Userkare

Userkare
Woserkare, Weserkare
Userkare's cartouche on the Abydos king list
Pharaoh
Reign	2 to 4 years, late 24th century BC
Predecessor	Teti
Successor	Pepi I
Royal titulary Golden Horus Conjectural: Bikwy-nub Bjk.wj-nb.w The Two Golden Falcons <hiero>G5*G5:S12</hiero> Prenomen Userkare Wsr-k3-Rˁ Powerful is the Ka of Ra<hiero><-N5-wsr-s-kA-></hiero>
Father	Possibly Teti
Mother	Uncertain, possibly Khuit II or Khentkaus IV
Dynasty	Sixth Dynasty

Userkare (meaning "Powerful is the soul of Ra"; also Woserkare) was the second king of the Sixth Dynasty of Egypt during the Old Kingdom Period. He reigned briefly, two to four years, in the late 24th or the early 23rd century BC. Userkare's relation to his predecessor Teti and successor Pepi I is unknown and his reign remains enigmatic.

Although Userkare is attested in some historical sources, that is they bear witness to his existence, he is not mentioned in the tomb inscriptions of Egyptian officials who lived during his reign and who usually report the names of the kings whom they served. The representations of some high officials of the period have been deliberately chiselled out in their tombs and their titles altered, for instance the word "king" being replaced by that of "desert". Egyptologists thus suspect that Pepi might have tried to erase all memory of Userkare from official records, monuments, tombs and artefacts. The Egyptian priest Manetho, who wrote a history of Egypt over 2,000 years later in the 3rd century BC, stated that Userkare's predecessor Teti was murdered, but is otherwise silent concerning Userkare. Consequently, some Egyptologists consider Userkare to have been a short-lived usurper to the throne. Alternatively, he may have been a legitimate short-lived ruler, a younger brother to a more ambitious Pepi I, or a regent who ruled during Pepi I's childhood before his accession to the throne.

The identity of Userkare's parents is conjectural and depends on whether he was legitimate or not. If he was, he could have been a son of Teti with one of his queens, possibly Khuit II or Khentkaus IV. If he was an usurper, he could possibly be a descendant of a cadet branch of the preceding Fifth Dynasty, as suggested by his name being constructed in the manner of the kings of that dynasty.

The tomb of Userkare has not yet been identified, either because it was never finished or because Pepi I erased traces of his predecessor's rule. If the tomb was indeed started, Egyptologists conjecture that it would be located in South Saqqara.

Attestations

Contemporaneous sources

Secure attestations

Few artefacts dating to Userkare's lifetime have survived to this day, the only secure attestations contemporaneous with his reign being two cylinder seals and a copper mallet. The first seal is made of green-glazed steatite and bears the inscription "(The) good god Userkare, beloved by the gods (and) Hathor"; the second is of black steatite and shows Userkare's cartouche with the sun disk. The copper mallet from the Michaelides collection bears a small inscription giving the name of a crew of workmen "Beloved ones of Userkare" or "Userkare is beloved" who hailed from Wadjet the 10th nome of Upper Egypt, located around Tjebu south of Asyut.

Possible attestations

The Egyptologists Michel Baud and Vassil Dobrev have also proposed that a copper axe head discovered in Syria could belong to Userkare. The axe bears the name of another crew of workmen called the "Beloved ones of the Two Golden Falcons", where "Two Golden Falcons" is the golden Horus name of a pharaoh. Although both Khufu and Sahure bore this name and either one of them may be the owner of the axe, Baud and Dobrev note that Teti's and Pepi's golden horus names are "Golden Falcon who Unites" and "Three Golden Falcons", respectively. Given the role of the golden Horus name as a symbol of the transmission of royal powers in the Old Kingdom period, Dobrev proposes that the missing link between Teti's and Pepi's names is the name "Two Golden Falcons" and that it would logically correspond to Userkare's brief intervening reign. Consequently the axe would be an attestation of his rule.

