Shenshek was a ruler of some part of

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Med ...

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 by ...

, possibly during the 17th century BC, and likely belonging to the 14th Dynasty. 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>Darrell D. Baker: The Encyclopedia of the Pharaohs: Volume I - Predynastic to the Twentieth Dynasty 3300–1069 BC, Stacey International, , 2008, p. 424 As such he would have ruled from

Avaris Avaris (; Egyptian: ḥw.t wꜥr.t, sometimes ''hut-waret''; grc, Αὔαρις, Auaris; el, Άβαρις, Ávaris; ar, حوّارة, Hawwara) was the Hyksos capital of Egypt located at the modern site of Tell el-Dab'a in the northeastern ...

over the eastern

Nile Delta The Nile Delta ( ar, دلتا النيل, or simply , is the delta formed in Lower Egypt where the Nile River spreads out and drains into the Mediterranean Sea. It is one of the world's largest river deltas—from Alexandria in the west to ...

and possibly over the western Delta as well. His chronological position and identity are unclear. __FORCETOC__

Attestation

Shenshek is known from a single scarab discovered in Avaris, modern Tell el-Dab'a, by the Egyptologist

Manfred Bietak Manfred Bietak (born in Vienna, 6 October 1940) is an Austrian archaeologist.Egyptian Museum The Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, known commonly as the Egyptian Museum or the Cairo Museum, in Cairo, Egypt, is home to an extensive collection of ancient Egyptian antiquities. It has 120,000 items, with a representative amount on display ...

, catalog number TD-6160 0I. Hein (editor): ''Pharaonen und fremde Dynastien im Dunkel'', Museen der Stadt Wien, 1994, p. 145

Identity

The primary historical source for the identification and chronological position of the rulers of the 14th Dynasty is the Turin canon, a king list compiled during the

Ramesside period The Twentieth Dynasty of Egypt (notated Dynasty XX, alternatively 20th Dynasty or Dynasty 20) is the third and last dynasty of the Ancient Egyptian New Kingdom period, lasting from 1189 BC to 1077 BC. The 19th and 20th Dynasties furthermore togeth ...

. The identification of Shenshek with one of the names on the list is difficult because the Turin canon only records the kings'

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 ...

while Shenshek is a nomen. Although the Egyptologists 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 Lite ...

deem it likely that Shenshek is indeed recorded on the list, its identification will remain conjectural until an artefact bearing both Shenshek's nomen and prenomen is found. After his discovery of the seal, Bietak proposed that Shenshek is a variant of the name of king Maaibre Sheshi, whose chronological position is somewhat unclear but who could also belong to the 14th Dynasty. This hypothesis is rejected by Baker and Ryholt. Based on a

seriation Seriation is a way of situating an object within a series. It may refer to: * Seriation (archaeology) *Seriation (semiotics) *Seriation (statistics) In combinatorial data analysis, seriation is the process of finding an arrangement of all objects in ...

of the scarab-seals of the Second Intermediate Period, Ryholt proposed that Shenshek reigned after

Nehesy Nehesy Aasehre (Nehesi) was a ruler of Lower Egypt during the fragmented Second Intermediate Period. He is placed by most scholars into the early 14th Dynasty, as either the second or the sixth pharaoh of this dynasty. As such he is considered to ...

and before

Yaqub-Har Meruserre Yaqub-Har (other spelling: Yakubher, also known as Yak-Baal) was a pharaoh of Egypt during the 17th or 16th century BCE. As he reigned during Egypt's fragmented Second Intermediate Period, it is difficult to date his reign precisely, an ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Shenshek 17th-century BC Pharaohs Pharaohs of the Fourteenth Dynasty of Egypt