General Notes

King Nefererkare was a younger brother of Sahure and followed him on the throne. He was probably a mature man at this point but manage to have a reign of about twenty years, almost twice as long as his brother. Confident in a rather long period on the throne he planned and built a pyramid that was the biggest so far in the dynasty (over 100 m at the base side) and he almost lived long enough to see it completed. In the cartouche left is his personal name (Kakai) that he had beside his long throne name (meaning - "beautiful is the soul of Re"), as son of the solar god. Two of his sons became kings over Egypt.

Nefererkara Kakai was probably the son of Userkaf, the first king of the 5th Dynasty and thus younger (half-?) brother to his predecessor king Sahure. His pyramid complex at Abusir was unfinished during his lifetime, but obviously finished by his successors. About fifteen years after his death king Neuserre incorporated both his valley temple and causeway into his own complex (see view over Abusir). Somewhere in the vicinity he built a solar temple, because the written historical texts say so, but nothing of this shrine has so far been found and still waits to be dug out from the sand.
Egyptologists do not agree on the length of his reign and figures between fourteen and twenty-four have been suggested. Nefererkara is notable for an innovation in the long row of royal names (titles). He was the first ruler to give himself two names within a cartouche - one as the son of Re and one as his personal name. All his followers in Egyptian history took up this custom. At his pyramid complex hundreds of fragments of papyrus were found in the late 1800s and the writing was in a new "shorthand" type of hieroglyphs, the so-called hieratic type of signs used for practical reasons rather than decorative.

Today four of the original six steps of the core are visible in Nefererkare's pyramid when the casing stones are gone. The design was later altered and the sides were made straight.


This first example of this sort of text surely had a long time of development and is this king's most notable contributions to Egyptology. When decrypted and published in the 1960s it turned out to be parts of the royal archive at the site. It contained details of the administration for guarding the temples, taking care of the daily offerings like bread, beer, meat, fowl, corn and fruit. It also showed tables for regular inspections and records of the equipment in the cult of the dead pharaohs.
The name of his pyramid was: "The pyramid of the Ba-spirit".