Talk:Khahotepre Sobekhotep VI

article needs attention

These articles lead to confusion, I removed a sentence about his reign length that was the same number of days as Sobekhotep V and now I see that according to the article they also shared the same praenomen. So work is needed. Til Eulenspiegel /talk/ 19:50, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Contrasting claims

The claim that Khahotepre was possibly the same person of prince Sobekhotep son of Khaneferre, seems not to consider – and in contrast with – Ryholt's arrangement Khaneferre SH IV -> Merhotepre SH V -> Khahotepre SH VI (arrangement followed in en.wiki), and sounds more a legacy of the traditional arrangement Khaneferre -> Khahotepre -> Merhotepre. Assuming Ryholt's point of view it looks more obvious that the prince Sobekhotep son of Khaneferre and Tjan should have been Merhotepre instead of Khahotepre. Maybe someone having Ryholt's book could put light in this discrepancy. Khruner (talk) 08:07, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

Khruner So I can confirm that Ryholt proposed Khaneferre SH IV -> Merhotepre SH V -> Khahotepre SH VI however note that von Beckerath's arrangement is Khaneferre SH IV -> Khahotepre SH V-> Wahibre Ibiau -> Merneferre Ay -> Merhotepre SH VI == Merhotepre Ini and note indeed that Ryholt does not do this last identification. von Beckerath's arrangement seems to have been kept by the editors of the Egyptian Chronology, E. Hornung & co. possibly following Thomas Schneider who share von Beckerath's opinions most of the time see here p. 176 (i.e. p.189 on the online reader). See here for Ryholt's discussion on the matter. Iry-Hor (talk) 16:50, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Iry-Hor Yes, I skipped some rulers but my riddle still remains: who is the Sobekhotep son of Khaneferre and his queen Tjan? From Khaneferre's article (ref in Ryholt, p. 231 which isn't in preview) it seems that he had two sons Sobekhotep. I guess that for Ryholt one of the two became Merhotepre. But that lead us to face another problem, since Ryholt (p. 232) reports that Sobekhotep V (=Ryholt's Merhotepre) was a son of a lady called Nubhotepti. That led me to a purely OR conjecture so I will give it up. But I'll be grateful if in your spare time could make me a brief summary of what is said about this thing in Ryholt, p. 231. Khruner (talk) 18:54, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Khruner Ok I am having a look tonight, I hope we can resolve this riddle. Iry-Hor (talk) 12:08, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

Khruner Apologies for the delay, I am moving again these days and won't be settled until mid-September. Just finding Ryholt's book was a quest but I enjoyed diving again in the intricacies of the SIP. So here is Ryholt's argument for placing Merhotepre Sobekhotep between Sobekhotep IV and Khahotepre Sobekhotep: First, Ryholt says that several seals are attributable to a king Sobekhotep, two of which are genealogical, i.e. they explicitly name his mother as Nubhotepti and record the nomen as Sobekhotep (note the mystery is I am not 100% sure thatthese seals also give the prenomen Merhotepre, as this is not clear from Ryholt's writing. I will check this at some point). An additional seal impression from Tukh mentions a god's father (of this king) whose name is unfortunately broken. However, the surviving traces led Ryholt to rule out Haankhef and Montuhotep as possibilities, these two being being the only known god's fathers known from such seals (I believe these were the fathers of Neferhotep I, Sihathor, Sobekhotep IV and Sobekhotep III, respectively). According to Ryholt, the prenomen on the seal in question seems to read Mer-[…]-Ra, which in conjunction with the clearly readable nomen Sobekhotep, means the seal belongs to either Merhotepre Sobekhotep or Merkawre Sobekhotep, the only kings whose nomen and prenomen fit those given on the seal. Ryholt observes that such seals are securely known only from the time period from Sobekhotep III to Sobekhotep IV thus leaving the possibility that they were still in use under Sobekhotep IV's successor whose name is lost on the Turin canon.Noting further that no such seals are known for Khahotepre Sobekhotep, Wahibre Ibiaw and Merneferre Ay, whose reigns (lasting a total of about 30 years) are otherwise well attested by seals, Ryholt deduces that genealogical seals had fallen out of use at the time. According to him, it was likely to be so during Merkawre Sobekhotep's reign who was the 9th successor of Sobekhotep IV. Thus, Ryholt's reasoning only leaves Merhotepre Sobekhotep as possibility for Sobekthotep's immediate successor. In contrast, Ryholt observe that von Beckerath placed Merhotepre Sobekhotep as the 5th successor of Sobekhotep IV solely on the basis that the 5th successor is named Merhotepre on the Turin canon. However, seals indicated that at least one other king of this period has this prenomen, namely Merhotepre Ini. Thus there is for Ryholt no difficulty in letting Ini be the 5th successor and Merhotepre Sobekhotep be Sobekhotep V. This also means that genealogical seals were used during the time span from Sobekhotep III to Merhotepre Sobekhotep without interruption. Finally, Ryholt observes that his hypothesis means that Merhotepre Sobekhotep was succeeded by Khahotepre Sobekhotep who both had prenomen of the form X-hotepre.

