widely popular motif in Latin literature as well as in vernacular adaptations, including Old English prose and verse. Claudia Di Sciacca (2008) has drawn attention to how the influence of Isidore's flexible model underlies Old English homiletic passages, of which Vercelli X, 231-45 is particularly relevant here: For ϸan nis naht ϸysses middangeardes wlite 7 ϸysse worulde wela; he is hwilendlic 7 yfellic 7 forwordenlic, swa ða rican syndon her in worulde. / Hwaer syndon ϸa rican caseras 7 cyningas ϸa ϸe gio waeron, oððe ϸa cyningas ϸe we io cuðon. Hwaer syndon ϸa ealdormen ϸa ϸe bebodu setton.
[Therefore, this earth's beauty and this world's prosperity is nothing; it is transitory, and devious, and perishable, as are the powerful here in the world. Where are the powerful caesars and kings that once were, or the kings we once knew? Where are the elders who made decrees? […] So fleeting is that excessive love of earthly treasures; it is even like the showers of rain, when it pours most heavily from the heavens and then quickly glides away.] The presence of caseras as part of the list of political powers introduces a new element in Vercelli X: the coexistence of a familiar figure of authority (cyningas and ealdormen) and a historically removed one (caseras), thereby bringing together not just the present and immediate past of the speaker and their audience but the more distant times of Classical antiquity. This interaction of past and present, familiar and remote, medieval vernacular and Classical latinity, represents the successful incorporation of the ubi sunt motif beyond the strict confines of translations and adaptations of Latin materials, and its recontextualisation 1 3 Pharaoh: A Neglected ubi sunt Poem within Old English cultural parameters. The invocation of the unfamiliar ancient past alongside the recognisable presence of kings and elders past, present, and (implicitly) future confers the passage with an unusually grim gravitas and invites reflection on how all civilisations, regardless of time and place, are subject to the inevitable mutability of fate.
The incorporation of the ubi sunt motif into the conventional modes of expression of Old English literature is elevated to an even higher degree of sophistication in its poetic adaptation. In a pioneering study, James E. Cross (1956)  Again, the juxtaposition of cyningas and caseras brings the Latin tradition and the Old English aesthetics of the familiar together to construct a powerful image of the sweeping away of civilisations and worldly power. It is worth noting that the Seafarer poet introduces a significant innovation in his adaptation of the ubi sunt motif: the passage takes the form of a sequence of negative statements (nearon nu cyningas ne caeseras) rather than a series of rhetorical questions. The triple negative naeron…ne…ne intensifies the rhetorical force of the passage through use of accumulative effect and shifts the focus on how former figures of authority are no more, rather than on how they once were. Therefore, Old English poets not only incorporated the defining elements of the ubi sunt tradition (invocation of powerful figures long gone, meditation of the fleetingness of life and the irrelevance of material wealth, and commentary on the passing on of earthly prosperity and glory) but went to further lengths in adding their own innovations in form and content. These include the rephrasing of the traditional formula to accommodate rhetorical purpose and poetic effect, and the juxtaposition of familiar and unfamiliar cultural references to add a sense of the universal and absolute to the purpose of the ubi sunt motif while keeping it relevant to their audiences.
A corroborating example of the latter is the substitution of Weland for Fabricius in the Old English Meters of Boethius, which Cross leaves out of his survey precisely owing to its deviation from the Isidorean model (1956: 25, n. 4 The corresponding section in the Old English Meter 10, too long to quote in full here, rephrases the original as a series of rhetorical questions introduced by Hwaer is/sint nu, 'Where is/are now?' In each of these, the names of the Classical figures Brutus and Cato are accompanied by brief explanatory remarks that justify their fame on the grounds of political authority, in the case of Brutus, and renowned wisdom, in that of Cato. Fabricius is, however, replaced by a more familiar name from the remote past: Hwaer sint nu þaes wisan Welandes ban, þaes goldsmiðes, þe waes geo maerost. Forðy ic cwaeð þaes wisan Welandes ban, forþy aengum ne maeg eorðbuendra. se craeft losian þe him Crist onlaenð. […] Hi waeron gefyrn forðgewitene; nat naenig mon hwaer hi nu sindon. (33-37; 52-53).
