Shepseskaf
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| Shepseskaf in hieroglyphs | |||||||||||||
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Shepseskaf was a son of Menkaure who succeeded his father on the throne. Shepseskaf's name means "His Soul is Noble."[1] He was likely the last Egyptian Pharaoh of the Fourth dynasty if he was not succeeded by a certain unknown ruler named Djedefptah as recorded in some Egyptian literature and, indirectly, by the Turin Canon. No ruler named Djedefptah is recorded in contemporary documents such as royal monuments or private tombs in the Old Kingdom cemeteries of Giza and Saqqara which date to this period.[2] Palace officials who served in the interval between the 4th and 5th dynasties of Egypt such as the long-lived palace courtier Netry-nesut-pu explicitly lists this sequence of Old Kingdom kings under whom he served under in his tomb: Radjedef → Khafre → Menkaure → Shepseskaf, and the first three 5th dynasty kings namely Userkaf, Sahure and Neferirkare.[3] Finally,
| “ | No names of estates of the period [which are] compounded with royal names make mention of any other kings than these, nor do the names of...royal grandchildren, who often bore the name of a royal ancestor as a component of their own [name]."[4] | ” |
The Turin Canon ascribes Shepseskaf a rule of four years and his anonymous 4th dynasty successor--presumably a reference to Djedefptah--a reign of two years. In contrast, Manetho's King List explicitly gives Shepseskaf a reign of seven years which may be a combination of the 4 + 2 (= 6) full year figures noted in the Turin Kinglist for the last two kings of the Fourth Dynasty plus a significant monthly fraction. Manetho's King List does, however, also note the existence of the unknown and possibly fictitious ruler Djedeptah--called Thampthis in his records--who is ascribed a reign of nine years.
Shepseskaf broke with the Fourth Dynasty tradition of constructing large pyramid tombs by chosing to construct his tomb as a great mastaba at Saqqara, now known as Mastabat Fara'un. In contrast, his three immediate predecessors built the pyramids of Giza while Sneferu, the founder of the fourth dynasty, alone constructed three pyramids in his reign most notably, the Bent Pyramid and the Red Pyramid. Shepseskaf may have designed a smaller tomb for himself since he was faced with the arduous task of completing his father's pyramid at Giza while simultaneously building his own tomb--all this within his short reign.[5]
[edit] References
- ^ Peter Clayton, Chronicle of the Pharaohs, Thames and Hudson Ltd, 1994. p.56
- ^ P.F. O'Mara, Manetho and the Turin Canon: A Comparison of Regnal Years, GM 158 (1997), p.51
- ^ P.F. O'Mara, Manetho and the Turin Canon: A Comparison of Regnal Years, GM 158 (1997), p. 51. O'Mara's source on Netry-nesut-pu is Kurt Sethe's Urkunden or Urk I, p.166
- ^ O'Mara, op. cit., p.51; O'Mara's sources are LD, II, Urkunden I and Auguste's Mariette's 1889 book 'Mastabas de l'ancien empire'
- ^ Shepseskaf by J. Dunn
- Shepseskaf
- Urkunden des Alten Reichs by Kurt Sethe
| Preceded by Menkaura |
Pharaoh of Egypt Fourth dynasty |
Succeeded by Djedefptah or Userkaf |
