32 Facts About Neferirkare Kakai

Neferirkare Kakai was an ancient Egyptian pharaoh, the third king of the Fifth Dynasty.

Neferirkare Kakai acceded the day after his father's death and reigned for eight to eleven years, sometime in the early to mid-25th century BCE.

Neferirkare Kakai was himself very likely succeeded by his eldest son, born of his queen Khentkaus II, the prince Ranefer B who would take the throne as king Neferefre.

Neferirkare Kakai fathered another pharaoh, Nyuserre Ini, who took the throne after Neferefre's short reign and the brief rule of the poorly known Shepseskare.

Neferirkare Kakai was acknowledged by his contemporaries as a kind and benevolent ruler, intervening in favour of his courtiers after a mishap.

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Neferirkare Kakai's rule witnessed a growth in the number of administration and priesthood officials, who used their expanded wealth to build architecturally more sophisticated mastabas, where they recorded their biographies for the first time.

Neferirkare Kakai was the last pharaoh to significantly modify the standard royal titulary, separating the nomen or birth name, from the prenomen or throne name.

Neferirkare Kakai's rule witnessed continuing trade relations with Nubia to the south and possibly with Byblos on the Levantine coast to the north.

Neferirkare Kakai is well attested in sources contemporaneous with his reign.

Neferirkare Kakai appears in the nearly contemporaneous Giza writing board, a short list grouping six kings from different dynasties dating to the later Fifth or early Sixth Dynasty.

Neferirkare Kakai is attested in two ancient Egyptian king lists, both dating to the New Kingdom.

Neferirkare Kakai was given an entry in the Turin canon, a document dating to the reign of Ramesses II as well.

Neferirkare Kakai's entry is commonly believed to be in the third column-19th row; unfortunately this line has been lost in a large lacuna affecting the papyrus, and neither his reign length nor his successor can be ascertained from the surviving fragments.

Archaeological evidence has established that the transitions from Userkaf to Sahure and from Sahure to Neferirkare Kakai were father–son transitions, so that neither Sahure nor Neferirkare Kakai can be dynasty founders in the modern sense of the term.

Neferirkare Kakai was mentioned in the Aegyptiaca, a history of Egypt written in the 3rd century BCE during the reign of Ptolemy II by Manetho.

Manetho's Aegyptiaca assigns Neferirkare Kakai a reign of 20 years, but the archaeological evidence now suggests that this is an overestimate.

Annal then records that in his first year as king, Neferirkare Kakai granted land to the agricultural estates serving the cults of the Ennead, the Souls of Pe and Nekhen and the gods of Keraha.

Neferirkare Kakai commanded "the fashioning and opening of the mouth of an electrum statue of [the god] Ihy, escorting [it] to the mrt-chapel of Snefru of the nht-shrine of Hathor".

Later in his reign, in the year of the fifth cattle count, Neferirkare Kakai had a bronze statue of himself erected and set up four barques for Ra and Horus in and around his sun temple, two of which were of copper.

Fact that the Palermo stone terminates around Neferirkare Kakai's rule led some scholars, such as Grimal, to propose that they might have been compiled during his reign.

Reign of Neferirkare Kakai saw the last important modification to the titulary of pharaohs.

Neferirkare Kakai was the earliest pharaoh to separate the nswt-bjtj and Z3-R? epithets of the royal titulary.

Neferirkare Kakai associated these two epithets with two different, independent names: the prenomen and nomen, respectively.

Neferirkare Kakai's reign was unusual for the significant number of surviving contemporary records which describe him as a kind and gentle ruler.

When Rawer, an elderly nobleman and royal courtier, was accidentally touched by the king's mace during a religious ceremony—a dangerous situation which could have caused this official to be put immediately to death or banished from court since the pharaoh was viewed as a living god in Old Kingdom mythology—Neferirkare Kakai quickly pardoned Rawer and commanded that no harm should occur to the latter for the incident.

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Similarly, Neferirkare Kakai gave the Priest of Ptah Ptahshepses the unprecedented honour of kissing his feet rather than the ground in front of him.

When Washptah died, Neferirkare Kakai was reportedly inconsolable and retired to his personal quarters to mourn the loss of his friend.

Pyramid of Neferirkare Kakai, known to the Ancient Egyptians as Ba-Neferirkare and variously translated as "Neferirkare is a Ba" or "Neferirkare takes form", is located in the royal necropolis of Abusir.

Pyramid of Neferirkare Kakai is surrounded by smaller pyramids and tombs which seem to form an architectural unit, the cemetery of his close family.

Neferirkare Kakai is known from ancient sources to have built a temple to the sun god Ra, which is yet to be identified archaeologically.

Egyptologist Werner Kaiser proposed, based on a study of the evolution of the hieroglyph determinative for "sun temple", that Neferirkare Kakai completed the sun temple of Userkaf—known in Ancient Egyptian as Nekhenre—sometime around the fifth cattle count of his reign.

Secondly, they observe that both the pyramid and sun temple of Neferirkare Kakai were unfinished at his death, raising the question as to why the king would have devoted exceptional effort on a monument of Userkaf when his own still required substantial works to be completed.