[Where are now the bones of wise Weland, that goldsmith who was once most broadly renowned? For this reason, I spoke of the bones of wise Weland, because the skill which Christ grants to any dweller on earth cannot be lost by him […] They passed away long ago, no man knows where they are now.] In these lines, the total assimilation of the ubi sunt motif is fulfilled. The Old English poet reutilises the phraseology of the topos for his own aesthetic design, which emphasises the importance of historical figures by means of epistrophic doublets (the repetition of a word at the end of two or more lines; in this case þaes wisan Welandes ban), and so constructs a complex rhetorical design around the figure of Weland with the apparent purpose of justifying his choice and its placement in the ubi sunt sequence. As a mythological and quasi-historical figure derived from vernacular tradition, the inclusion of Weland in this passage serves as a bridge between followed by a straightforward answer (cf. Adrian and Ritheus). There is only one explanation as to why the Pharaoh poet would disrupt the dynamics of dialogic literature in this way: that the second speaker's negative statement is meant to echo the ubi sunt motif and remind the audience about the transience and eventual erasure of worldly fame and power. The opening of Pharaoh should therefore be read, according to this interpretation, as a rephrasing of 'where are now Pharaoh's numberless armies? No one knows now,' in the manner of Meter 10. This reading is reinforced by the sheer vastness of Pharaoh's army (three times six hundred), which would add to a sense of awe at the might wielded by the ancient ruler, much like the homilist of Vercelli X or the Seafarer poet invoke the memory of the caesars of old as an example of how the most powerful figures have fallen and only their names remain -or, in the case of nameless Pharaoh, only their titles.
The second speaker in Pharaoh then adds, butan ic wene þus, 'but I believe thus:' that a vast army was destroyed by the crashing waves, through a cruel act of fate in this world. The shift in the poem's focus, away from biblical miscellanea or riddling language, replicates the language of the ubi sunt motif by alluding to the obliteration of Pharaoh's army as a result of the same inevitable fate experienced by all in the worldly kingdom. Interestingly, the poet again omits any direct mention of God's intervention in Pharaoh's demise, attributing it instead to a sudden twist of fate not unlike those experienced by the earlier kings and rulers mentioned in similar passages in The Wanderer, The Seafarer, or Meter 10. Contrasting with the explicit condemnation of Pharaoh and the active role of God present in the Old English Exodus, the Pharaoh poet avoids framing the action in the second half of the poem against an explicit scriptural or doctrinal background, limiting themselves to introducing an oblique reference to the interrelation between fate and divine will and their decisive role in the undoing of earthly power. As the only verb indicating action in the poem, forniman carries exceptional semantic force and stands as the key to understanding how all elements come together in Pharaoh to construct an unconventional and poetically innovative reconfiguration of the traditional ubi sunt motif.

Conclusions
Once the form and interpretation of Pharaoh have been reconstructed as part of a larger network of meanings and contextual backgrounds, it is possible to re-evaluate its textual function. Earlier in this study, I mentioned how, in the poetic Solomon and Saturn, questions and answers succeeded one another as both speakers engaged in an ever more complex dialogue on matters of fate, free will, and the philosophical aspects of good, evil, and natural law. The extended form of these poems allows for a progressive display of overlapping discourses and multi-layered metaphorical speech, resulting in a complex interplay of poetic genres and modes (Anlezark 2009: 12-41). Pharaoh poses a similar challenge to its audience, if in a different guise. Through its condensed poetic form and economy of allusive language, Pharaoh presents itself, in appearance and immediate function, as a riddle that defeats its very purpose by offering an answer to its own question. It is also an exchange between two speakers that starts and finishes abruptly, with only one question and its 1 3 Pharaoh: A Neglected ubi sunt Poem corresponding answer, thereby offering little in the way of a dialogue. Pharaoh thus plays with familiar forms and genres only to challenge our expectations; it invites us to look beyond the obvious and immediate. The riddle of Pharaoh, as Anderson noted, is indeed deciphering its very reason for being.
