PATHROS păth’ rŏs (פַּתְרֹ֣וס). Geographical term: “Upper Egypt,” roughly the Nile Valley between Cairo and Aswan. The name is a transcription of Egyp. p’-t’-rs, “the southern land.” It occurs in the inscrs. of Esarhaddon, king of Assyria (680-669 b.c.), who campaigned in Egypt, and boasted of himself as “king of Egypt (muṩur), Paturisi, and Ethiopia (kusi),” and this order from N to S is exactly repeated in Isaiah 11:11, “Egypt (miṩrayim), Pathros, and Ethiopia (kuš).” The term also occurs elsewhere in the OT (Jer 44:1 15; Ezek 29:14; 30:14), and in the gentilic form, פַּתְרֻסִ֞ים (Gen 10:14; cf., 1 Chron 1:12).

Bibliography H. Gauthier, Dictionnaire des noms géographiques contenus dans les textes hiéroglyphiques, II (1925), 155; ANET, 290; R. Borger, Die Inschriften Asarhaddons, Konigs von Assyrien (1956), 132 and references.