Sahure - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Etymology

Sahure's birth name means "He who is Close to Re

Ra is the ancient Egyptian sun god. By the Fifth Dynasty he had become a major deity in ancient Egyptian religion, identified primarily with the mid-day sun...

". His Horus name was Nebkhau.

Biography

Sahure was a son of queen Neferhetepes

Neferhetepes (Userkaf)

Neferhetepes was the wife of the Ancient Egyptian king Userkaf, who was the first king of the Fifth Dynasty. She was also the mother of king Sahure who was the successor of Userkaf. Furthermore she was most likely mother of Meretnebty, who was the wife of Sahure...

, as shown in scenes from the causeway of Sahure's pyramid complex in Abusir. His father was Userkaf

Userkaf

Userkaf was the founder of the Fifth dynasty of Egypt and the first pharaoh to start the tradition of building sun temples at Abusir. His name means "his Ka is powerful". He ruled from 2494-2487 BC and constructed the Pyramid of Userkaf complex at Saqqara.- Family :Userkaf's wife was Queen...

. Sahure's consort was queen Neferetnebty

Neferetnebty

Neferetnebty was a Queen of Egypt as a wife of Pharaoh Sahure. She lived during the 5th dynasty and was named after Two Ladies, a pair of Egyptian goddesses who protected the pharaoh.- Biography :...

. Reliefs show Sahure and Neferetnebty with their sons Ranefer and Netjerirenre. He was succeeded by Neferirkare

Neferirkare Kakai

Neferirkare Kakai was the third Pharaoh of Egypt during the Fifth dynasty. His praenomen, Neferirkare, means "Beautiful is the Soul of Ra". His Horus name was Userkhau, his Golden Horus name Sekhemunebu and his Nebti name Khaiemnebty.- Family :...

, the first king known to have used separate names. Miroslav Verner

Miroslav Verner

Prof. Dr. Miroslav Verner, DrSc. is a Czech Egyptologist, who specializes in the history and archaeology of Ancient Egypt of the Old Kingdom....

speculates that Prince Ranefer took the throne as Neferirkare

Neferirkare Kakai

and Prince Netjerirenre may have later take the throne as Shepseskare.

Sahure ruled Egypt from around 2487 BC to 2475 BC. The Turin King List

Turin King List

The Turin King List, also known as the Turin Royal Canon, is a hieratic papyrus thought to date from the reign of Ramesses II, now in the Museo Egizio at Turin...

gives him a reign of twelve years while the contemporary Palermo Stone

Palermo stone

The Palermo Stone is a large fragment of a stele known as the Royal Annals of the Old Kingdom of Ancient Egypt. It contains records of the kings of Egypt from the first dynasty through the fifth dynasty....

Annal preserves Years 2-3, 5-6 and the final year of Sahure's reign. The document notes six or seven cattle counts, which would indicate a reign of at least 12 full years if the Old Kingdom cattle count was held biannually (i.e.: every 2 years) as this Annal document implies for the early Fifth Dynasty. If this assumption is correct and Sahure's highest date was the Year after the 6th count rather than his 7th count as Wilkinson believes, then this date would mean that Sahure died in his 13th Year and should be given a reign of 13 Years 5 Months and 12 days. This number would be only one year more than the Turin Canon's 12 year figure for Sahure.

Historical records and Egyptian art show that Sahure established an ancient Egyptian navy and sent a fleet to Punt and traded with cultures in the Eastern Mediterranean. His pyramid had colonnaded courts and relief sculptures which illustrated his naval fleet and recorded his military career consisting mostly of campaigns against the Libyans in the western desert. He is credited with having begun the cemetery complex at Saqqara and he also used a diorite quarry just west of Abu Simbel.

Pyramid

His pyramid

Egyptian pyramids

The Egyptian pyramids are ancient pyramid-shaped masonry structures located in Egypt.There are 138 pyramids discovered in Egypt as of 2008. Most were built as tombs for the country's Pharaohs and their consorts during the Old and Middle Kingdom periods.The earliest known Egyptian pyramids are found...

complex was the first built at the new royal burial ground at Abusir

Abusir

Abusir is the name given to an Egyptian archaeological locality – specifically, an extensive necropolis of the Old Kingdom period, together with later additions – in the vicinity of the modern capital Cairo...

