12 Facts About Nebka

Nebka is the throne name of an ancient Egyptian pharaoh of the Third Dynasty during the Old Kingdom period, in the 27th century BCE.

Nebka is thought to be identical with the Hellenized name ?e?e????? recorded by the Egyptian priest Manetho of the much later Ptolemaic period.

Nebka's name is otherwise recorded from the near contemporaneous tomb of a priest of his cult as well as in a possible cartouche from Beit Khallaf, later New Kingdom king lists and in a story of the Westcar Papyrus.

Nebka is thought by most Egyptologists to be the throne name of Sanakht, the third or fourth ruler of the Third Dynasty, who is sparsely attested by archaeological evidence and must have had only a short reign.

Older hypotheses followed two New Kingdom sources which credit Nebka with founding the Third Dynasty, a view that is believed to contradict the archaeological evidence.

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The tomb of Nebka has not been located with any certainty and three locations have been proposed: a mastaba in Beit Khallaf attributed to Sanakht by John Garstang, a mudbrick structure in Abu Rawash seen as the tomb of Nebka by Swelim and Dodson, and the Unfinished Northern Pyramid of Zawyet El Aryan.

The passage involving Nebka starts after a magician, Ubaoner, throws a commoner who had an affair with Ubaoner's wife to a crocodile, who swallows him for seven days:.

Nebka is brought to a place east of the palace and burnt alive.

Necherochis or Necherophes, both likely Hellenized forms of Nebka, is said to have faced a rebellion of Libyans during his reign, but "when the moon waxed beyond reckoning, they surrendered in terror".

Some Egyptologists including Malek tried to reconcile this position in the list with the evidence from Beit Khallaf by proposing that Nebka Sanakht reigned for a short time between the last Second Dynasty ruler Khasekhemwy and Djoser, whom Malek sees as a younger brother to Sanakht.

Evidence from the tomb of Akhetaa regarding the chronological position of Nebka is inconclusive: on the one hand, Akhetaa's title could indicate that he was priest of the cult of the reigning king and thus that Nebka was alive at the end of the Third Dynasty.

Tomb of Nebka has not been located with any certainty, nor has that of Sanakht.