Sewahenre Senebmiu (also Sonbmiu) is a poorly attested

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 Pharaoh (, ; Egyptian: '' pr ꜥꜣ''; cop, , Pǝrro; Biblical Hebrew: ''Parʿō'') is the vernacular term often used by modern authors for the kings of ancient Egypt who ruled as monarchs from the First Dynasty (c. 3150 BC) until the ...

during the

Second Intermediate Period The Second Intermediate Period marks a period when ancient Egypt fell into disarray for a second time, between the end of the Middle Kingdom and the start of the New Kingdom. The concept of a "Second Intermediate Period" was coined in 1942 b ...

, thought to belong to the late

13th Dynasty 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 p ...

Attestations

Senebmiu is a poorly attested pharaoh. Contemporary attestations of Senebmiu are few and all originate from

Upper Egypt Upper Egypt ( ar, صعيد مصر ', shortened to , , locally: ; ) is the southern portion of Egypt and is composed of the lands on both sides of the Nile that extend upriver from Lower Egypt in the north to Nubia in the south. In ancient E ...

. Darrell Baker and Daphna Ben Tor suggest that this may signal that the 13th Dynasty had lost control of

Lower Lower may refer to: *Lower (surname) *Lower Township, New Jersey *Lower Receiver (firearms) *Lower Wick Gloucestershire, England See also *Nizhny Nizhny (russian: Ни́жний; masculine), Nizhnyaya (; feminine), or Nizhneye (russian: Ни́� ...

and possibly

Middle Egypt Middle Egypt () is the section of land between Lower Egypt (the Nile Delta) and Upper Egypt, stretching upstream from Asyut in the south to Memphis in the north. At the time, Ancient Egypt was divided into Lower and Upper Egypt, though Middle ...

at the time.Daphna Ben Tor: ''Sequences and chronology of Second Intermediate Period royal-name scarabs, based on excavated series from Egypt and the Levant'', in: ''The Second Intermediate Period (Thirteenth-Seventeenth Dynasties), Current Research, Future Prospects'' edited by Marcel Maree, Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta, 192, 2010, p. 91

Gebelein, stela (BM EA 24898)

A fragment of a limestone stele discovered by G.W. Fraser in 1893 in

Gebelein Gebelein (Egyptian Arabic: , Two Mountains; Egyptian: Inerty or Per-Hathor; Ancient Greek: or ; Latin: ''Pathyris'' or ''Aphroditopolis'') was a town in Egypt. It is located on the Nile, about 40 km south of Thebes, in the New Valley Go ...

and now in the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

(BM EA 24898) bears the mention "''The son of Ra, of his body, Senebmiu''". The stele once depicted the king wearing the double crown and probably making an offering, but most of the relief is lost.

Deir el-Bahri, naos (Cairo JE 46196)

An attestation of Senebmiu was uncovered in the mortuary temple of

Mentuhotep II Mentuhotep II ( egy, Mn- ṯw- ḥtp, meaning " Mentu is satisfied"), also known under his prenomen Nebhepetre ( egy, Nb- ḥpt- Rˁ, meaning "The Lord of the rudder is Ra"), was an ancient Egyptian pharaoh, the sixth ruler of the Eleventh D ...

Deir el-Bahri Deir el-Bahari or Dayr al-Bahri ( ar, الدير البحري, al-Dayr al-Baḥrī, the Monastery of the North) is a complex of mortuary temples and tombs located on the west bank of the Nile, opposite the city of Luxor, Egypt. This is a part of ...

, where the side of a small naos is inscribed with the king's titulary.

Édouard Naville Henri Édouard Naville (14 June 1844 – 17 October 1926) was a Swiss archaeologist, Egyptologist and Biblical scholar. Born in Geneva, he studied at the University of Geneva, King's College, London, and the Universities of Bonn, Paris, a ...

: ''The XIth dynasty temple at Deir el-Bahari, Part II'', (1907
available copyright-free online
/ref>

Qurna, staff (Moscow I.1.a. 1801, a, b)

A staff bearing the king's prenomen and inscribed for the "''Royal sealer, overseer of marshland dwellers Senebni''" was found in a now-lost tomb in Qurna on the west bank of the Nile opposite Karnak.

Karnak King List

The Karnak king list entry 49, redacted during the reign of

Thutmose III Thutmose III (variously also spelt Tuthmosis or Thothmes), sometimes called Thutmose the Great, was the sixth pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty. Officially, Thutmose III ruled Egypt for almost 54 years and his reign is usually dated from 2 ...

, mentions his prenomen Sewahenre after Sekhemre Wahkhau Rahotep.

Turin King List

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 ...

, redacted during the time of

Ramesses II Ramesses II ( egy, rꜥ-ms-sw ''Rīʿa-məsī-sū'', , meaning "Ra is the one who bore him"; ), commonly known as Ramesses the Great, was the third pharaoh of the Nineteenth Dynasty of Egypt. Along with Thutmose III he is often regarded as ...

, is severely damaged after the record of Sobekhotep VII and the identity and chronological order of the last 19 kings of the 13th Dynasty is impossible to ascertain from the document.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> Senebmiu's

prenomen The ''praenomen'' (; plural: ''praenomina'') was a personal name chosen by the parents of a Roman child. It was first bestowed on the ''dies lustricus'' (day of lustration), the eighth day after the birth of a girl, or the ninth day after the birt ...

''Sewahenre'' may have been partially preserved on column 8, line 16 of the papyrus, which reads '. Darrell Baker and

Kim Ryholt Kim Steven Bardrum Ryholt (born 19 June 1970) is a professor of Egyptology at the University of Copenhagen and a specialist on Egyptian history and literature. He is director of the research centeCanon and Identity Formation in the Earliest Litera ...

note that this attribution is far from certain as it could also correspond to another obscure king of this period with the name ''Sekhaenre''.

Theories

According to Egyptologist

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 ...

, he was the forty-first king of the 13th Dynasty.Jürgen von Beckerath: ''Handbuch der Ägyptischen Königsnamen'', MÄS 49, Philip Von Zabern. (1999)Jürgen von Beckerath: ''Untersuchungen zur politischen Geschichte der Zweiten Zwischenzeit in Ägypten'', Glückstadt, 1964Jürgen von Beckerath: ''Chronologie des pharaonischen Ägyptens'', Münchner Ägyptologische Studien 46. Mainz am Rhein, 1997 Alternatively, Darrell Baker proposes that he may have been its fifty-seventh ruler.Darrell D. Baker: ''The Encyclopedia of the Pharaohs: Volume I – Predynastic to the Twentieth Dynasty 3300–1069 BC'', Stacey International, , 2008, p. 381-382

only specifies that Senebmiu's short reign dates to between 1660 BC and 1649 BC.

References

{{authority control 17th-century BC Pharaohs Pharaohs of the Thirteenth Dynasty of Egypt