According to Manetho, the reign of Unas concluded the 5th Dynasty, and the next king, Teti (Homs Seheteptawy, 2345-2323 BC), ushered in the 6th Dynasty. We have no definite information on the personal relationship between Teti and his predecessors, but his chief wife Iput was probably Unas’s daughter. Teti’s vizier Kagemni began his career under Djedkara and Unas. However, the Turin Canon also inserts a break at this point followed by a total for the kings between Menes (the first king of the ist Dynasty) and Unas (the figure is now lost). This gives us some food for thought, because the criterion for such divisions in the Turin Canon invariably was the change of location of the capital and royal residence.
The original capital at White Wall, founded at the beginning of the ist Dynasty, was probably gradually replaced in importance by the more populated suburbs further to the south, approximately to the east of Teti’s pyramid. Djed-isut, the name of this part of the city, derived from the name of Teti’s pyramid and its pyramid town. The royal palaces of Djedkara and Pepy I (and possibly also that of Unas) may, however, have already been transferred further south, away from the squalor, noise, and smell of a crowded city, to places in the valley east of the present South Saqqara and separated from Djed-isut by a lake. This would, at least, explain the choice of South Saqqara as the site for the pyramids of Djedkara and Pepy I.
In a development that paralleled that near the pyramid of Teti, the adjacent settlement took its name Mennefer (Greek Memphis) from the name of Pepy I’s pyramid and its pyramid town. Later, in the second millennium, this became physically linked with the settlements around the temple of the god Ptah further to the east, and the city in its entirety began to be known as Mennefer. So, to some extent, the site of the royal residence may have changed at the end of the 5th or early in the 6th Dynasty and this may explain the division in the Turin Canon, later reflected in Manetho’s account (Pepy I’s father Teti was included in the new line of rulers). But here we are entering a realm of speculation and only future fieldwork in the Memphite region will show how much of it is justified.
Teti may have been followed by King Userkara (2323-2321 bc), although his existence can be disputed. Some confusion may be due to the fact that Pepy I (Homs Merytawy, 2321-2287 BC), the son of Teti and Queen Iput, was called Nefersahor in the first part of his reign. This was his ‘prenomen’ or ‘throne name’, received at his coronation, preceded by the title nesu-bit (‘he of the sedge and bee’) and enclosed in an oval cartouche. Later he changed it to Meryra. The ‘nomen’ or ‘birth name’, Pepy (the number that conventionally follows is ours, and was never used by the ancient Egyptians), predated his accession to the throne: it was introduced by the title sa Ra (‘son of the god Ra’) and was also written in a cartouche.
Egypt’s internal situation now began to change. The king’s position remained theoretically unaffected, but there can be no doubt that difficulties appeared. This impression can be only partly explained by the increase in the volume and quality of information that allows us a deeper insight into Egyptian society, beyond the monolithically monumental and largely formal fagade of the earlier periods. The king’s person was no longer untouchable: a biographical text of Weni, a high Court official, mentions an unsuccessful plot against Pepy I inspired by one of his queens late in his reign. Her name is not given, but marriage politics were known: in his declining years, the king married two sisters, both called Ankhnes-meryra (‘King Meryra [Pepy I] lives for her’). Their father Khui was an influential official at Abydos. These were dramatic events, but the growth of power and influence of local administrators (especially in Upper Egypt, further away from the capital) and the corresponding weakening of the royal authority may have had less dramatic, but potentially much more serious, consequences. A new office of ‘overseer of Upper Egypt' was created late in the 5th Dynasty.
The kings of the 6th Dynasty built extensively, constructing shrines of local gods all over Egypt, but these fell victim to later rebuilding or have not yet been excavated. Upper Egyptian temples, such as those of BChenti-amentiu at Abydos, Min at Koptos, Hathor at Dendera, Homs at Hierakonpolis, and Satet at Elephantine, were especially favoured. Donations made to these temples and exemptions from taxes and compulsory service granted to them multiplied.
The pyramid temples of the late 5th and 6th Dynasties include scenes that appear so convincing that one might be tempted to take them at face value. So, for example, a scene showing the submission of Libyan chiefs during the reign of Pepy II is a close copy of such a representation in the temples of Sahura, Nyuserra, and Pepy I (and, some 1,500 years later, it was repeated in the temple of King Taharqo at Kawa, in Sudan). These scenes were standard expressions of the achievements of the ideal king and as such bore little resemblance to reality. Their inclusion in the temples guaranteed their continuity. The same explanation may be given to the scenes of ships returning from an expedition to Asia and a raid on the nomads of Palestine, depicted in the causeway of Unas. However, other sources show that similar events did take place. The already mentioned Weni describes repeated large-scale military actions against the Aamu of the Syro-Palestinian region. In spite of the way they were presented, they were preventative or punitive raids rather than defensive campaigns.
The exploitation of mineral resources in the deserts outside Egypt continued. Turquoise and copper continued to be mined at Wadi Maghara in the Sinai (Djedkara, Pepy I and II), Egyptian alabaster at Hatnub (Teti, Merenra, Pepy I and II), and greywacke and siltstone in the Wadi Hammamat (Pepy I, Merenra) in the Eastern Desert, gneiss in the quarries north-west of Abu Simbel (Djedkara). Expeditions were sent to Punt by Djedkara, and commercial and diplomatic contacts were maintained with Byblos (by Djedkara, Unas, Teti, Pepy I and II, and Merenra) and also with Ebla (Pepy I).
Nubia became particularly important during the later 6th Dynasty and attempts were made to improve navigation in the first-cataract region in the time of Merenra. The area now began to receive an influx of new settlers (the so-called Nubian C Group) from further south, between the 3rd and 4th cataracts, with the centre at Kerma. There were occasional clashes with these people as Egypt tried to prevent a potential threat to its economic interests and its security. Caravan expeditions across the Nubian territory (the lands of Wawat, Irtjet, Satju, and lam) were organized by administrators of the southernmost Egyptian nome at Elephantine, such as Harkhuf, Pepynakht Heqaib, and Sabni. African luxury goods that reached Egypt this way included incense, hard wood (ebony), animal skins, and ivory, but also dancing dwarfs and exotic animals. The employment of Nubians, especially in border police units and as mercenaries in military expeditions, dates from this period onwards.
The Western Desert was criss-crossed by caravan routes. One of them left the Nile in the area of Abydos for the Kharga Oasis and then proceeded southwards along the track now known as Darb el-Arbain (Arabic; ‘forty-day route’) to the Selima Oasis. Another departed from Kharga westwards, to the Dakhla Oasis, where an important settlement thrived at Ayn Asil, near modem Balat, especially during the reign of Pepy II.
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