Hetepsechemui

Name of Hetepsechemui
Diorite vase with the throne name of Hetepsechemui
Horus name	Hetep-Sechemui Ḥtp-sḫm.wj Reconciliation of the two powers
Sideline	Hetep-nebti Ḥtp-nbtj reconciliation of the two mistresses
Proper name	Bedjatau B (w) ḏ3w The metal caster
Royal Papyrus Turin (No. II./20)	... Bau-hetepiu ...- B3w-ḥtpjw ... Bas are reconciled (with the name ideogram for a king who represents the Horus falcon)
List of kings of Abydos (Seti I) (No. 9)	Bedjau B (w) ḏ3w The metal caster
List of Kings of Saqqara (No.3)	Bau-netjer B3w-nṯr Divine on Bas
Greek Manetho variants:	Africanus : Boëthôs Eusebius : Bochos Eusebius, AV : Bochus

Hetepsechemui (also Hor-hetep-Sechemui ) is the Horus name of the first ancient Egyptian king ( pharaoh ) of the 2nd Dynasty ( early dynasty ), who lived around 2855 BC. BC ruled and is one of the well-researched rulers of this time.

Name and identity

King Hetepsechemui is considered to be the founder of the 2nd dynasty. During his reign, the tradition prevailed to use the same name version for the royal titles customary at that time, such as proper name , Horus name and Nebtiname . The actual birth names may only have been used unofficially. The background to this new tradition may have been that with the beginning of the 2nd dynasty the name of a ruler was given philosophical significance. Replacing the true maiden name with versions that are always spelled the same indicates that the king's name was only adopted after the accession to the throne.

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  The name "Bedjatau" in a cartouche from the inscription on the writing tablet of Giza

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  Cartouche no. 9 in the list of kings of Abydos with the name "Bedjau".

supporting documents

Hetepsechemuis Horus name appears on various artifacts in Abydos , Saqqara , Badari and Gizeh on stone vessels, clay seals and cylinders made of bones. Hetepsechemui's name often appears next to that of his successor Nebre on the stone vessels from his tomb in Saqqara .

Hetepsechemuis birth name is unknown. In the list of kings of Abydos Hetepsechemui is said to appear under the name Bedjau written in a cartouche . A similar name, Bedja-tau, appears on a writer's palette from the “Mastaba G1011” in Giza . According to Wolfgang Helck, it means "the metal founder".

Reign

When Hetepsechemui took office, the use of ivory tablets, as known from graves of the 1st dynasty , surprisingly ends . However, the reason for this is unknown. The last written documents in this form were found in the entrance area of ​​the tomb of King Qaa .

Contemporary finds indicate that it was difficult for Hetepsechemui to take the throne after Qaa immediately. Finds in Abydos show that a certain Seneferka and a very sparsely documented king “Vogel” ruled for a total of one to three years. It seems that both predecessors were fighting for the throne and Hetepsechemui seized the opportunity and decided the power struggle for himself. This assumption is supported by the unusual Horus name of Hetepsechemui. The ruler had emphatically dedicated to these two halves of the country ( Upper and Lower Egypt ) of Egypt. George Andrew Reisner and Dietrich Wildung suspect that he would have had no reason to if the transition from the first to the second dynasty had gone smoothly. Wolfgang Helck adds that Seneferka and "Vogel" were apparently banned from the later records due to their illegimacy , as their power struggles caused the dynasty to perish.

According to inscriptions on clay seals, Hetepsechemui founded a new residence near Thinis and named it Hor-chaj-seba ("Horus, the shining star"). He also had a new temple built for the deity Netjer-Akhti near Buto . The actual duration of his reign is not known, the Turin royal papyrus certifies the regent 95 years. Since no sed festival is documented for Hetepsechemui , he should not have ruled for more than about 30 years. Sabine Kubisch, who holds a PhD in Egyptology, suspects that he was around 2850 BC. Chr. Ascended the throne and probably 2825 BC. Died after about 25 years of rule.

Entrance to gallery tomb B in Saqqara.

Manetho (Africanus) reports that under Hetepsechemui, whom he calls Boëthôs , “a chasm opened up at Bubastis and many died”. This description could indicate a severe earthquake , as the region around Bubastis lies in a seismologically active zone.

dig

Flinders Petrie and Alessandro Barsanti consider the gallery grave B in Saqqara under the Unas-Aufweg with a length of 120 m, a width of 40 m and more than 70 storage rooms for that of the Hetepsechemui, since both Hetepsechemuis and Nebre seals were unrolled there .

Wolfgang Helck is undecided and sees this grave as that of King Nebre, since the grave of Hetepsechemui has not yet been located and is probably located elsewhere in this area.

