Khaba

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Khaba was a Pharaoh of Ancient Egypt's Old Kingdom and is generally considered to have reigned near the end of the Third Dynasty. He is thought to be the successor to Sekhemkhet. Khaba is believed to have reigned a relatively brief four years between 2603 BC to 2599 BC, although these dates are highly conjectural, based on what scant evidence exists of this early king.

Khaba is commonly associated with the Layer Pyramid, located at Zawyet el'Aryan, about 2 km south of Giza. It is an unfinished pyramid whose construction is typical of Third Dynasty masonry and would have originally risen about 42-45m in height (it is now about 20m). While there were no inscriptions directly relating the pyramid to this king, he is attested in four or perhaps five sites and eight alabaster bowls inscribed with the king's serekh were discovered nearby in Mastaba Z-500 located just north of the pyramid.^[1]

This king is mentioned in the Turin King List as "erased", which may imply that there were dynastic problems during his reign, or that the scribe working on this list was unable to fully decipher the name from the more ancient records being copied from. It has also been suggested that Khaba may be the Horus name of the last king of the Third Dynasty, Huni, and that the two kings are the same person.

Khaba's name, typically displayed within a serekh rather than the more typical cartouche form established by the end of this dynasty, was written using the sign of a rising sun that had the sound value of kha, and a Saddle-billed Stork that had the sound value of ba. His name translates as "The Soul Appears."^[2]