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Pepi II's cartouche: Neferkare and Pepi read sign by sign
13 October 2026
Pepi II wrote his name in two cartouches. The first holds his throne name, Neferkare, three signs: a sun disc, a heart with its windpipe and a pair of raised arms. It means "Beautiful is the ka of Ra". The second holds his birth name, Pepi, two stools and two reed leaves.
He was a king of the 6th Dynasty, at the end of the Old Kingdom, around 2200 BC. Later Egyptians remembered his reign as the longest of all, more than ninety years, a figure many Egyptologists now doubt.
Neferkare takes three signs
The throne name is nfr-kꜣ-rꜥ, said "nefer-ka-ra". The sun disc (N5) for Ra stands first in the oval out of respect, though it is read last. The heart and windpipe (F35) writes nfr, "beautiful, good, perfect". The raised arms (D28), bent at the elbows, are the ka, the life force every person carries.
Read together they give "Beautiful is the ka of Ra", or "the perfect one of the ka of Ra" in some translations. The name ties the king's own life force to the sun god's. It stands after the sedge and the bee, the title "king of Upper and Lower Egypt".
Two kings shared the name Pepi
The birth name is ppy, said "PEP-ee". Each stool (Q3) writes p, and the two reed leaves (M17) together write y. It follows the title "son of Ra", the pintail duck and the sun.
Pepi I, his grandfather or perhaps his father, had exactly the same birth name, so a lone "Pepi" oval could belong to either king. Pepi I's throne name was Meryre, "beloved of Ra", which tells the two apart when both rings survive. Neferkare itself was reused much later: Shabaka of the 25th Dynasty, among others, took the same throne name.
Pepi II became king as a child
Pepi II became king at about six years old, and his mother, Queen Ankhesenmeryre II, probably governed for him in the first years. A small alabaster statue in the Brooklyn Museum shows her seated with the boy king on her lap, drawn as a tiny adult in a king's dress.
From those first years comes his most famous text. Harkhuf, governor at Aswan, led expeditions south into Africa and sent word that he was bringing back a dwarf, or pygmy, a dancer for the god. The young king wrote back, eager to see him, and promised Harkhuf a great reward if the dancer arrived alive and well. Harkhuf was so proud of the letter that he had it carved on the front of his tomb at Qubbet el-Hawa, opposite Aswan.
His pyramid at South Saqqara carries his name
His pyramid stands at South Saqqara. Gaston Maspero entered it in 1881, and Gustave Jéquier excavated the whole complex in the 1920s and 1930s. The burial chamber and corridors are carved with Pyramid Texts, the spells that carried a king to the sky, and his name runs through them in cartouches. Long used as a quarry, the pyramid is now a heavily ruined mound. Ask locally whether its inside can be visited.
Saqqara as a whole is the best place to meet the Pyramid Texts, which began with Unas a few generations earlier. In the burial chambers, the cartouche of the king in the text is the easiest word to find, three signs among hundreds of columns.
Further south, Harkhuf's tomb facade at Aswan keeps the letter with the boy king's name, and his cartouches turn up on objects in museums around the world.
The Old Kingdom ended after his long reign
Pepi II's reign closed the age of the pyramid builders. Over the decades, provincial governors grew richer and more independent, and royal power weakened. Within a few years of his death the Old Kingdom gave way to the First Intermediate Period, when several rulers claimed the throne at once.
Several kings of the troubled years after him still took the throne name Neferkare, among them Neferkare Neby and Neferkare Khendu.
Neferkare's three signs are simple to draw
Draw the oval and put the sun disc at the top. The heart and windpipe go below it: a rounded heart with a thin line rising out of it, crossed near the top. The raised arms close the name, elbows bent, palms forward.
The same heart and windpipe opens Nefertiti's name, and the raised arms end Hatshepsut's Maatkare.
Questions
Did Pepi II really reign for 94 years?
Perhaps not. The 94 years come from Manetho, writing nearly two thousand years later, and the Turin King List gives over 90. The highest year actually recorded in his reign is his 62nd, so many Egyptologists think he ruled for about sixty-odd years.
Who was Pepi II's father?
Probably King Merenre, who died young. Older books make him a son of Pepi I, and a few scholars still do.
Is Pepi II the same as Neferkare?
Yes. Neferkare was his throne name and Pepi his birth name. Egyptian kings carried five names, and these two are the ones written in cartouches.
Glossary
- birth name
- The name a king was given at birth, written in the second cartouche after the title "son of Ra". Egyptologists also call it the nomen.
- cartouche
- An oval ring drawn around a royal name, a loop of rope tied at one end. Kings wrote their two main names in cartouches.
- dynasty
- A line of kings counted together, usually one family. Egyptologists number Egypt's kings in about 30 dynasties, following the priest Manetho.
- First Intermediate Period
- The years after the Old Kingdom, about 2160 to 2055 BC, when Egypt split between rival kings in Herakleopolis in the north and Thebes in the south.
- Lower Egypt
- The north of Egypt, the flat Nile Delta from around Memphis to the sea. It is called lower because it is downstream.
- Old Kingdom
- The age of the pyramid builders, about 2686 to 2181 BC, from the 3rd to the 6th Dynasty.
- pyramid
- A royal tomb with four sloping sides meeting at a point, built in the Old and Middle Kingdoms. Khufu's Great Pyramid at Giza is the largest.
- Pyramid Texts
- The oldest religious spells of Egypt, carved in the burial rooms of pyramids from the reign of Unas, around 2350 BC, on.
- throne name
- The name a king took when he came to the throne, written in the first cartouche after the title "King of Upper and Lower Egypt". Egyptologists also call it the prenomen.
- tomb
- A burial place: a pit, a mastaba, a pyramid or rooms cut into rock. Its chapel was where the family brought offerings.
People in this article
Where to see it
- Saqqara site
- Pyramid of Unas monument
Sources
More to read
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