Further attestations that may be of Userkare include an inscription on the architrave of the tomb of Mehi discussed in details below; a block from Tanis bearing the cartouche "User[...]re", but which could equally well be attributed to Nyuserre; and, perhaps, a block inscribed with the cartouche "Uni" from Ezbet Rushdi near Tell el-Dab'a.

The Egyptologist Flinders Petrie has tentatively identified Userkare with a king named Ity attested by a single rock inscription found in the Wadi Hammamat. The inscription, dated to the first year of reign of Ity, mentions a band of 200 sailors and 200 masons under the direction of the overseers Ihyemsaf and Irenakhet sent to the Wadi Hammamat to collect stones for the construction of Ity's pyramid called "Bau Ity", meaning "Glory of Ity" or "The Bas of Ity". Petrie's identification of Userkare with Ity relies solely on his estimation of the inscription to the Sixth Dynasty and the fact that Userkare is the only king of this period whose full titulary is not known. As of 2025, this identification is at best deemed conjectural or completely rejected and several dates belonging to the First Intermediate Period (c. 2180 – c. 2050 BC) have been proposed for Ity.

South Saqqara Stone

In addition to the above attestations contemporaneous with Userkare's reign, details about his time on the throne were once given on the nearly contemporaneous South Saqqara Stone, a royal annal of the Sixth Dynasty dating to the reign of Merenre Nemtyemsaf I or Pepi II. It was uncovered by Gustave Jéquier in a storeroom of the mortuary temple of Iput II, northwest of the pyramid complex of Pepi II. The stone had been reused as lid for the sarcophagus of queen Ankhesenpepi III, though this lid did not originally belong with the sarcophagus.

Unfortunately, an estimated 92% of the original text was lost when the stone was roughly polished, possibly in the late first intermediate to early Middle Kingdom period (c. 2050 – 1650 BC). The presence of Userkare on the annal can nonetheless be inferred from a large space between the sections concerning the reigns of Teti and Pepi I as well as from traces of a royal titulary in this space. Although the text reporting Userkare's activities is lost, its length suggests that Userkare ruled Egypt from two to four years, with the former seen as less probable than the latter.

Historical sources

Several ancient sources mention Userkare. The first is the Abydos king list, a list of kings written during the reign of Seti I (c. 1290 – 1279 BC), over 1,000 years after the early Sixth Dynasty. Userkare's cartouche occupies the 35th entry of the list, between those of Teti and Pepi I, making him the second pharaoh of the dynasty.

Userkare was possibly also listed on the Turin canon, a king list composed during the reign of Ramesses II (1279 – 1213 BC). Unfortunately, a lacuna affects parts of the second line of the fourth column of the papyrus on which the list was written, the location were Userkare's name might have been located. If Userkare was indeed mentioned as Pepi I predecessor, then what remains of his entry on the papyrus indicates that he was credited with 20 years of reign. This is now widely considered untenable because of evidence from the South Saqqara stone.

Reign

File:SouthSaqqaraStone.png

The South Saqqara Stone, the royal annals of the Sixth Dynasty, which detailed Userkare's reign in what is now an illegible section of its text

The consensus among modern Egyptologists is that Userkare reigned between Teti and Pepi I during the early Sixth Dynasty. For Michel Baud, the absence of monuments as well as the scarcity of artefacts and documents pertaining to Userkare all point to the short duration of his reign.

For the same reasons, his relations to his predecessor and successor are largely uncertain, consequently Egyptologists have proposed a number of hypotheses regarding his identity and the nature of his rule . These fall broadly into two contradictory scenarios: one that sees Userkare as a legitimate ruler or regent, while the other perceives Userkare as an usurper, possibly responsible for the murder of his predecessor Teti. A minority opinion held by the Egyptologists Oleg Dmitrievich Berlev and Yury Perepelkin is that Userkare is not an independent ruler but rather a name of Teti.

