Menkheperreseneb II was a ''

High Priest of Amun The High Priest of Amun or First Prophet of Amun ('' ḥm nṯr tpj n jmn'') was the highest-ranking priest in the priesthood of the ancient Egyptian god Amun. The first high priests of Amun appear in the New Kingdom of Egypt, at the beginning ...

'', ''Superintendent of the Gold and silver treasuries'', and ''Chief of the Overseers of Craftsmen''. He served at the time of

Thutmose III Thutmose III (variously also spelt Tuthmosis or Thothmes), sometimes called Thutmose the Great, was the sixth pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty. Officially, Thutmose III ruled Egypt for almost 54 years and his reign is usually dated from 2 ...

and

Amenhotep II Amenhotep II (sometimes called ''Amenophis II'' and meaning '' Amun is Satisfied'') was the seventh pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt. Amenhotep inherited a vast kingdom from his father Thutmose III, and held it by means of a few milit ...

, and may have been buried in his Theban tomb, TT112.

Biography

Menkheperreseneb II was a son of the charioteer of His Majesty Hepu and the King's Nurse Taiunet.Fazzini, Richard A., ''A Statue of a High Priest Menkheperreseneb in The Brooklyn Museum'', in ''Studies in honor of William Kelly Simpson'', vol. 1 (1996) pp 209-225. Until recently it was believed that there was only one High Priest of Amun called Menkheperraseneb; in 1994, Egyptologist

Peter Dorman Peter FitzGerald Dorman (born 1948) is an epigrapher, philologist, and Egyptologist. Recently a professor of history and archaeology at the American University of Beirut (AUB), he served as the 15th President of the university from 2008 to 2015. ...

showed that the HPA were actually two: Menkheperreseneb II was indeed the nephew and successor of Menkheperraseneb I, brother of Hepu and owner of tomb TT86.Peter Dorman, ''Two Tombs and One Owner'', in ''Thebanische Beamtennekropolen. Studien zur Archäologie und Geschichte Altägyptens 12''. Edited by J. Assmann, E, Dziobek, H. Guksch, and F. Kampp. Heidelberg: Heidelberger Orientverlag, 1994, pp. 141-54.

Attestations

Apart from his tomb TT112, there are many monuments bearing the name of a "High Priest of Amun Menkheperraseneb"; unfortunately, for almost all of these, it is not possible to determine whether they belonged to "the elder" or to "the younger". This is the case for numerous

funerary cone Funerary cones were small cones made from clay that were used in ancient Egypt, almost exclusively in the Theban Necropolis. The items were placed over the entrance of the chapel of a tomb. Early examples have been found from the Eleventh Dynasty ...

s scattered in many museums throughout the world (e.g.

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

of New York, the Archeological Civic Museum of Bologna), a vase from

Saqqara Saqqara ( ar, سقارة, ), also spelled Sakkara or Saccara in English , is an Egyptian village in Giza Governorate, that contains ancient burial grounds of Egyptian royalty, serving as the necropolis for the ancient Egyptian capital, Memphis ...

, and a scarab upon which he as the ''Overseer of the Crafts of Amun.''
A sitting statue of a '' Second Priest of Amun Menkheperraseneb'' (the "Second Priest" is the rank immediately below the "High Priest") 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 ...

(BM 708) may refer to either priest in the early stage of his career, although it may suggest an unrelated individual. In the

Cairo 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 ...

is an inscribed statue of a ''Priest of Amun Menkheperraseneb, son of Amenemhat'' (CG 42125), which was long attributed to either priest, now is likely to belong to a different individual. Moreover, another statue ( Brooklyn Museum 36613), inscribed with the

cartouche In Egyptian hieroglyphs, a cartouche is an oval with a line at one end tangent to it, indicating that the text enclosed is a royal name. The first examples of the cartouche are associated with pharaohs at the end of the Third Dynasty, but the f ...

s of Thutmose III, surely belongs to a High Priest of Amun Menkheperraseneb, although it is not possible to determine which of the two. TT112

References

{{authority control 14th-century BC clergy Officials of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt Theban High Priests of Amun Priests of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt