shepherd king

Noun

shepherd king (plural shepherd kings)

1. In the ancient Middle East, a man or mythic figure who was both a shepherd and a king.
   • The marriage of the goddess to the shepherd makes him the shepherd-king; Heaven and earth are wed in their embrace.1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London: Rider/Hutchinson & Co., page 169
2. One of the Hyksos, kings of the Fifteenth Dynasty of Egypt (fl. c. 1650–1550 BC).
   • The dark days of the "Shepherd" or "Hyksos" kings, that were to the imagination of later Egypt what the Babylonian Captivity was to the Jews, or the Danish Terror to early England.1907, Ronald M. Burrows, The Discoveries In Crete, page 72