literature

• Peter A. Clayton: The Pharaohs. Rulers and Dynasties in Ancient Egypt. Bechtermünz, Augsburg 1998, ISBN 3-8289-0661-3 .
• Walter B. Emery : Egypt. Early history and culture, 3200–2800 BC Chr. Fourier, Wiesbaden 1980, ISBN 3-921695-39-2 .
• Martin von Falck, Susanne Martinssen-von Falck: The great pharaohs. From the early days to the Middle Kingdom. Marix, Wiesbaden 2015, ISBN 978-3737409766 , pp. 54-57.
• Wolfgang Helck : Investigations into the thinite age. (= Egyptological treatises. Vol. 45). Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1987, ISBN 3-447-02677-4 .
• Jochem Kahl : Inscriptional Evidence for the Relative Chronology of Dyn. 0-2. In: Erik Hornung, Rolf Krauss, David A. Warburton (eds.): Ancient Egyptian Chronology (= Handbook of Oriental studies. Section One. The Near and Middle East. Volume 83). Brill, Leiden / Boston 2006, ISBN 978-90-04-11385-5 , pp. 94-115 ( online ).
• Peter Kaplony: Inscriptions of the early Egyptian period. (= Egyptological treatises. Vol. 8, 3). Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1963.
• WM Flinders Petrie : The royal tombs of the earliest dynasties: 1901. Part II (= Memoir of the Egypt Exploration Fund. Volume 21). Egypt Exploration Fund et al., London 1901 ( digitization ).
• Thomas Schneider : Lexicon of the Pharaohs. Albatros, Düsseldorf 2002, ISBN 3-491-96053-3 .
• Rainer Stadelmann : The Egyptian pyramids. From brick construction to the wonder of the world. (= Cultural history of the ancient world . Vol. 30). 2nd revised and expanded edition. von Zabern, Mainz 1991, ISBN 3-8053-1142-7 .
• Jürgen von Beckerath : Handbook of the Egyptian king names (= Munich Egyptological studies. Vol. 20). Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich et al. 1984, ISBN 3-422-00832-2 .
• Jürgen von Beckerath: Chronology of the pharaonic Egypt. The timing of Egyptian history from prehistoric times to 332 BC BC (= Munich Egyptological Studies. Vol. 46). von Zabern, Mainz 1997, ISBN 3-8053-2310-7 .
• William Gillian Waddell: Manetho. (= The Loeb classical Library. Vol. 350). Harvard University Press et al., Cambridge MA et al. 1997, ISBN 0-674-99385-3 .
• Dietrich Wildung : The role of Egyptian kings in the consciousness of their posterity. Part 1: Posthumous sources on the kings of the first four dynasties. (= Munich Egyptological Studies. Vol. 17, ZDB -ID 500317-9 ). Hessling, Berlin 1969.
• Toby AH Wilkinson : Early Dynastic Egypt. Routledge, London et al. 1999, ISBN 0-415-18633-1 .

Web links

Commons : Hetepsechemui  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• The Ancient Egypt Site

Remarks

1. ↑ Term of office: 38 years.
2. ↑ ^{a b Duration of} government: No information.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Wolfgang Helck: Investigations on the thinite age. 1987, p. 117.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Edward Brovarski: Two old writing boards from Giza. In: Annales du Service des Antiquités de l'Egypte. Vol. 71, 1987, ISSN  1687-1510 , pp. 27-52, here: panel 1, online (PDF; 11 MB) .
3. ^ Alan H. Gardiner : The royal canon of Turin. Reissued. Griffith Institute, Oxford 1997, ISBN 0-900416-48-3 , illustration 1. The representation of the entry in the Turin papyrus, which differs from the usual syntax for hieroboxes, is based on the fact that open cartridges were used in the hieratic . The alternating time-missing-time presence of certain name elements is due to material damage in the papyrus.
4. ↑ Wolfgang Helck: Investigations on the thinite age. 1987, pp. 105f., 117, 124.
5. ↑ see: Edward Brovarski: Two old writing boards from Giza. In: Annales du Service des Antiquités de l'Egypte. Vol. 71, 1987, ISSN  1687-1510 , pp. 27-52, here: panel 1, online (PDF; 11 MB) .
6. ^ Flinders Petrie: The royal tombs of the earliest dynasties: 1901. Part II, London 1901.
7. ↑ Lacau-Lauer: Predynastic Dynasties . Pp. 79-83.
8. ↑ Guy Brunton: Qau and Badari I. with chapters by Alan Gardiner and Flinders Petrie, British School of Archeology in Egypt 44, London 1927: Bernard Quaritch, Plate XIX, 25.
9. ↑ Inscriptions of Hotepsekhemwy
10. ^ Thomas Schneider: Lexicon of the Pharaohs. 2002, p. 134.
11. ↑ Peter Kaplony: "He is a darling of women" - a "new" king and a new theory about the crown prince and the goddesses of the state (crown goddesses) of the 1st / 2nd. Dynasty. In: Egypt and Levant. Vol. 13, 2006, ISSN  1015-5104 , pp. 107-126, doi : 10.1553 / AE and L13 .
12. ↑ Dietrich Wildung: The role of Egyptian kings in the consciousness of their posterity. Part 1. 1969, pp. 36-41.
13. ↑ Wolfgang Helck: Investigations on the thinite age. 1987, pp. 194-195.
14. ↑ Turin kinglist ( Memento from January 12, 2007 in the web archive archive.today )
15. ^ Nabil Swelim : Some Problems on the History of the Third Dynasty (= Archaeological and historical Studies. 7, ZDB -ID 800015-3 ). Archaeological Society of Alexandria, Alexandria 1983, pp. 67-77 (also: Budapest, Univ., Diss., 1982).
16. ↑ Kubisch, Sabine: Das altengypt, Stuttgart 2008, p. 184.
17. ^ William Gillian Waddell: Manetho. 1997, p. 35.
18. ^ Peter Munro : The Unas cemetery north-west. Volume 1: Topographical-historical introduction. The double grave of queens Nebet and Khenut. von Zabern, Mainz 1993, ISBN 3-8053-1353-5 .

predecessor	Office	successor
Hor Qaa	King of Egypt 2nd Dynasty (beginning)	Nebre