Gemenefkhonsbak was an ancient Egyptian ruler ("king") of

Tanis Tanis ( grc, Τάνις or Τανέως ) or San al-Hagar ( ar, صان الحجر, Ṣān al-Ḥaǧar; egy, ḏꜥn.t ; ; cop, ϫⲁⲛⲓ or or ) is the Greek name for ancient Egyptian ''ḏꜥn.t'', an important archaeological site in the ...

during the

25th Dynasty The Twenty-fifth Dynasty of Egypt (notated Dynasty XXV, alternatively 25th Dynasty or Dynasty 25), also known as the Nubian Dynasty, the Kushite Empire, the Black Pharaohs, or the Napatans, after their capital Napata, was the last dynasty of th ...

Biography

Little is known of him. According to

Kenneth Kitchen Kenneth Anderson Kitchen (born 1932) is a British biblical scholar, Ancient Near Eastern historian, and Personal and Brunner Professor Emeritus of Egyptology and honorary research fellow at the School of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology, Univ ...

, he ruled Tanis from around 700 to c. 680 BCEKenneth Kitchen, ''The Third Intermediate Period in Egypt (1100–650 BC)'', 1996, Aris & Phillips Limited, Warminster, , table 23B, although these dates are uncertain. some time after the fall of the last Tanite

pharaoh Pharaoh (, ; Egyptian: ''pr ꜥꜣ''; cop, , Pǝrro; Biblical Hebrew: ''Parʿō'') is the vernacular term often used by modern authors for the kings of ancient Egypt who ruled as monarchs from the First Dynasty (c. 3150 BC) until the an ...

of the

22nd Dynasty The Twenty-second Dynasty of Egypt is also known as the Bubastite Dynasty, since the pharaohs originally ruled from the city of Bubastis. It was founded by Shoshenq I. The Twenty-first, Twenty-second, Twenty-third, Twenty-fourth, and Twenty-f ...

Osorkon IV Usermaatre Osorkon IV was an ancient Egyptian pharaoh during the late Third Intermediate Period. Traditionally considered the last king of the 22nd Dynasty, he was ''de facto'' little more than ruler in Tanis and Bubastis, in Lower Egypt. He i ...

, which occurred shortly after 716 BCE. Like many of the

Nile Delta The Nile Delta ( ar, دلتا النيل, or simply , is the delta formed in Lower Egypt where the Nile River spreads out and drains into the Mediterranean Sea. It is one of the world's largest river deltas—from Alexandria in the west to Po ...

governors, he proclaimed himself king, adopting a

royal titulary The royal titulary or royal protocol is the standard naming convention taken by the pharaohs of ancient Egypt. It symbolised worldly power and holy might, also acting as a sort of mission statement for the duration of a monarch's reign (although so ...

.Kitchen, op. cit. § 357 His successor as ruler of Tanis could have been Sehetepibenre Pedubast.

Attestations

Few monuments bearing his name were found. The better known among these is a

hieratic Hieratic (; grc, ἱερατικά, hieratiká, priestly) is the name given to a cursive writing system used for Ancient Egyptian and the principal script used to write that language from its development in the third millennium BC until the ris ...

stele A stele ( ),Anglicized plural steles ( ); Greek plural stelai ( ), from Greek , ''stēlē''. The Greek plural is written , ''stēlai'', but this is only rarely encountered in English. or occasionally stela (plural ''stelas'' or ''stelæ''), whe ...

from Heliopolis and now in the

Museo Egizio The Museo Egizio (Italian language, Italian for Egyptian Museum) is an archaeological museum in Turin, Piedmont, Italy, specializing in Art of Ancient Egypt, Egyptian archaeology and anthropology. It houses List of museums of Egyptian antiquitie ...

Turin Turin ( , Piedmontese language, Piedmontese: ; it, Torino ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in Northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital ...

; on this stele, this king is depicted while spearing a foreigner who lies before

Osiris Osiris (, from Egyptian ''wsjr'', cop, ⲟⲩⲥⲓⲣⲉ , ; Phoenician: 𐤀𐤎𐤓, romanized: ʾsr) is the god of fertility, agriculture, the afterlife, the dead, resurrection, life, and vegetation in ancient Egyptian religion. He was ...

. According to

Miroslav Verner Miroslav Verner (born October 31, 1941 in Brno) is a Czech egyptologist, who specializes in the history and archaeology of Ancient Egypt of the Old Kingdom and especially of the Fifth Dynasty of Egypt. Biography Verner was the director of the ...

, a

scaraboid seal Scarabs were popular amulets and impression seals in ancient Egypt. They survive in large numbers and, through their inscriptions and typology, are an important source of information for archaeologists and historians of the ancient world. They a ...

of unknown origin reading ''Shepeskare'', which

Flinders Petrie Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie ( – ), commonly known as simply Flinders Petrie, was a British Egyptologist and a pioneer of systematic methodology in archaeology and the preservation of artefacts. He held the first chair of Egypt ...

attributed to pharaoh

Shepseskare Shepseskare or Shepseskara (Ancient Egyptian language, Egyptian for "Noble is the Soul of Ra") was an Ancient Egyptian pharaoh, the fourth or fifth ruler of the Fifth Dynasty of Egypt, Fifth Dynasty (2494–2345 BC) during the Old Kingdom of Eg ...

of the

5th Dynasty The Fifth Dynasty of ancient Egypt (notated Dynasty V) is often combined with Dynasties III, IV and VI under the group title the Old Kingdom. The Fifth Dynasty pharaohs reigned for approximately 150 years, from the early 25th century BC until ...

at the beginning of the 20th century, may instead belong to Gemenefkhonsbak.Miroslav Verner (2000), ''Who was Shepseskara, and when did he reign?'', in: Miroslav Bárta, Jaromír Krejčí (editors), ''Abusir and Saqqara in the Year 2000'', Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Oriental Institute, Prague, , p. 582
available online
.

References

8th-century BC pharaohs 7th-century BC pharaohs Non-dynastic pharaohs People of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty of Egypt {{AncientEgypt-bio-stub