, a few kilometres north of Saqqara

Saqqara

Saqqara is a vast, ancient burial ground in Egypt, serving as the necropolis for the Ancient Egyptian capital, Memphis. Saqqara features numerous pyramids, including the world famous Step pyramid of Djoser, sometimes referred to as the Step Tomb due to its rectangular base, as well as a number of...

(though Userkaf had probably already built his solar temple there) and marks the decline of pyramid building, both in terms of size and quality, though many of the surviving fragments of reliefs which decorated the temple walls of both Sahure's and other Fifth Dynasty's kings are of high quality.

His pyramid provides us most of the information we know of this king. The reliefs in his mortuary and valley temple depict a counting of foreigners by or in front of the goddess Seshat

Seshat

In Egyptian mythology, Seshat was the Ancient Egyptian goddess of wisdom, knowledge, and writing. She was seen as a scribe and record keeper, and her name means she who scrivens , and is credited with inventing writing...

and the return of a fleet from Asia

Asia

Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...

, perhaps Byblos

Byblos

Byblos is the Greek name of the Phoenician city Gebal . It is a Mediterranean city in the Mount Lebanon Governorate of present-day Lebanon under the current Arabic name of Jubayl and was also referred to as Gibelet during the Crusades...

. This may indicate a military interest in the Near East

Near East

The Near East is a geographical term that covers different countries for geographers, archeologists, and historians, on the one hand, and for political scientists, economists, and journalists, on the other...

, but the contacts may have been diplomatic and commercial as well. As part of the contacts with the Near East, the reliefs from his funerary monuments also hold the oldest known representation of a Syria

Syria

Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....

n bear.

When it was excavated in the first years of the 20th century, a great amount of fine reliefs were found to an extent and quality superior to those from the dynasty before. Some of the low relief-cuttings in red granite

Granite

Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic...

are masterpieces of their kind and still in place at the site. The construction of the pyramid was made (like the others from this dynasty) with an inner core of roughly hewn stones in a step construction held together in many sections with a mortar of mud.

While this was under construction, a corridor was left into the shaft where the grave chamber was erected separately and later covered by leftover stone blocks and debris. This construction strategy is clearly visible from two unfinished pyramids and reflects the older style from the Third dynasty

Third dynasty of Egypt

For the Sumerian Renaissance, see Third Dynasty of Ur.The Third Dynasty of ancient Egypt is the first dynasty of the Old Kingdom. Other dynasties of the Old Kingdom include the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth...

now coming back into fashion after being temporarily abandoned by the builders of the five great pyramids at Dahshur

Dahshur

Dahshur , is a royal necropolis located in the desert on the west bank of the Nile approximately 40 kilometres south of Cairo...

and Giza during the Fourth dynasty

Fourth dynasty of Egypt

The fourth dynasty of ancient Egypt is characterized as a "golden age" of the Old Kingdom. Dynasty IV lasted from ca. 2613 to 2494 BC...

.

Today, only the inside construction remains of his pyramid and remain partly visible in a pile of rubble originating from the crude filling of debris and mortar behind the casing stones taken away a thousand years ago. The whole inner construction is badly damaged and not possible to access today. The entrance at the north side is a short descending corridor lined with red granite followed by a passageway ending at the burial chamber. It has a gabled roof made of big limestone layers. Fragments of the sarcophagus

Sarcophagus

A sarcophagus is a funeral receptacle for a corpse, most commonly carved or cut from stone. The word "sarcophagus" comes from the Greek σαρξ sarx meaning "flesh", and φαγειν phagein meaning "to eat", hence sarkophagus means "flesh-eating"; from the phrase lithos sarkophagos...

were found here when it was entered in the early 19th century. The colossal roof blocks of Suhare's temple weighed up to about 220 tons based on estimates by J.S. Perring. He estimated the size of the largest blocks at 35 feet by 9 feet by 12 feet. One end of these blocks was tapered so the estimated volume is 95 cubic meters or 2.4 tons. There were a total of at least 12 blocks the smallest of which was less than 100 tons. All but 2 of these are now broken. The Valley building of Sahure's Pyramid at Abu Sir included 8 monolithic granite columns with leafs on their capitals. These were probably not more than about 10 tons each but what makes them worth noting is that over a portion 2.6 meters long they taper from 91.2 cm to 79.8 cm with the error from the mean diameter never more than 8 millimetres.

