Khui was an
ancient Egyptian kinglet during the early
First Intermediate Period
The First Intermediate Period, described as a 'dark period' in ancient Egyptian history, spanned approximately 125 years, c. 2181–2055 BC, after the end of the Old Kingdom. It comprises the Seventh (although this is mostly considered spurious ...
. Khui may have belonged to the
Eighth Dynasty of Egypt, as
Jürgen von Beckerath has proposed, or he may instead have been a provincial nomarch who proclaimed himself king.
Attestation
Khui is not known from historical sources and the only certain attestation of his existence is a fragmentary relief on a stone block showing his
cartouche which was published in 1912 by the
Egyptologist Ahmed Bey Kamal and later republished by
Raymond Weill. The block was excavated from a
mastaba
A mastaba (, or ), also mastabah, mastabat or pr- djt (meaning "house of stability", " house of eternity" or "eternal house" in Ancient Egyptian), is a type of ancient Egyptian tomb in the form of a flat-roofed, rectangular structure with inwar ...
tomb of the
necropolis
A necropolis (plural necropolises, necropoles, necropoleis, necropoli) is a large, designed cemetery with elaborate tomb monuments. The name stems from the Ancient Greek ''nekropolis'', literally meaning "city of the dead".
The term usually im ...
of Dara near
Manfalut
Manfalut ( ar, منفلوط ', ; ) is a city in Egypt. It is located on the west bank of the Nile, in the Asyut Governorate. The city is at 350 km (230 miles) south of Cairo. In 2006, it had a population of 82,585 people.
Local agriculture i ...
.
This necropolis is dominated by a massive funerary structure which was hastily attributed to this obscure king (the so-called
Pyramid of Khui), assuming that the block came from its almost disappeared
mortuary temple.
[Mark Lehner, ''The Complete Pyramids'', Thames & Hudson, , p. 164][Egyptian History Dyn. 6-11](_blank)
/ref>
Pharaoh or nomarch
Based on the cartouche surrounding Khui's name on the relief from Dara, Egyptologists including Jürgen von Beckerath have proposed that he was a king of the early First Intermediate Period, belonging to the Eighth Dynasty.
On the other hand, Egyptologists Barry Kemp and Toby Wilkinson believe it more likely that Khui was a nomarch, that is a provincial governor, who took advantage of the power vacuum following the collapse of the Old Kingdom and proclaimed himself king, in the same way as the coeval and neighboring Heracleopolite founders of the 9th Dynasty.[ Toby Wilkinson, ''The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt'', New York, Random House, 2010, p. 123.]
References
Bibliography
*Jürgen von Beckerath, ''Chronologie des pharaonischen Ägypten'', Zabern Verlag Mainz, 1994, p. 151. .
* Thomas Schneider, ''Lexikon der Pharaonen'', Düsseldorf, Albatros Verlag, 2002, p. 104. .
22nd-century BC Pharaohs
Pharaohs of the Eighth Dynasty of Egypt
Nomarchs
{{AncientEgypt-bio-stub