Mershepsesre Ini (also known as Ini II) was a
pharaoh of the late
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 ...
, possibly the forty-sixth king of this dynasty.
He reigned over
Upper Egypt during the mid-17th century BC.
Attestations
Mershepsesre Ini is attested only by a single inscription, giving his nomen and prenomen carved on the lower half of a statue which originated from the
precinct of Amun-Ra
The Precinct of Amun-Re, located near Luxor, Egypt, is one of the four main temple enclosures that make up the immense Karnak Temple Complex. The precinct is by far the largest of these and the only one that is open to the general public. The te ...
in
Karnak.
In
Roman times, the statue was brought to the Temple of
Isis at
Benevento
Benevento (, , ; la, Beneventum) is a city and ''comune'' of Campania, Italy, capital of the province of Benevento, northeast of Naples. It is situated on a hill above sea level at the confluence of the Calore Irpino (or Beneventano) and the ...
, Italy, where it was unearthed in 1957; the statue is now housed in the local Museo del Sannio.
Ini may also be attested on the
Turin canon in column 8, row 16, which reads "''Mer...re''". If this identification is correct, Mershepsesre Ini II was the forty-sixth king of the dynasty.
Kim Ryholt proposed instead that the "''Mer...re''" of the Turin canon refers to Mersekhemre Neferhotep II, whom he regards as a different ruler from
Mersekhemre Ined. Nevertheless, Mershepsesre Ini must have reigned toward the end of the dynasty.
Chronological position
The exact chronological position of Mershepsesre Ini is uncertain, although he must have reigned at the end of the 13th Dynasty. In his reconstruction of the
Second Intermediate Period,
Kim Ryholt does not give any position to Mershepsesre Ini due to a lack of evidence. In the new arrangement, Mershepesre Ini's predecessor is
Sewadjare Mentuhotep V and his successor is Mersekhemre Neferhotep II.
Jürgen von Beckerath instead gives the "''Mer...re''" of the Turin canon as the predecessor of Mershepsesre Ini and his successor as Merkheperre.
[Jürgen von Beckerath: ''Chronologie des pharaonischen Ägyptens'', Münchner Ägyptologische Studien 46, Mainz am Rhein, 1997]
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ini, Mershepsesre
17th-century BC Pharaohs
Pharaohs of the Thirteenth Dynasty of Egypt