Peribsen (Seth-Peribsen)

A radical religious shift

Peribsen was a radical figure who briefly broke with ancient Egyptian religious tradition, predating Akhenaten's famous religious rebellion by over 13 centuries. Since the predynastic period, kings used a *serekh* (a royal crest) topped with a falcon representing the god Horus. Peribsen shocked tradition by dropping the Horus falcon entirely, replacing it with the "Seth animal"—the symbol of the god Set (Seth).

An uncertain political context

It is unknown whether he was a usurper or a royal from Upper Egypt who mobilized the followers of Seth. His granodiorite stela, found at Abydos and now in the British Museum, records only his serekh and a brief formula rather than any account of political events, so the change in his divine emblem cannot itself be read as proof of a war or a formal division of the kingdom, however tempting that inference has proven for later popular accounts. He did, however, return to the ancient burial traditions of the First Dynasty by placing his tomb in the royal cemetery of Abydos. His tomb was relatively small (16 by 13 meters) and utilized a mud-brick burial chamber, unlike the wood-lined tombs of the previous dynasty.

Peribsen or Sekhemib?

A separate royal name, Sekhemib, is attested on sealings from the same funerary enclosure area at Abydos associated with Peribsen, leading many Egyptologists to propose that Sekhemib and Peribsen were the same king under two different names — Sekhemib perhaps an earlier Horus-name later replaced by the Seth-serekh — though others treat them as two closely spaced but distinct rulers. A sealing bearing Peribsen's name found far south at Elephantine, near modern Aswan, shows that whatever the internal politics of his reign, his administration's reach still extended across a considerable stretch of the Nile Valley.