Neferefre
Neferefre Isi was an ancient Egyptian pharaoh of the Fifth Dynasty. He was most likely the eldest son of pharaoh Neferirkare Kakai and queen Khentkaus II. He started a pyramid for himself in the royal necropolis of Abusir. The pyramid was never finished, with a mason’s inscription showing that works on the stone structure were abandoned during or shortly after the king’s second year of reign.
About Neferefre in brief
Neferefre Isi was an ancient Egyptian pharaoh of the Fifth Dynasty during the Old Kingdom period. He was most likely the eldest son of pharaoh Neferirkare Kakai and queen Khentkaus II. He started a pyramid for himself in the royal necropolis of Abusir called Netjeribau Raneferef. The pyramid was never finished, with a mason’s inscription showing that works on the stone structure were abandoned during or shortly after the king’s second year of reign. There are very few archaeological sources contemporaneous with his reign, a fact which is now seen by Egyptologists to imply a very short reign. After his death, he might have been succeeded by an ephemeral and little-known pharaoh, Shepseskare, whose relation with NefereFre remains highly uncertain and debated. Nefrefre was also mentioned in the Aegypta, a history of Egypt written in the 3rd century BC during the reign of Ptolemy II. A single copy of the document survived by the Egyptian priest Manetho II and could be effectively used as the corresponding sign to add a decade to the length of his reign. He is also mentioned on the Saqqara Tablet, which dates to the same period as the Turin canon, but it has been lost in a large lacuna affecting the document since the same time as the Saara tablet. The name is still legible with a stroke indicating one year of the reign to a decade, which could be added in principle, but would be effectively lost in the lacuna of this document.
Naferefre was buried in his pyramid, hastily completed in the form of a mastaba by his second successor and presumably younger brother, pharaoh Nyuserre Ini. Fragments of his mummy were uncovered there, showing that he died in his early twenties. Some of the AbUSir Papyri discovered in Khentkhaus II’s temple and dating to the mid- to late Fifth Dynasty mention the mortuary temple and funerary cult of Neferfre. They constitute a written source near-contemporaneous to his reign that gives details regarding the administrative organisation and importance of the funerarycult of the king in Ancient Egyptian society. The inscription was written on the fourth day of the Akhet season in the year of first occurrence of the cattle count, an event consisting of counting the livestock throughout the country to evaluate the amount of taxes to be levied. It is traditionally believed that such counts occurred every two years during theOld Kingdom although recent reappraisals have led Egyptologist to posit a less regular and somewhat more frequent count. Therefore, the inscription must refer to Neferenfre’s first or second year on the throne, and his third year at the very latest. A single text shows that Nefmerefre had planned or just started to build a sun temple called Hotep-Re, meaning ‘Ra is content’ or ‘Ra’s offering table’
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This page is based on the article Neferefre published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 04, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
