Reign early 20th century BCE (11th–12th Dynasty) | ||
Seankhibtawy Seankhibra was an enigmatic Ancient Egyptian king of the 12th Dynasty, around 1950 BC. Seankhibtawy Seankhibra is so far only known from an architrave found at Ayn Shams (the ancient Iunu or Heliopolis). The architrave adorned once a private tomb.
Identification
His identification causes problems in Egyptology, as there is no other king known with the same names, dating to the Middle Kingdom. The monument with the king's name dates on stylistically grounds for sure to the Middle Kingdom. The name of the private person who owned it, is erased, but the remains indicate that it might be a person called Heny.
Egyptian kings had a title string consisting of five names. The prenomen and the nomen being the most common ones on monuments. Another important name was the Horus name. Seankhibtawy Seankhibra appears on the monument with the Horus name Seankhibtawy and his prenomen Seankhibra. No other known king bears this combination of names. However, there is so far one king known from the Middle Kingdom with this prenomen Seankhibra: king Amenemhat VI. A second king with the same prenomen is attested in the Turin Canon as king of the 14th Dynasty, but the latter king is not known from any contemporary monuments. The exact findspot of the architrave is not known, but must come from an undocumented rescue excavation. The first person who commented on the king was Detlef Franke who assigned the monument to Amenemhat VI. Kim Ryholt in his study of the Second Intermediate Period followed Franke's dating. The monument was fully published in 2005 by Mey Zaki who again follows this dating. However, already earlier William Kelly Simpson dated the king to the late 11th Dynasty, where there reigned a king such as Mentuhotep IV who is also very badly attested in ours sources. Nevertheless, on stylistical grounds it is more likely that the monument dates to the early 12th Dynasty, to the reigns of Amenemhat I, Senusret I or Amenemhat II. Therefore, Seankhibtawy Seankhibra is either an otherwise not yet attested short reigning usurper; or it is an early name of one of the mentioned kings before they changed name to the form better known from other monuments.