As a legitimate ruler

Statue of a pharaoh wearing a crown and a pleated kilt

According to Manetho, Userkare's predecessor Teti was murdered

The Egyptologists William Stevenson Smith, William C. Hayes and Nicolas Grimal believe that Userkare briefly ruled Egypt either as a legitimate stopgap ruler or as a regent with queen Iput I. Indeed, Teti's son Pepi I reigned for c. 50 years, indicating that he was probably very young at the death of his father, too young to immediately assume the throne. The theory that Userkare was merely a regent is rejected by Naguib Kanawati, on the basis that Userkare seems to have been mentioned on the Turin canon which otherwise lists only kings, is present in the Abydos king list and holds full royal titulary, something reserved exclusively to reigning pharaohs. In support of the hypothesis that Userkare was a legitimate stopgap ruler, Grimal stresses that he is well attested by historical and contemporaneous sources, in particular the South Saqqara Stone. This seems in contradiction with the idea that, being illegitimate, he was victim of a by his successor Pepi, whereby Pepi would have attempted to erase all memory of Userkare from official records. In addition, there is no direct evidence of difficulties associated with Pepi I's rise on throne in the archaeological record, which one could expect had Userkare been a usurper. Rainer Stadelmann and Michel Baud stress that there is no clear evidence for a targeting Userkare. For example his funerary complex may have been planned yet never erected, which they find would provide a better explanation for its absence than a "speculative" attempt on Pepi I's behalf to erase traces of his predecessor's rule. Alternatively Userkare may have been legitimate yet only reigned jointly with Pepi I in a true coregency, although as the Egyptologist Christoffer Theis points out this hypothesis lack direct evidence.

Vivianne Gae Callender—who thinks that Userkare was the target of some kind of —has put forth another theory in which Userkare was a legitimate son of Teti born while his father was king, but not his first-born son. In this hypothesis, Userkare's claim to the throne would rely on his being born after Teti had assumed power, while Pepi I would be the eldest son of Teti yet born before Teti's elevation to power. In particular Teti's eight to 12 years of reign would imply that Userkare would have been around 10 at the time of his coronation and facing a resentful older brother, possibly explaining the paucity of attestations of his rule. Morris Bierbrier goes even further by suggesting that the "ambitious" future pharaoh Pepi I might have had Userkare killed. Although not going as far, Karola Zibelius-Chen too thinks that Userkare was a legitimate son of Teti facing his half brother's opposition. She points in particular to the existence of two distinct queens of Teti bearing the title of "King's mother". One is Pepi's mother Iput while the identity of the second one is uncertain. For Zibelius-Chen and Callender she could well be the queen who later conspired against Pepi and was prosecuted when the conspiracy was discovered.

As a usurper to the throne

Bronze head of a pharaoh

Teti's son, Pepi I, may have instituted a against Userkare

The Egyptian priest Manetho wrote a history of Egypt, the Aegyptiaca, in the 3rd century BC during the reign of Ptolemy II (283 – 246 BC). No copies of the Aegyptiaca have survived, and it is now known only through later writings by Sextus Julius Africanus (c. 160 – 240) and Eusebius (c. 260/265 – 339). According to the Byzantine scholar George Syncellus (fl. 800), Africanus's version of the Aegyptiaca reported that Othoês—the hellenized name of Teti—was murdered by his bodyguards or attendants. No other ancient source or archaeological evidence has come to light directly confirming this story. Based on the Aegyptiaca Egyptologists have found it plausible that Userkare participated in or at least benefited from Teti's assassination, despite Userkare's own absence from the Aegyptiaca. Userkare's name is theophoric and incorporates the name of the sun god Ra, a naming fashion common during the preceding Fifth Dynasty. Against this opinion, Theis observes that other kings of the Sixth Dynasty, Merenre and Pepi II—whose throne name was Neferkare—did include Ra in their names as well. Since Teti was not a son of the last Fifth Dynasty king Unas, some Egyptologists have proposed that Userkare could have been a descendant of a lateral branch of the Fifth Dynasty royal family who briefly seized power in a coup, and may even have reigned only over a small part of Egypt. In possible support of this theory is the discovery of stone blocks inscribed with Teti's mother Seshseshet's name reused as building material in the core of Pepi's pyramid. The reliefs of the blocks had been deliberately damaged and Verner proposed that Userkare may be responsible for this.