Like the dialogues of Solomon and Saturn or the Riddles of the Exeter Book, Pharaoh is a prismatic text: it yields different meanings depending on how we choose to approach it. If read as a primarily didactic or catechumenal poem, it offers an opportunity to reflect on its typological associations and place the text within a broader doctrinal and interpretive framework. In this case, however, meaning takes precedence over form, largely ignoring the question of why the poet chose to present this information in the unusual form of a riddle/dialogue. On the other hand, as noted above, Pharaoh simply does not work as a riddle beyond its superficial formal resemblance to other texts in this category, unless both the question and the answer are part of the enigma itself. In this way, the Pharaoh poet encourages their audience to engage in deeper meditation about the implications of what the poet says, but also about what he implies.
The answer to Pharaoh's riddle lies both within and beyond itself: its sophisticated use of poetic allusion and intertextuality demands that we reapproach the poem from a new perspective, one that revisits the question it poses free from preliminary expectations about its resolution. The Pharaoh poet is not asking about the exact mathematical number of troops in the Egyptian army, but rather, he uses this initial indication of his vast military command and political influence to venture the further, more fundamental question, what else can we learn from the fall of a prominent figure of authority from the remote past? Where is now the might of Pharaoh, ancient ruler of the powerful kingdom of Egypt and oppressor of God's Chosen People? To which the answer, read with fresh eyes, is that no one knows for certain, because regardless of power and fame, fate and God's divine decree are inalterable, and all is subject to sudden change in this worldly kingdom, now as it was then. Scripture, patristic learning, and Old English poetics constantly remind us of this universal truth, which Pharaoh ingeniously connects with the narrative of Salvation History the Judgment of the Damned through its typological resonances and suggestive use of poetic language.
The riddle of Pharaoh thus resolves itself as a challenge to our own horizons of textual expectations. It is, after all, a riddle, but one that reveals its true nature only in retrospect, through careful reassessment of the nature of poetic language and its implications. As such, the function of Pharaoh is a priori didactic, doctrinal, and recreational, but ultimately philosophical, sapiential, and meta-poetic. Above all, Pharaoh provides us with an opportunity to reflect on matters of reading, intertextuality, and the limitations of genre classifications for the interpretation of Old English texts. The poem resists easy assimilation into any of the labels that have been imposed on it, navigating instead the boundaries of various modes of poetic expression, and inviting us to reflect on the very experience of reading as an exercise in associative thinking and meaning making. Ultimately, Pharaoh defies modern notions of intertextuality that conceive textual influence as part of a hierarchy of literary genres and poetic modes where secular epic and lyric-in the case of Old English, Beowulf and the so-called 'Old English elegies'-occupy a privileged position in both critical and popular reception, relegating other 'minor' categories, such as religious and philosophical verse, to a marginal position.
By contrast, the nature of Old English poetics shows a fundamentally horizontal intertextuality where all texts participate in a shared experience of the world and draw from cohesive range of conventional means of expression to represent it. Accordingly, Old English poetry requires that we read each text through our previous experience with Old English poetics as part of a complex and multiform network of interweaving thematic threads and intertextual allusions whereby all texts serve to contextualise and mutually illuminate each another. Such system of associative reading renders artificial classification ineffective by presenting intertextuality as a fluid phenomenon that transcends taxonomies of genre, mode, and the traditional separation between prose and verse. In turn, Old English stands in constant interaction and interchange with other textual traditions, both Latin and vernacular, so that the adaptation and incorporation of received learning becomes part of the same Old English poetics of the familiar and a window to how poetic exercise reflects the vibrant multilingualism and multiculturality of early medieval England. Reading Old English poetry requires, then, like deciphering the riddle of Pharaoh, that we abandon modern aesthetic and literary biases and engage in ongoing and ever-growing conversation with and between literary traditions.