Tefnakht

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Tefnakht
Tefnakht on his year 8 stela
Tefnakht on his year 8 stela
Pharaoh
Reign732–725 BC
PredecessorInterregnum (as a pharaoh)
Osorkon C (as a Great Chief of the Ma)
Ankhhor (as a Great Chief of the West)
SuccessorBakenranef
Royal titulary
Horus name
Siakhet[hor]
Sj3-ẖt
Son of Khet
G5
S32
mi
Nebty name
Siakhetnebty
Sj3-ẖt
Son of the Two Ladies' body
G16
S32
F51
Prenomen  (Praenomen)
Shepsesre
Špss-Rˁ
Noble like Ra[1]
M23L2
N5A50S29S29
Nomen
Tefnakht[2]
T3y-[.f]-nḫt
G39N5
X1G1I9
N35
M3		 Aa1
X1
ChildrenBakenranef
FatherGemnefsutkapu
Dynasty
24th Dynasty

Shepsesre Tefnakht (in

22nd Dynasty: Shoshenq V. Tefnakht I was actually the second ruler of Sais; he was preceded by Osorkon C, who is attested by several documents mentioning him as this city's Chief of the Ma and Army Leader, according to Kenneth Kitchen,[4] while his predecessor as Great Chief of the West was a man named Ankhhor.[5] A recently discovered statue, dedicated by Tefnakht I to Amun-Re, reveals important details about his personal origins.[6] The statue's text states that Tefnakht was the son of a certain Gemnefsutkapu and the grandson of Basa, a priest of Amun near Sais. Consequently, Tefnakht was not actually descended from either lines of Chiefs of the Ma and of the Libu as traditionally believed but rather came from a family of priests, and his ancestors being more likely Egyptians rather than Libyans.[7]

Tefnakht is absent from the Manethonian tradition, perhaps because of the abbreviated form in which the Aegyptiaca is known, perhaps because Tefnakht was considered a usurper.[8]

Biography

Tefnakht erected two donation

22nd
or 23rd dynasties.

Tefnakht was not a member of the Tanite-based 22nd Dynasty of Egypt since

stela of Piye which this Nubian ruler erected on the New Year's Day of his 21st regnal year. Shortly afterwards, Piye returned home to Nubia at Gebel Barkal
, and never returned to Lower Egypt again.

Kingship

Complete stele of Tefnakht

Despite this setback, Tefnakht was left alone as the local prince of his local region of Sais. He managed, over time, to soon reestablish his kingdom's control in the Delta region from the political vacuum which resulted after Piye's departure from this region. It is generally believed that prince Tefnakht officially proclaimed himself as king Shepsesre Tefnakht I and adopted a royal title sometime after Piye's departure from Lower Egypt. His successor at Sais was Bakenranef.

While most scholars such as Kenneth Kitchen have equated Manetho's Tefnakht with the king Shepsesre Tefnakht of Sais who is attested by the Year 8 Athens donation stela, a recent article by Olivier Perdu[10] has suggested that this Tefnakht was rather Tefnakht II, a much later king of Sais who ruled in the mid-680's BCE during the late Nubian 25th Dynasty. In his paper, Perdu published a newly discovered stela dating from the second year of Necho I's reign, which he contends is similar in style, text and content to the Year 8 stela of Shepsesre Tefnakht. Perdu, thus, infers that these two kings of Sais—Necho I and Tefnakht II—were close contemporaries. However, his arguments are not currently accepted by most Egyptian scholars such as Dan'el Kahn or Kenneth Kitchen who still believe that the Year 8 Athens stela of king Shepsesre Tefnakht likely belongs to Tefnakht I rather than a hypothetical Tefnakht II who would then have assumed power in 685 BC at Sais—early during the reign of Taharqa, one of the most powerful Nubian rulers of Egypt. Kahn has also stressed at an Egyptological Conference at Leiden that Perdu's epigraphic criteria here in the famed Athens stela—such as the use of the tripartite wig, the method through which the falcon-headed god keeps his head upright in the same stela and on temple wall reliefs contemporary with Tefnakht I's time, the decoration of the stela scene: Heaven supported by wAs scepters—appear already in use in the 24th or early 25th Nubian dynasty during Piye, Shabaka or Bakenranef's reign.[11] The invisible back side of the tripartite wig can be found on the donation stela of Shebitku from Pharbaitos and on the Bakenranef/Bocchoris vase dating to the last days of Piye and the beginning of Shabaka—all appear close in time to the presumed reign of Tefnakht I. Moreover, the head of the falcon-headed god Horus is, as Perdu himself noted, similar in style to the stela of Tefnakht, chief of the Meshwesh and Piye's chief rival.[12]