Few depictions of the king are known, and in a sculpture he is shown sitting on his throne with a local nome

Nome (Egypt)

A nome was a subnational administrative division of ancient Egypt. Today's use of the Greek nome rather than the Egyptian term sepat came about during the Ptolemaic period. Fascinated with Egypt, Greeks created many historical records about the country...

deity by his side.

History

Most foreign intercations during the reign of Sahure were economic, rather than military. In one scene in his pyramid, there are great ships with Egyptians and representatives from the Middle East on board. It is believed they are returning from the port of Byblos in Lebanon

Lebanon

Lebanon , officially the Republic of LebanonRepublic of Lebanon is the most common term used by Lebanese government agencies. The term Lebanese Republic, a literal translation of the official Arabic and French names that is not used in today's world. Arabic is the most common language spoken among...

with huge cedar trees. There is corroborating evidence for this in the form of his name on a piece of thin gold stamped to a chair, as well as other evidence of the Fifth dynasty

Fifth dynasty of Egypt

The fifth dynasty of ancient Egypt is often combined with Dynasties III, IV and VI under the group title the Old Kingdom. Dynasty V dates approximately from 2494 to 2345 BC.-Rulers:...

king's cartouche

Cartouche

In Egyptian hieroglyphs, a cartouche is an ellipse with a horizontal line at one end, indicating that the text enclosed is a royal name, coming into use during the beginning of the Fourth Dynasty under Pharaoh Sneferu, replacing the earlier serekh...

s found in Lebanon on stone vessels. Other scenes in his temple depict what seem to be Syrian bears.

There is also the first documented expedition to the land of Punt

Land of Punt

The Land of Punt, also called Pwenet, or Pwene by the ancient Egyptians, was a trading partner known for producing and exporting gold, aromatic resins, African blackwood, ebony, ivory, slaves and wild animals...

, which apparently yielded a quantity of myrrh

Myrrh

Myrrh is the aromatic oleoresin of a number of small, thorny tree species of the genus Commiphora, which grow in dry, stony soil. An oleoresin is a natural blend of an essential oil and a resin. Myrrh resin is a natural gum....

, along with malachite

Malachite

Malachite is a copper carbonate mineral, with the formula Cu2CO32. This green-colored mineral crystallizes in the monoclinic crystal system, and most often forms botryoidal, fibrous, or stalagmitic masses. Individual crystals are rare but do occur as slender to acicular prisms...

and electrum

Electrum

Electrum is a naturally occurring alloy of gold and silver, with trace amounts of copper and other metals. It has also been produced artificially. The ancient Greeks called it 'gold' or 'white gold', as opposed to 'refined gold'. Its color ranges from pale to bright yellow, depending on the...

, and because of this, Sahure is often credited with establishing an Egyptian navy

Navy

A navy is the branch of a nation's armed forces principally designated for naval and amphibious warfare; namely, lake- or ocean-borne combat operations and related functions...

. There are also scenes of a raid into Libya

Libya

Libya is an African country in the Maghreb region of North Africa bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad and Niger to the south, and Algeria and Tunisia to the west....

which yielded various livestock and showed the king smiting the local chieftains. The Palermo stone

Palermo stone

also corroborates some of these events and also mentions expeditions to the Sinai and to the exotic land of Punt, as well as to the diorite

Diorite

Diorite is a grey to dark grey intermediate intrusive igneous rock composed principally of plagioclase feldspar , biotite, hornblende, and/or pyroxene. It may contain small amounts of quartz, microcline and olivine. Zircon, apatite, sphene, magnetite, ilmenite and sulfides occur as accessory...

quarries northwest of Abu Simbel

Abu Simbel

Abu Simbel temples refers to two massive rock temples in Abu Simbel in Nubia, southern Egypt on the western bank of Lake Nasser about 230 km southwest of Aswan...

in Nubia

Nubia

Nubia is a region along the Nile river, which is located in northern Sudan and southern Egypt.There were a number of small Nubian kingdoms throughout the Middle Ages, the last of which collapsed in 1504, when Nubia became divided between Egypt and the Sennar sultanate resulting in the Arabization...

