Third Intermediate Period
Pamui (Pimay)
22nd Dynasty (Bubastite/Libyan) · 945-715 BCE
Open full-size illustration →Source: Shaw, Oxford History of Ancient Egypt (2000)
Background
Pamui reigned only briefly between Shoshenq III and Shoshenq V, and even the name by which he is known is disputed: many Egyptologists now treat "Pami" and "Pimay" as two distinct Egyptian names that later sources have likely conflated into a single ruler. Additional detail: UCL Digital Egypt.
Dynastic chronology: Shaw, Oxford History of Ancient Egypt (2000)
Full profile
An obscure reign
Pamui ruled during the late stages of the 22nd Dynasty. Information regarding his reign is incredibly scarce, reflecting the continued decline in royal authority and monument construction in the north.
Dated by a sacred bull
One of the few firm anchors for this king's reign comes not from his own monuments but from the Serapeum at Saqqara, where priests recorded the burial of a sacred Apis bull in his second regnal year; the same records show that bull had been installed in office 26 years earlier, during the 28th year of Shoshenq III, helping historians work out roughly how much time separated the two reigns. His name has also become a small point of scholarly debate: the forms "Pami" ("the Cat") and "Pimay" ("the Lion") were once assumed to be the same word, but differences in how the two names were actually written in hieroglyphs have led some Egyptologists to argue they may in fact belong to two separate figures rather than one.
Sources for this profile
- Shaw, I. (Ed.). (2000). The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt. Oxford University Press.
- Dodson, A., & Hilton, D. (2004). The Complete Royal Families of Ancient Egypt. Thames & Hudson.
- Leprohon, R. J. (2013). The Great Name: Ancient Egyptian Royal Titulary. Society of Biblical Literature.
- UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology. Chronology. UCLA.
- University College London. Digital Egypt for Universities.
The complete, APA-formatted reference list is on the Academic Sources & Bibliography page.