Merkheperre was an
Egyptian
Egyptian describes something of, from, or related to Egypt.
Egyptian or Egyptians may refer to:
Nations and ethnic groups
* Egyptians, a national group in North Africa
** Egyptian culture, a complex and stable culture with thousands of years of ...
pharaoh of the late
13th Dynasty of Egypt
In music or music theory, a thirteenth is the note thirteen scale degrees from the root of a chord and also the interval between the root and the thirteenth. The interval can be also described as a compound sixth, spanning an octave pl ...
during the
Second Intermediate Period reigning some time between 1663 BC and 1649 BC.
[K.S.B. Ryholt, ''The Political Situation in Egypt during the Second Intermediate Period, c.1800–1550 BC'', Carsten Niebuhr Institute Publications, vol. 20. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 1997]
excerpts available online here.
/ref> As such, Merkheperre would have reigned either over Upper Egypt from Thebes or over Middle and Upper Egypt from Memphis. At the time, the Eastern Nile Delta was under the domination of the 14th Dynasty.
Attestations
Merkheperre appears on the Turin canon The Turin King List, also known as the Turin Royal Canon, is an ancient Egyptian hieratic papyrus thought to date from the reign of Pharaoh Ramesses II, now in the Museo Egizio (Egyptian Museum) in Turin. The papyrus is the most extensive list av ...
, a king list compiled in the early Ramesside period.Petrie Museum
The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology in London is part of University College London Museums and Collections. The museum contains over 80,000 objects and ranks among some of the world's leading collections of Egyptian and Sudanese material ...
UC 16372 and a scarab inscribed with his name. Although the scarab is accepted as evidence of Merkheperre by Darrell Baker, Jürgen von Beckerath
Jürgen von Beckerath (19 February 1920, Hanover – 26 June 2016, Schlehdorf) was a German Egyptologist. He was a prolific writer who published countless articles in journals such as '' Orientalia'', ''Göttinger Miszellen'' (GM), ''Journal of t ...
, Stephen Quirke and others, Kim Ryholt rejects this attribution.[Darrell D. Baker: ''The Encyclopedia of the Pharaohs: Volume I - Predynastic to the Twentieth Dynasty 3300–1069 BC'', Stacey International, , 2008, p. 214] Ryholt points to its lack of royal attributes and insignia as well as its stylistic features which depart from other royal seals of the 13th Dynasty. Rather, Ryholt proposes that the scarab simply represents Khepri
Khepri (Egyptian: ''ḫprj,'' also transliterated Khepera, Kheper, Khepra, Chepri) is a scarab-faced god in ancient Egyptian religion who represents the rising or morning sun. By extension, he can also represent creation and the renewal of life. ...
pushing the sun.
Chronological position
The exact chronological position of Merkheperre is not known for certain as the damaged state of the Turin canon only allows for conjectural reconstructions of the late 13th dynasty. According to Ryholt he was the forty-seventh ruler of the dynasty, while Baker sees him as the forty-sixth and von Beckerath as the fifty-seventh.[Jürgen von Beckerath: ''Chronologie des pharaonischen Ägyptens'', Münchner Ägyptologische Studien 46. Mainz am Rhein, 1997] All agree that he was succeeded by Merkare, however von Beckerath proposed that his predecessor was Mershepsesre Ini II
Mershepsesre Ini (also known as Ini II) was a pharaoh of the late 13th Dynasty, possibly the forty-sixth king of this dynasty. He reigned over Upper Egypt during the mid-17th century BC.
Attestations
Mershepsesre Ini is attested only by a sing ...
, when a new reconstruction of the Turin canon led Ryholt and Baker to propose that his predecessor was ''Mer ..e''.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Merkheperre
17th-century BC Pharaohs
Pharaohs of the Thirteenth Dynasty of Egypt