Sekhemkare Amenemhat V was an Egyptian pharaoh of the 13th Dynasty during the Second Intermediate Period. According to Egyptologists Kim Ryholt and Darrell Baker, he was the 4th king of the Dynasty, reigning from 1796 BC until 1793 BC. The identity of Amenemhat V is debated by a minority of Egyptologists, as he could be the same person as Sekhemkare Amenemhat Sonbef, the second ruler of the 13th Dynasty.
Attestations
Amenemhat V is attested in column 7, line 7 of the Turin canon, which credits him with a reign of three to four years. A papyrus may confirm this from Lahun, which mentions the year three, months and days of a king Sekhemkare, which could be Amenemhat V or Sonbef.
In addition, Amenemhat V is attested by a single artefact contemporaneous with his lifetime, a statue of him from Elephantine initially set up in the Temple of Satet and inscribed with the following dedication:
The good god, lord of the two lands, lord of the ceremonies, the king of Upper and Lower Egypt Sekhemkare, the son of Ra Amenemhat, beloved of Satet, lady of Elephantine, may he live forever.
The head and arms of the statue were discovered in the 19th century in the ruins of a temple built to honour a nomarch named Heqaib and are in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. The body of the statue bearing the above inscription was discovered in 1932 and is now in the Aswan Museum.
Identity of Sekhemkare Amenemhat V
Egyptologists debate whether Sekhemkare Amenemhat V is the same king as Sekhemkare Sonbef, whom Kim Ryholt, Jürgen von Beckerath and Darrell Baker see as the 2nd ruler of the 13th Dynasty. Indeed, Sonbef called himself “Amenemhat Sonbef”, which Ryholt argues must be understood as “Amenemhat [Sa] Sonbef”, The Son of Amenemhat Sonbef, i.e. Sonbef would be the son of Amenemhat IV. In particular, they see Sonbef and Amenemhat V as two different rulers. Ryholt and Baker further posit that the ephemeral reign of Nerikare separated Sonbef’s and Amenemhat’s rules. At the same time, von Beckerath believes Sekhemre Khutawy Pantjeny reigned between the two. On the opposite, Detlef Franke and Stephen Quirke believe that the “Amenemhat” in Sonbef’s title is part of his name and identifies him as Amenemhat V, thus seeing the two kings as the same person. In other terms, Franke and others regard “Amenemhat Sonbef” as a double name. Indeed, dual naming was common in Egypt, especially in the late 12th and 13th Dynasties.
