page_title: Menkauhor Kaiu
section_title: Contemporaneous
hierarchical_section_title: Menkauhor Kaiu / Attestations / Contemporaneous
caption_attribution_description: English: Personified agricultural estate of pharaoh Menkauhor as depicted on the south wall of the tomb of Ptahhotep II in Saqqara.
context_page_description: Menkauhor Kaiu was an Ancient Egyptian pharaoh of the Old Kingdom period. He was the seventh ruler of the Fifth Dynasty at the end of the 25th century BC or early in the 24th century BC.
  Menkauhor ruled for possibly eight or nine years, following king Nyuserre Ini, and was succeeded in turn by Djedkare Isesi. Although Menkauhor is well attested by historical sources, few artefacts from his reign have survived. Consequently, his familial relation to his predecessor and successor is unclear, and no offspring of his have been identified. Khentkaus III may have been Menkauhor's mother, as indicated by evidence discovered in her tomb in 2015.
  Beyond the construction of monuments, the only known activity dated to Menkauhor's reign is an expedition to the copper and turquoise mines in Sinai. Menkauhor ordered the construction of a sun temple, called the "Akhet-Ra", meaning "The Horizon of Ra". The last ever to be built, this sun temple, known from inscriptions found in the tombs of its priests, is yet to be located. Menkauhor was buried in a small pyramid in Saqqara, which the Ancient Egyptians named Netjer-Isut Menkauhor, "The Divine Places of Menkauhor".
context_section_description: Relatively few attestations dating to Menkauhor's reign have survived compared to the other kings of the Fifth Dynasty. Nonetheless, Menkauhor's name is well attested in the names and titles of priests and officials of the Fifth Dynasty as well as in the names of the agricultural estates associated with his funerary cult. Surviving artefacts contemporaneous with Menkauhor's reign include two stone vessels inscribed with his name from the mortuary temple of Neferefre – possibly gifts from Menkauhor for the funerary cult of Neferefre– as well as a few sealings from the same temple and from an area known as "Djedkare's Family Cemetery" in Abusir. Cylinder seal impressions showing Menkauhor's Horus name or the name of his pyramid have also been unearthed in the mortuary complex of Nyuserre Ini, and in the necropolises of Giza and Gebelein.
  A gold cylinder seal bearing Menkauhor's cartouche as part of the name of his pyramid together with the serekh of Djedkare Isesi is now on display at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The seal, purportedly discovered near the Pactolus river valley in western Anatolia, could attest to wide-ranging trade-contacts during the Fifth Dynasty, but its provenance remains unverifiable.
  The only secure depiction of the king dating to the Old Kingdom that has survived to this day is a rough, possibly unfinished, alabaster statuette showing Menkauhor enthroned and wearing the tight-fitting ceremonial robe of the Heb-sed. The statue was discovered in a cachette built during the late New Kingdom beneath the floor of a room to the west of the sacred lake at the temple of Ptah in Memphis. The Egyptologist Jocelyn Berlandini proposed that another statuette, usually attributed to Teti, belongs instead to Menkauhor Kaiu. Berlandini bases her hypothesis on stylistic grounds, noting the resemblance with Menkauhor's seated statue, as well as the location of the second statue, which was uncovered east of Teti's pyramid, in close proximity to Menkauhor's pyramid.
  Monumental attestations of Menkauhor are limited to a rock inscription at the Wadi Maghareh in Sinai, showing his titulary and a rough stele inscribed with his cartouche from Mastaba 904 at Saqqara.
caption: Personified agricultural estate of Menkauhor, tomb of Ptahhotep, Saqqara[23]
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