Unlike Necho I, neither of this king's presumed Saite royal predecessors, a certain Nekauba and Tefnakht II, are monumentally attested in Lower Egypt. Hence, the latter two kings who appear in the records of Manetho's Epitome may well be fictitious. Moreover, it is improbable that Taharqa, perhaps one of the most powerful Kushite kings of the Nubian 25th dynasty for the first 18 years of his reign, would have tolerated the existence of a rival line of native Egyptian kings at Sais during the first half of his reign when he exercised full control over Memphis and the Delta region. After all, the 24th dynasty Saite rulers Tefnakht and Bakenranef had fought Taharqa's father Piye and resisted Shabaka's expansion of Kushite power into the Delta region.

References

  1. ^ Peter A. Clayton, Chronicle of the Pharaohs: The Reign-by-Reign Record of the Rulers and Dynasties of Ancient Egypt, Thames and Hudson, London, 1994. p.188
  2. ^ Tefnakht
  3. ^ Diodorus Siculus 1.45
  4. ^ KA Kitchen, The Third Intermediate Period in Egypt (1100–650 BC), 3rd ed. 1996, Aris & Phillips Limited, pp.351 & p.355
  5. ^ Kitchen, op. cit., § 316.
  6. ^ P.R. Del Francia, "Di una statuette dedicate ad Amon-Ra dal grande capo dei Ma Tefnakht nel Museo Egizio di Firenze", S. Russo (ed.) Atti del V Convegno Nazionale di Egittologia e Papirologia, Firenze, 10-12 dicembre 1999, Firenze, 2000, 63-112, 76-82
  7. ^ Del Francia, pp.63-112 & 76-82
  8. ISBN 9782724700459
    .
  9. ^ Kitchen, The Third Intermediate Period in Egypt, p.362
  10. ^ Olivier Perdu, "La Chefferie de Sébennytos de Piankhy à Psammétique Ier", Revue d'Égyptology 55 (2004), pp. 95-111.
  11. ^ Dan'el Kahn, The Transition from Libyan to Nubian Rule in "Egypt: Revisiting the Reign of Tefnakht, THE LIBYAN PERIOD IN EGYPT, Historical and Cultural Studies into the 21st - 24th Dynasties: Proceedings of a Conference at Leiden University 25–27 October 2007," G.P.F. Broekman, R.J. Demarée & O.E. Kaper, (eds.), pp.139-48
  12. ^ Olivier Perdu, De Stéphinates à Nécho ou les débuts de la XXVIe Dynastie, académie des Inscriptios & belles-lettres – Comptes rendus (CRAIBL), 2002. p.1229, n. 73

Further reading

  • Dan'el Kahn, Did Tefnakht I rule as king?, GM 173 (1999), pp. 123–125
  • Dan'el Kahn, The Transition from Libyan to Nubian Rule in Egypt: Revisiting the Reign of Tefnakht. In: G. P. F. Broekman, R. J. Demarée and O. E. Kaper (eds), The Libyan Period in Egypt (Egyptologische Uitgaven, vol. 23), 139-148. Leiden 2009: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten; Leuven: Peeters.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Tefnakht.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tefnakht&oldid=1172151124"