The Egyptologist Naguib Kanawati also finds the hypothesis that Userkare was a short-lived legitimate ruler or regent "unconvincing". Indeed, archaeological evidence lends credence to the idea that Userkare was illegitimate in the eyes of his successor Pepi I. In particular, there is no mention of Userkare in the tombs and biographies of the many Egyptian officials who served under both Teti and Pepi I. The viziers Inumin and Khentika, who served both Teti and Pepi I, are completely silent about Userkare and none of their activities during Userkare's time on the throne are reported in their tomb. Furthermore, the tomb of Mehi, a guard who lived under Teti, Userkare and Pepi, yielded an inscribed architrave—the lintel that rests on the capitals of columns—where the name of king Teti is written on a cut-out addition to the stone. For Kanawati this indicates that the name of Teti had originally been written on the architrave, was then erased to be replaced by that of another king whose name was itself chiselled out and replaced again by that of Teti on a replacement stone. Kanawati argues that the intervening name was that of Userkare to whom Mehi may have transferred his allegiance to. As a result, Kanawati has argued that the evidence suggests that Mehi had switched his allegiance from Teti to Userkare and, following Pepi I’s accession, attempted to realign with the legitimate royal line. In any case, Mehi's attempt to switch back to Teti was seemingly unsuccessful, as there is evidence that work on his tomb stopped abruptly and that he was never buried there. Rainer Stadelmann has contested Kanawati's reconstruction of the history of the inscription on Mehi's architrave, and Theis points to its unprovability.

A similar situation is encountered in the mastaba of Merefnebef, whom the Egyptologist Peter J. Brand qualifies as a "lowly" official and courtier who started his career under Teti then was elevated to the highest position, becoming vizier, in all probability under Userkare. The tomb exhibits distinct building phases, the latest one corresponding to Merefnebef's vizierate during which Merefnebef had his title inscribed repeatedly on the exterior of his tomb. Work on the tomb was then abruptly stopped, either with Merefnebef's death or with his political downfall following the death of Userkare. Later on, one of Merefnebef's sons intervened in the mastaba, chiselling out the representations of his father and brothers, altering his father's titles in particular those of "Honoured by the king" by erasing the word "king" or even replacing it with the word "desert". Finally the mastaba, left unfinished, was deliberately walled off so as to be hidden from sight. For the archaeologist Karol Myśliwiec who excavated the tomb, this shows that "the infamy of the most shameful moment in [Merefnebef's] career, that of being (probably) promoted to the function of vizier by the usurper Userkare, was visibly remembered for generations". This opinion is shared by Brand who sees here an instance of a wider pattern of promotion of low-ranking officials to the highest offices under Userkare, followed by their demotions or expulsions under Pepi I.

Michel Baud also sees difficulties with the idea that Userkare was fully legitimate: both he and Theis called the silence in contemporaneous private biographies "disturbing", with no official of the time period mentioning serving under Userkare. Furthermore, Baud and Vassil Dobrev do not see Userkare's presence on the South Saqqara Stone royal annals as evidence that he was legitimate in the eyes of his successors: it could be that royal annals and kings lists were not affected by measures, even those targeting usurpers, because their purpose was precisely to systematically record all royal names and activities, regardless of their political context. At the opposite, for Theis, Userkare's presence on the annals makes it highly probable that he was a fully legitimate, albeit ephemeral ruler and there is insufficient evidence of a against him.

