Tefnakht II (

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic pe ...

: , ;

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...

: , ) was an ancient Egyptian ruler of the city of Sais during the early 7th century BC. He is recognized as an early member of the so-called "Proto-Saite Dynasty", which directly preceded the

26th Dynasty of Egypt The Twenty-sixth Dynasty of Egypt (notated Dynasty XXVI, alternatively 26th Dynasty or Dynasty 26) dynasty was the last native dynasty to rule Egypt before the Persian conquest in 525 BC (although others followed). The dynasty's reign (664–525 ...

Biography

Tefnakht II is mainly known by

Manetho Manetho (; grc-koi, Μανέθων ''Manéthōn'', ''gen''.: Μανέθωνος) is believed to have been an Egyptian priest from Sebennytos ( cop, Ϫⲉⲙⲛⲟⲩϯ, translit=Čemnouti) who lived in the Ptolemaic Kingdom in the early third ...

's ''Aegyptiaca'', under the name ''Stephinates''. Based on Manetho's work, Sextus Julius Africanus called Stephinates the founder of the 26th Dynasty while another historian,

Eusebius Eusebius of Caesarea (; grc-gre, Εὐσέβιος ; 260/265 – 30 May 339), also known as Eusebius Pamphilus (from the grc-gre, Εὐσέβιος τοῦ Παμφίλου), was a Greek historian of Christianity, exegete, and Chris ...

, placed a certain Ammeris "the Nubian" just before him. In both cases, the two historians credited Stephinates with a 7-year-long reign.Kitchen, op. cit., § 116 In 1917,

Flinders Petrie Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie ( – ), commonly known as simply Flinders Petrie, was a British Egyptologist and a pioneer of systematic methodology in archaeology and the preservation of artefacts. He held the first chair of Egyp ...

was the first to argue that "Stephinates" was probably an

render of the Egyptian name ''Tefnakht'', and first called this ruler "Tefnakht II" in order to distinguish him by the namesake ''Great Chief of the West'' who few decades earlier clashed against

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 th ...

Piye Piye (once transliterated as Pankhy or Piankhi; d. 714 BC) was an ancient Kushite king and founder of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty of Egypt, who ruled Egypt from 744–714 BC. He ruled from the city of Napata, located deep in Nubia, modern-day Sudan ...

of the Kushite 25th Dynasty and later rose to kingship under the name Shepsesre Tefnakht (I), founding the short-lived Saite 24th Dynasty.Kitchen, op. cit., § 117 Kenneth Kitchen hypothesized that Tefnakht II may have been a relative of

Bakenranef – son and successor of Tefnakht I – who was probably killed by Shebitqo and then replaced by a faithful governor, the aforementioned Ammeris. Thus, according to Kitchen, Tefnakht II effectively restored a Saite dynasty, and ruled from 695 to 688 BC. He was then succeeded by another relative called ''Nekhepsos'' in Greek, and identified with the Egyptian

Nekauba Almost nothing is known of Nekauba (Ancient Greek: ). He is listed as one of the early kings of the 26th Saite Dynasty in Manetho's Epitome and ruled for six years. However, his status as king is not confirmed by any contemporary documents and h ...

. It is possible that many scarabs datable to this period, and bearing the otherwise unknown throne names ''Menibre'' and ''Iribre'', belongs indeed to Tefnakht II and Nekauba. In 2011,

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 ...

made a case for Tefnakht II being the father of the later pharaoh

Necho I Menkheperre Necho I ( Egyptian: Nekau, Greek: Νεχώς Α' or Νεχώ Α', Akkadian: Nikuu or Nikû) (? – near Memphis) was a ruler of the ancient Egyptian city of Sais. He was the first securely attested local Saite king of the 26th Dyn ...

: according to a papyrus from

Tebtunis Tebtunis was a city and later town in Lower Egypt. The settlement was founded in approximately 1800 BCE by the Twelfth Dynasty king Amenemhat III. It was located in what is now the village of Tell Umm el-Baragat in the Faiyum Governorate. In Tebt ...

, the latter was the son of a king named Tefnakht, with the most likely choice being Tefnakht II.

Tefnakht I and Tefnakht II

Since the initial claim by Petrie, there were scholars whom questioned the distinction between Tefnakht I and Tefnakht II. In 1956, Wolfgang Helck equated the two figures, a position later rejected by Karl-Heinz Priese, who stated that there was no compelling reason to identify Tefnakht II with Tefnakht I aside from the similarity of their names.
In more recent times, Oliver Perdu noticed close similarities in style, form and content between a newly discovered donation stela dating to Year 2 of Necho I, and a Year 8 donation stela of Shepsesre Tefnakht (I). Perdu argued that these two Saite rulers were more close contemporaries than usually believed, and suggested that Shepsesre Tefnakht is in fact Tefnakht II and not Tefnakht I, the former having lived just few years before

while the latter, several decades before.
Perdu's arguments were put in discussion by Dan'el Kahn who note that his

epigraphic Epigraphy () is the study of inscriptions, or epigraphs, as writing; it is the science of identifying graphemes, clarifying their meanings, classifying their uses according to dates and cultural contexts, and drawing conclusions about the wr ...

criteria here – such as the use of the tripartite wig, the slender figure of the king and the method through which the falcon-headed god keeps his head upright in stelas and temple wall reliefs contemporary with Tefnakht I's time – appear in use already in the early 25th Dynasty during

's or

Shabaka Neferkare Shabaka, or Shabako ( Egyptian: 𓆷𓃞𓂓 ''šꜣ bꜣ kꜣ'', Assyrian: ''Sha-ba-ku-u'') was the third Kushite pharaoh of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty of Egypt, who reigned from 705 to 690 BC.F. Payraudeau, Retour sur la succession ...

's reign and even in

Shoshenq V Aakheperre Shoshenq V was an ancient Egyptian pharaoh of the late 22nd Dynasty. Despite having enjoyed one of the longest reigns of the entire dynasty – 38 years – and having left a fair amount of attestations, little is known about Shoshe ...

's Year 38 donation stela of the ''Chief of the Ma'' Tefnakht (I), who was Piye's rival.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tefnakht 02 7th-century BC Pharaohs Pharaohs of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty of Egypt 7th-century BC rulers