Djedankhre Montemsaf was a Theban king of the 16th Dynasty based in

Upper Egypt Upper Egypt ( ar, صعيد مصر ', shortened to , , locally: ; ) is the southern portion of Egypt and is composed of the lands on both sides of the Nile that extend upriver from Lower Egypt in the north to Nubia in the south. In ancient ...

during the Second Intermediate Period c. 1590 BC.

Kim Ryholt Kim Steven Bardrum Ryholt (born 19 June 1970) is a professor of Egyptology at the University of Copenhagen and a specialist on Egyptian history and literature. He is director of the research centeCanon and Identity Formation in the Earliest Litera ...

: ''The Political Situation in Egypt during the Second Intermediate Period'', Museum Tusculanum Press, (1997), p. 202 As such, he would have ruled concurrently with the

15th Dynasty The Fifteenth Dynasty was a foreign dynasty of ancient Egypt. It was founded by Salitis, a Hyksos from West Asia whose people had invaded the country and conquered Lower Egypt. The 15th, 16th, and 17th Dynasties of ancient Egypt are often combin ...

, which controlled Lower and Middle Egypt.

Attestations

Djedankhre Montemsaf is attested by an inscribed block found in

Gebelein Gebelein (Egyptian Arabic: , Two Mountains; Egyptian: Inerty or Per-Hathor; Ancient Greek: or ; Latin: ''Pathyris'' or ''Aphroditopolis'') was a town in Egypt. It is located on the Nile, about 40 km south of Thebes, in the New Valley Gov ...

, a bronze axe-blade of unknown origin, now in the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

, and bearing ''"The good god Djedankhre, given life"'' and finally two scarab seals, also of unknown provenance. Djedankhre Montemsaf is not attested on the surviving fragments of the

Turin canon The Turin King List, also known as the Turin Royal Canon, is an ancient Egyptian hieratic papyrus thought to date from the reign of Pharaoh Ramesses II, now in the Museo Egizio (Egyptian Museum) in Turin. The papyrus is the most extensive list av ...

, his reign and those of four other kings of the end of the 16th Dynasty being lost in a

lacuna Lacuna (plural lacunas or lacunae) may refer to: Related to the meaning "gap" * Lacuna (manuscripts), a gap in a manuscript, inscription, text, painting, or musical work **Great Lacuna, a lacuna of eight leaves where there was heroic Old Norse po ...

. For this reason, the exact chronological position as well as the length of his reign cannot be ascertained.

Chronological position

According to the new arrangement of kings of the Second Intermediate Period and

, Djedankhre Montemsaf succeeded Djedneferre Dedumose II and preceded Merankhre Mentuhotep VI on the throne. He was thus a king of the late 16th Dynasty and may have reigned ca. 1590 BC. The arguments supporting this chronological position are: 1) the form of his prenomen ''Ḏd-X-Rˁ'', which is in common with those of Dedumose I and Dedumose II; 2) the location of finds attesting Montemsaf in Thebes and the south; and 3) the style of the axe-blade which can be dated to the late Second Intermediate Period. On the other hand, an older study by

Jürgen von Beckerath Jürgen von Beckerath (19 February 1920, Hanover – 26 June 2016, Schlehdorf) was a German Egyptologist. He was a prolific writer who published countless articles in journals such as '' Orientalia'', ''Göttinger Miszellen'' (GM), ''Journal of t ...

places Djedankhre Montemsaf in the

13th Dynasty In music or music theory, a thirteenth is the note thirteen scale degrees from the root of a chord and also the interval between the root and the thirteenth. The interval can be also described as a compound sixth, spanning an octave p ...

, following

Mentuhotep VI Merankhre Mentuhotep VI was a Theban king of the Sixteenth Dynasty of Egypt based in Upper Egypt during the Second Intermediate Period. He was perhaps the 14th king of the dynasty.Darell D. Baker: ''The Encyclopedia of the Pharaohs: Volume I - P ...

and succeeded by

Dedumose I Djedhotepre Dedumose I was an Egyptian pharaoh of the Second Intermediate Period. According to egyptologists Kim Ryholt, Darrell Baker, Aidan Dodson and Dyan Hilton, he was a king of the 16th Dynasty. Alternatively, Jürgen von Beckerath, Thoma ...

on the throne.Jürgen von Beckerath: Untersuchungen zur politischen Geschichte der zweiten Zwischenzeit in Ägypten, Glückstadt 1964, (XIII G.)

References

{{authority control 16th-century BC Pharaohs Pharaohs of the Sixteenth Dynasty of Egypt