Baka (prince)

Baka (prince) in hieroglyphics
Baka B3 k3 The Ba and Ka

Baka was a prince of the ancient Egyptian 4th Dynasty and a son of Pharaoh Radjedef ; his mother is unknown. As a prince, Baka is only known through an incompletely preserved statue, which comes from his father's pyramid district in Abu Roasch and is now in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo . Possibly Baka was identical to the only sparsely documented Pharaoh Bicheris .

Baka as a possible pharaoh

The Egyptian historian Manetho names a king named Bicheris as the successor to Pharaoh Chephren , who has so far hardly been archaeologically documented. The only contemporary names come from the pyramid complex in Saujet el-Arjan that was ascribed to him . In the excavation there, several workers' graffiti were discovered, most of which contain a royal cartridge. These cartouches are the subject of controversy , since the excavator of the pyramid complex, Alessandro Barsanti , did not use the graffiti in his excavation publication as a facsimilereproduced, but only as rough sketches. Thus, although the second character in the cartridges can be clearly recognized as the Ka symbol , the first character is so indistinctly reproduced that it has not yet been clearly identified.

The most widespread reading now is that of Baka , on which the equation of Bicheris with a son of Pharaoh Radjedef is based. The problem here is the different spelling of the two names. The name of Prince Baka is written with a ram on the statue from Abu Roasch, but the name from Saujet el-Arjan is written with a bird, or more precisely with a stork. Both characters have the phonetic value Ba (or Bi), which would at least result in the same pronunciation.

The name Baka could then have been distorted to Ba-ka-Re in the further course of Egyptian history , from which the Greek form of the name Bicheris was derived. George Andrew Reisner made a similar proposal . He assumed that Bicheris himself changed his maiden name Baka to Ba-ka-Re after his accession to the throne.

Since the reading of the signature from Saujet el-Arjan is not unambiguous, the equation of Baka and Bicheris is not undisputed. So Bicheris was equated, among other things, with Setka , another son of Radjedef.

literature

• Michel Baud : Famille royale et pouvoir sous l'Ancien Empire égyptien. Tome 2 (= Bibliothèque d'Étude. Volume 126/2). Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale, Cairo 1999, ISBN 2-7247-0250-6 , p. 443 ( PDF; 16.7 MB ).
• Jürgen von Beckerath : Chronology of the pharaonic Egypt . Zabern Verlag, Mainz 1997, p. 39, 156-159, 175, 188 ISBN 3-8053-2310-7
• Aidan Dodson , Dyan Hilton: The Complete Royal Families of Ancient Egypt . The American University in Cairo Press, London 2004, pp. 52-61, ISBN 977-424-878-3
• Bertha Porter , Rosalind LB Moss : Topographical Bibliography of Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic Texts, Reliefs and Paintings. III. Memphis . 2nd Edition. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1974, p. 3 ( PDF 19.5 MB ).
• Thomas Schneider : Lexicon of the Pharaohs . Albatros Verlag, Düsseldorf 2002, p. 91; ISBN 3491960533
• Miroslav Verner : Archaeological Remarks on the 4th and 5th Dynasty Chronology . In: Archive Orientální , vol. 69, Prague 2001, pp. 363–418 ( PDF; 31 MB )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ see Verner: Archaeological Remarks .
2. ↑ Beckerath: Chronology. P. 158
3. ↑ George Andrew Reisner: A History of the Giza Necropolis. Volume I . Harvard University Press, Harvard 1942, p. 28 ( PDF; 249.8 MB )
4. ↑ Aidan Dodson: On the date of the unfinished pyramid of Zawyet el-Aryan . In: Discussion in Egyptology 3, Oxford 1985, pp. 21-24; Dodson / Hilton: Complete Royal Families . P. 61