.

However, this same scene of the Libyan attack was used two hundred years later in the mortuary temple of Pepi II

Pepi II Neferkare

Pepi II was a pharaoh of the Sixth dynasty in Egypt's Old Kingdom. His throne name, Neferkare , means "Beautiful is the Ka of Re". He succeeded to the throne at age six, after the death of Merenre I, and is generally credited with having the longest reign of any monarch in history at 94 years...

and in a Kawa

Kawa, Egypt

Kawa is a town in Sudan. Located in ancient Nubia between the Third and Fourth Cataracts of the Nile. Noteworthy archaeological discoveries include several Twenty-fifth dynasty of Egypt era steles .-References:...

temple of Taharqa

Taharqa

Taharqa was a pharaoh of the Ancient Egyptian 25th dynasty and king of the Kingdom of Kush, which was located in Northern Sudan.Taharqa was the son of Piye, the Nubian king of Napata who had first conquered Egypt. Taharqa was also the cousin and successor of Shebitku. The successful campaigns of...

. The same names are quoted for the local chieftain. Therefore, there is the possibility that Sahure was also copying an even earlier representation of this scene.

He apparently built a sun temple—as did most of the 5th Dynasty kings—called Sekhet-re, meaning "the Field of Re

Ra is the ancient Egyptian sun god. By the Fifth Dynasty he had become a major deity in ancient Egyptian religion, identified primarily with the mid-day sun...

" but thus far its location is unknown. His palace, called Uetjesneferusahure ("Sahure's splendor soars up to heaven"), is known from an inscription on tallow

Tallow

Tallow is a rendered form of beef or mutton fat, processed from suet. It is solid at room temperature. Unlike suet, tallow can be stored for extended periods without the need for refrigeration to prevent decomposition, provided it is kept in an airtight container to prevent oxidation.In industry,...

containers recently discovered in Neferefre

Neferefre

Neferefre was a Pharaoh of Egypt during the Fifth dynasty. His name means "Beautiful is Re" in Egyptian.-Family:Neferefre was the son of king Neferirkare Kakai by queen Khentkaus II, and the elder brother of pharaoh Nyuserre Ini....

's mortuary temple. It may have been located at Abusir

Abusir

as well. Under Sahure, the turquoise quarries in the Sinai were exploited (probably at Wadi Maghara and Wadi Kharit), along with the diorite quarries in Nubia.

Sahure is further attested by a statue now located in New York's Metropolitan Museum, in a biography found in the tombs of Perisen at Saqqara

Saqqara

and on a false door of Niankhsakhment at Saqqara. He is also mentioned in the Twelfth dynasty

Twelfth dynasty of Egypt

The twelfth dynasty of ancient Egypt is often combined with Dynasties XI, XIII and XIV under the group title Middle Kingdom.-Rulers:Known rulers of the twelfth dynasty are as follows :...

tombs of Sekhemkare

Sekhemkare

Horus name: Mekhibtaui Nebti name: ItisekhemefThrone name: SekhemkareBirth name: Amenemhat SenebefAmenemhat V Sekhemkare was an Egyptian king of the 13th Dynasty. He appears as 'Sekhemkare' in the Turin King List. Contemporary monuments of this king are several Nile level records and a statue found...

and Nisutpunetjer, in Giza.

Succession

Sahure's successor to the throne was not his eldest son and intended heir, Netjerirenre, but rather Neferirkare Kakai whose origins are unknown. On some reliefs from Sahure's mortuary temple, a secondary inscription gives one of the persons depicted in this king's entourage Neferirkare's name, royal insignia and royal titles. On this basis, some Egyptologists have concluded that Neferirkare and Sahure were brothers. If true, this would be evidence that Neferirkare usurped the throne at the expense of his nephew Netjerirenre, who was apparently still a child at Sahure's death. This may indicate certain dynastic and internal political problems with the royal succession during this time.

Family

Sahure was married to Neferetnebty