User was an ancient Egyptian

nomarch A nomarch ( grc, νομάρχης, egy, ḥrj tp ꜥꜣ Great Chief) was a provincial governor in ancient Egypt; the country was divided into 42 provinces, called nomes (singular , plural ). A nomarch was the government official responsib ...

(governor) of the Eight Dynasty. User is mainly known from a false door found at Khozam (ancient

Iushenshen Iushenshen was an ancient Egyptian town in the Coptic nome in Upper Egypt. It is a few times mentioned in Ancient Egyptian sources. According to the ''Ramesside Onomastica'' the place was located south of Coptos. south of Coptos there is the ...

) in 1884. The monument is about one meter high and is made of

graywacke Greywacke or graywacke (German ''grauwacke'', signifying a grey, earthy rock) is a variety of sandstone generally characterized by its hardness, dark color, and poorly sorted angular grains of quartz, feldspar, and small rock fragments or lit ...

. It is today in the

Egyptian Museum The Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, known commonly as the Egyptian Museum or the Cairo Museum, in Cairo, Egypt, is home to an extensive collection of ancient Egyptian antiquities. It has 120,000 items, with a representative amount on display a ...

in Cairo.Catalogue Generale 1442 Here User bears a long string of important titles, such as ''Father of the god, beloved of the god'', ''

Overseer of Upper Egypt The Overseer of Upper Egypt was an important Ancient Egyptian title during the Old and Middle Kingdom periods. The title appears first in the early Fifth Dynasty. The first title holder is the vizier Kay, who possibly lived during the reigns of ...

'', ''overseer of the desert lands'' and ''overlord of the Coptite nome''. The latter title is the main title for nomarchs in the late Old Kingdom and First Intermediate Period. Furthermore he was ''overseer of priests'' and ''overseer of the Eastern and Western Deserts''. The most unusual title for a nomarch is ''king's eldest son of his body''. The date of User was for a long time under discussion. However, he also appears in the tomb of

Shemay Shemay (also Shemai) was an ancient Egyptian official and later vizier toward the end of the 8th Dynasty (22nd century BCE) during the First Intermediate Period, mainly known for being the beneficiary of most of the Coptos Decrees. His career ha ...

at Coptos. There is depicted the transport of a stone from

Elephantine Elephantine ( ; ; arz, جزيرة الفنتين; el, Ἐλεφαντίνη ''Elephantíne''; , ) is an island on the Nile, forming part of the city of Aswan in Upper Egypt. The archaeological sites on the island were inscribed on the UNESCO ...

. Under the scene is another one that is destroyed, only the caption is preserved naming User with several title, including ''eldest king's son''. Shemay was in office at the end of the Eight Dynasty. Evidently User lived in the same period. The title ''king's eldest son of his body'' caused some discussion in Egyptology, as it is not certain whether he was a real son of a king or whether the title was purely honorific.

References

Bibliography

*{{cite book, last = Mostafa, first = Maha Farid, title=The Mastaba of SmAj at Naga' Kom el-Koffar, Qift, volume I, location=Cairo, year=2014, isbn=978-977-6420-04-5 People of the Eighth Dynasty of Egypt Nomarchs Ancient Egyptian priests Overseers of Upper Egypt