As a name of Teti

The Egyptologist Anthony Spalinger reports that Berlev and Perepelkin proposed that Userkare was in fact the prenomen of Teti, which they claim is unknown. They argued that an ancient scribe, redactor of royal annals added supplementary names to kings otherwise known to him by the same nomen, so as to distinguish them. This was the case for the nomen Teti which was that of Hor-Aha, Sekhemkhet and Teti. According to this hypothesis, the scribe added the prenomen "Userkare" to Teti's nomen, but this was interpreted by later Egyptians as referring to two distinct kings, ending up with two distinct cartouches on the Abydos king list. An evidence that Berlev and Perepelkin use to support this theory was found in the pyramid of Khendjer (built c. 1750 BC) where an ancient graffito written during the reign of Ramses II (c. 1303 – 1213 BC) by a certain Nasui, wrongly refers to the pyramid as that of Teti. This confusion may be due to the fact that Khendjer's prenomen was Userkare and as proposed by Berlev and Perepelkin, perhaps so was Teti's. This hypothesis is generally rejected by Egyptologists such as Theis, who pointed out that Teti used the same name for both his prenomen and nomen, meaning they were identical, and that pharaohs of the previous Fifth Dynasty like Userkaf, Sahure, and Unas also had identical prenomens and nomens, and so Teti would have done the same.

Parents

The identity of Userkare's parents cannot be established for certain owing to the lack of direct evidence and is thus tied to the hypothesis retained concerning his legitimacy. If he was legitimate, Userkare could have been a son of Teti, but the identity of his mother is very uncertain. Proceeding by elimination from the list of known Sixth Dynasty queens, Callender has conjectured that Userkare's mother was a queen bearing the title of "king's mother" mentioned in the mortuary temple of Pepi I and named "Kh[en]t[...]". For the Egyptologist Silke Roth "Kh[en]t[...]" is not a name but rather part of a title of the king's mother, possibly translated as "who is at the forefront[...]". It cannot be Pepi's own mother who is known to have been Iput I. For Wilfried Seipel the name could be fully rendered as "Khentitenka", while Theis, Dodson, Hilton and Bierbrier have proposed to read "Khentkaus". This could mean that Userkare's mother was Khentkaus IV, or that the inscribed block was reused and originally belonged to one of the Khentkauses of the preceding dynasty. Another possibility put forth by Janosí and Callender and agreed upon by Stadelmann and is that "Kh[en]t[...]" should be read "Khuit" and consequently should be identified as Khuit II.

Tomb

Map on light brown paper showing the location of ancient tombs in desert hills

Map of South Saqqara by Karl Richard Lepsius

As of 2025, the location of the tomb of Userkare has not yet been identified. The brevity of his reign implies that the tomb was probably unfinished at his death, making modern identification difficult. Since Userkare was a Sixth Dynasty king, his tomb was presumably planned to be a pyramid. A possible vindication of this hypothesis is the copper mallet mentioning a team of paid workers from the nome of Wadjet. These workers were involved in an important building project, probably Userkare's pyramid.

Two hypotheses for the location of Userkare's pyramid have been put forth. The Egyptologists Vassil Dobrev and Miroslav Bárta proposed that Userkare's pyramid is located in the northern part of Saqqara South known today as Tabbet al-Guesh, north-west of the mortuary complex of Pepi I. Indeed, a large necropolis of Sixth Dynasty administration officials was uncovered there under the aegis of the Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale. The necropolis comprises several large mastabas as well as two unfinished structures, one being 80 m × 80 m (260 ft × 260 ft), the other 60 m × 80 m (200 ft × 260 ft). According to Dobrev these could represent the start of a royal pyramid and its adjoining mortuary temple.

The astrophysicist Giulio Magli believes instead that the pyramid of Userkare is to be found midway between those of Pepi I and Merenre Nemtyemsaf I, at a place that would make the three pyramids form a line parallel to the one formed by the pyramid of Sekhemkhet, and those of Unas, Djoser, Userkaf and Teti to the North. As of 2015 no archaeological surveys had been carried out in this area to confirm or refute this hypothesis.

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