Until quite recently, the rise of Manetho’s 5th Dynasty used to be described in terms of a literary text set out in Papyrus Westcar. This is an incompletely preserved collection of stories, probably compiled during the Middle Kingdom and written down a little later. The Arabian Nights setting is the court of King BChufu, where royal princes entertain their fretful father by stories. Prince Hardjedef s narrative foretells the birth of triplets, the future kings Userkaf Sahura, and Neferirkara, to Radjedet, the wife of a priest of the god Ra at Sakhbu (in the Delta) as the result of her union with the sun-god. To Khufu’s sorrow, these children are destined to replace his own descendants on the throne of Egypt. The beginning of Manetho’s new Dynasty, the 5th, appears to be linked to a major change in Egyptian religion and, as Papyrus Westcar shows, the division may reflect ancient Egyptian tradition.
The first king of the new Dynasty was Userkaf (Homs Irmaet, 2494-2487 BC), whose name is of the same pattern as that of the last (or perhaps penultimate) king of the 4th Dynasty, Shepseskaf It has been suggested that Userkaf was a grandson of Djedefra, but, although there were undoubtedly some family links between him and the mlers of the 4th Dynasty, their precise nature is uncertain. We know nothing about the history of Userkaf s reign and there is no contemporary evidence to support the version of events given in Papyms Westcar.
The main surviving architectural achievement of Userkaf s reign was the building of a temple specifically dedicated to the sun-god Ra. This was the beginning of a trend; six of the first seven kings of Manetho’s 5th Dynasty (Userkaf, Sahura, Neferirkara, Raneferef
Nyuserra, and Menkauhor) built such temples in the next eighty years. The names of these temples are known from the titularies of their priests, but only two have so far been located and excavated, those of Userkaf and Nyuserra. The sun-temple built by Userkaf is at Abusir, north of Saqqara (although it seems that current excavations confirm the view that the division between Saqqara and Abusir has been created by modern archaeologists and was not felt to exist in antiquity).
Userkaf s pyramid is at North Saqqara, close to the north-eastern corner of Djoser’s enclosure. A substantial re-evaluation of rigid monu-mentality had taken place by this time, judging from the pyramid’s small size (side 73.5 m. and height 49 m.), the less painstaking method of construction, and the evident willingness to improvise (the main pyramid temple is, unusually, set against the southern face of the pyramid, perhaps in order not to interfere with an already existing structure). Userkaf, whose reign lasted for only seven years, may have come to the throne as an old man.
The building of sun-temples was the outcome of a gradual rise in importance of the sun-god. Ra now became Egypt’s closest equivalent to a state god. Each king built a new sun-temple and their proximity to the pyramid complexes, as well as their similarity to the royal funerary monuments in plan, suggest that they were built for the afterlife rather than the present. A sun-temple consisted of a valley temple linked by a causeway to the upper temple. The main feature of the upper temple was a massive pedestal with an obelisk, a symbol of the sun-god. An altar was placed in a court open to the sun. There were no wall reliefs in Userkaf s construction, the earliest of the sun-temples, but in Nyu-serra’s they were extensive. On the one hand, they emphasized the sun-god’s role as the ultimate giver of life and the moving force in nature, and, on the other, they established the king’s place in the eternal cycle of events by showing his periodic celebration of the sed-festivals. A large mud-brick replica of a barque of the sun-god was built nearby. The temples were, therefore, personal monuments to each king’s continued relationship with the sun-god in the afterlife. Like pyramid complexes, sun-temples were endowed with land, received donations in kind on festival days, and had their own personnel.
World History
