First Intermediate Period
Khety (last)
9th/10th Dynasties · 2160-2025 BCE
Open full-size illustration →Source: Shaw, Oxford History of Ancient Egypt (2000)
Background
This “last Khety” entry represents a late Herakleopolitan ruler in the traditional sequence before Theban reunification. The identity of the final northern king is not securely established, and later king lists do not give a fully reliable political chronology. It is therefore unsafe to attribute a precise reign, monument or final battle to this figure. The broader historical context is clearer: northern Herakleopolitan rulers competed with the Theban Eleventh Dynasty until the Theban house prevailed under Mentuhotep II. The entry is best understood as a chronological placeholder for an uncertain late phase, not a securely documented individual. Supporting detail: UCL Digital Egypt.
Dates from: Shaw, Oxford History of Ancient Egypt (2000)
Full profile
The war for the Thinite nome
The final years of Herakleopolitan rule are illuminated less by any single named king than by evidence for the war itself. Mentuhotep II, the Theban king who ultimately triumphed, named one year of his reign the "Year of the Crime of Thinis," referring to Herakleopolitan forces sacking the sacred royal necropolis at Abydos, in the Thinite nome, during the fighting. This closely echoes the confession of tomb violation in the roughly contemporary Teaching for King Merikare, in which a Herakleopolitan king's father admits to defiling Abydos and urges his son to make amends — two independent strands of evidence apparently describing the same episode of the war.
The Slain Soldiers of Deir el-Bahari
Physical evidence for the conflict's human cost survives in a mass burial discovered near Mentuhotep II's mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahari in the 1920s. The tomb held the linen-wrapped bodies of some sixty soldiers, unusually well preserved by natural dehydration, many killed by arrow wounds with little sign of close hand-to-hand combat, and one shroud bore Mentuhotep II's own name. Egyptologists generally connect these men with the fighting against the Herakleopolitan kingdom, making the burial one of the most vivid direct traces of the war that ended the Ninth and Tenth Dynasties.
Why no single king can be named
Despite this evidence for how the war ended, no source reliably identifies which Herakleopolitan king was actually reigning when Thebes prevailed. The relevant section of the Turin Canon is badly damaged, later king lists disagree on the sequence's final names, and it remains debated whether Merikare himself was still on the throne at the moment of defeat or was followed by one further, now-unrecoverable ruler. This entry stands in for that uncertain final phase rather than for a specific, securely identified individual.
Sources for this profile
- Baker, D. D. (2008). The Encyclopedia of the Pharaohs: Volume 1. Stacey International.
- Shaw, I. (Ed.). (2000). The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt. Oxford University Press.
- Ryholt, K. (2004). The Turin King-list. Ägypten und Levante, 14, 135–155.
- Dodson, A., & Hilton, D. (2004). The Complete Royal Families of Ancient Egypt. Thames & Hudson.
- University College London. Digital Egypt for Universities.
The complete, APA-formatted reference list is on the Academic Sources & Bibliography page.