page_title: Abydos Dynasty
section_title: Evidence in favor
hierarchical_section_title: Abydos Dynasty / Debate over existence / Evidence in favor
caption_attribution_description: English: The cartouche of a newly discovered pharaoh, Woseribre Senebkay, inside the king’s burial tomb.
context_page_description: The Abydos Dynasty is hypothesized to have been a short-lived local dynasty ruling over parts of Middle and Upper Egypt during the Second Intermediate Period in Ancient Egypt. The Abydos Dynasty would have been contemporaneous with the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Dynasties, from approximately 1650 to 1600 BC. It would have been based in or around Abydos and its royal necropolis might have been located at the foot of the Mountain of Anubis, a hill resembling a pyramid in the Abydene desert, close to a rock-cut tomb built for pharaoh Senusret III.
context_section_description: The existence of an Abydos Dynasty was first proposed by Detlef Franke and later elaborated on by Kim Ryholt in 1997. Ryholt observes that two attested kings of this period, Wepwawetemsaf (Wepwawet is his protection) and Pantjeny (He of Thinis), bore names in connection with Abydos: Wepwawet being an important Abydene god and Thinis being a prominent city, located a few miles north of Abydos. Additionally, Wepwawetemsaf, Pantjeny and Snaaib, another king of the period, are each known from single stelae discovered in Abydos, which could be a sign that this was their seat of power. Finally, Ryholt argues that the existence of an Abydos Dynasty would explain 16 entries of the Turin canon at the end of the 16th Dynasty. The Abydos Dynasty may have come into existence in the time lapse between the fall of the 13th Dynasty with the conquest of Memphis by the Hyksos and the southward progression of the Hyksos to Thebes.
  The existence of the dynasty may have been vindicated in January 2014, when the tomb of the previously unknown pharaoh Senebkay was discovered in the southern part of Abydos, an area called "Anubis Mountain" in ancient times. If Senebkay indeed belongs to the Abydos Dynasty, his tomb might signal the royal necropolis of this dynasty, adjacent to the tombs of the Middle Kingdom rulers. Since then, excavations have revealed no less than eight anonymous royal tombs dating to the Second Intermediate Period similar in style and size to Senebkay's burial, as well as two tombs, possibly pyramids, dating to the mid 13th-Dynasty, S9 and S10, which may belong to Neferhotep I and his brother Sobekhotep IV.
caption: The cartouche of pharaoh Woseribre Senebkay, inside the king's burial tomb.
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