I find Ryholt's argument quite convincing myself, I see no reason why Merhotepre Sobekhotep should be the same person as Merhotepre Ini, in particular since it was common for kings of this period to bear the same names. A similar problem occurs for Mersekhemre Ined / Mersekhemre Neferhotep (III), whom Ryholt sees as different kings while other scholars identify the two solely on the basis of their prenomen being identical. He observes that by similar arguments a number of other kings whom we know to have been different people would have been merged by these scholars. Ryholt makes no mention at this point of a prince Sobekhotep son of Tjan and Khaneferre, in particular since he assume Nubhotepi to have been Merhotepre Sobekhotep's mother. I don't know if the genealogical seal bearing the god's father name also bears the name of Nubhotepi but it seems this is not the case. In addition I am surprised that the son of a pharaoh would call his father god's father since this title is non-royal and used for non-royal ancestors of a king. I assume one of the three is true: 1)Ryholt is wrong and Khaneferre's son reigned after him; 2) Khaneferre was succeded by someone whose father was not a king and who was the son of Nubhotepi (this would be unsurprising given the instability in royal succession at the time, e.g. Neferhotep I was not a son of Sobekhotep III) thus I would place my bet on 2). Iry-Hor (talk) 14:10, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

Iry-Hor I see, many thanks for your time and kindness. I was thinking about a scenario with Merhotepre and Khahotepre ruling in sequence as half-brothers, i.e. both Khaneferre's sons but born from different queens (Merhotepre son of Nubhotepti, possibly the main queen, and Khahotepre son of Tjan, possibly a later/secondary queen). This is obiously an insufficiently evidenced, personal conjecture which I have conceived combining what I can read on Ryholt's SIP and the wiki articles about Tjan and these 3 kings. However, the mere fact that Merhotepre describe himself as son of a king's mother and father rather than of a queen and a king, suggests me that Khaneferre was the last pharaoh within his family. Khruner (talk) 16:43, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

Khruner I still have problems with Ryholt's attribution of the seals bearing Nubhotepti's name to Merhotepre Sobekhotep. As far as I can tell he uses again his argument that genealogical seals were only in use for certain from Sobekhotep III until Sobekhotep IV, so that the genealogical seals in question can only belong to Sobekhotep III, IV or V if Merhotepre Sobekhotep was indeed the immediate successor of Khaneferre. Since both Sobekhotep III's and Sobekhotep IV's mothers are known, Ryholt says the Sobekhotep son of Nubhotepi was Merhotepre Sobekhotep. I find this quite doubtful since the argument falls apart if some later king had the brilliant idea of using genealogical seals again (after all these were used explicitely to distenciate the ruler from precedent kings, stressing that he was not part of their family, so king wanting to reject past pharaohs could do such a thing) or if a prince did it as well (e.g. if a prince Sobekhotep brother of Nerferhotep and Khaneferre had existed). Iry-Hor (talk) 13:57, 30 August 2015 (UTC)