Wankhare Khety II

Wankhare Khety II was an Ancient Egyptian king of the Ninth Dynasty who ruled at Hierakleopolis the Great during the First Intermediate Period. H. R. Hall believed he was the Akhthoes of Manetho's list. According to Manethos, “he became more terrible than all those who had gone before him that he did evil unto the people in all Egypt and that he finally went mad and was devoured by a crocodile." This fate is similar to other kings whom Manetho felt had ruled cruelly; Menes, who unified Upper and Lower Egypt, was also said to have been devoured by a crocodile.[1]

While seen as a local ruler, as there was not real central authority during much of the First Intermediate Period, Khety II (or an earlier king of the same name) appears to have held sway over much of Middle and Upper Egypt, as his name is found in inscriptions north of the First Cataract.[2]

References

  1. ^ H. R. (Henry Reginald) Hall, The Ancient History of the Near East from Earliest Times to the Battle of Salamis 3rd Ed. (London: Metheuen and Co., 1916), 139-140. The term used in the ancient texts is imprecise, and Menes may have been eaten by a hippopatomus. See Archibald Henry Sayce, Edward Gibbon, Ancient Empires of the East vol. 1 (Philadelphia: J. D. Morris, 1906), 15.
  2. ^ Hall, The Ancient History of the Near East from Earliest Times to the Battle of Salamis, 3rd Ed., p. 139.