Merankhre Mentuhotep
Egyptian pharaoh of the 16th dynasty

Merankhre Mentuhotep VI was a Theban king of the Sixteenth Dynasty of Egypt based in Upper Egypt during the Second Intermediate Period. He was perhaps the 14th king of the dynasty.
Attestations
Merankhre Mentuhotep is only attested through two statuettes, JE 37418/CG 42021 and BM EA 65429. The first, discovered in the Karnak cachette by Georges Legrain, is missing its head and feet and gives the king's nomen and prenomen as well as a dedication to the god Sobek, lord of smnw. The second statuette, whose origin is unknown, also bears the titulary of the king but with no dedication.
Another possible attestation of Merankhre Mentuhotep VI is given by a fragment of a wooden coffin, now in the British Museum under the catalog number BM EA 29997. The coffin bears the following text:
The Patrician, Royal Representative, Eldest King's son, the Senior Commander Herunefer, true of voice, who was begotten by king Mentuhotep, true of voice, and borne by the senior Queen Sitmut.
The prenomen of the king Mentuhotep is missing and the identification of this Mentuhotep remains problematic. Kim Ryholt notes however that the coffin is also inscribed with an early version of passages of the Book of the Dead, which is one of only two pre-New Kingdom inscriptions of this text. Thus, Ryholt argues that this Mentuhotep must have reigned during the late Second Intermediate Period.
“Merankhre Mentuhotep” enters the record as egyptian pharaoh of the 16th dynasty. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Merankhre, Mentuhotep and Egyptian can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Merankhre Mentuhotep” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.