Djedkare Isesi

Djedkare's origins are unknown, and his relationship to Menkauhor is not recorded. His reign was long. The Turin Canon gives 28 years, but a document from the year of his 22nd cattle count and several records of a jubilee festival, usually held after thirty years, suggest that he ruled for about forty years. The administrative papyri from Abusir cover many years of his reign. His chief queen was Setibhor, and several of his sons and daughters are known from their tombs.

For about eighty years every pharaoh since Userkaf had built a temple for the sun god. Djedkare did not, and no pharaoh after him did either. He also left Abusir and built his pyramid at South Saqqara. Ra remained the great god of kingship, and Djedkare kept the name of Ra in his throne name. Some Egyptologists connect the change with the growing importance of Osiris, god of the dead, whose name appears more often in tombs from this time. Others see practical or economic reasons.

Djedkare reorganised the administration. He changed the system of ranking titles, appointed several viziers, sometimes more than one at a time, and gave them new titles of honour. Officials in the provinces gained more independence and began to build large tombs in their home towns instead of near the pharaoh's pyramid. Some historians see here the beginning of the weakening of royal power that would come at the end of the Old Kingdom, while others think the pharaoh remained firmly in control.

One of the most famous texts of Egyptian literature, the "Maxims of Ptahhotep", presents itself as the advice of a vizier of Pharaoh Isesi to his son. It teaches modesty, honesty, self-control and good speech, and reminds the reader that no one is born wise and that even a poor servant girl may speak good words. The text is preserved in copies of the Middle Kingdom, such as the Papyrus Prisse in Paris, and was probably written down later than the time of Djedkare, but it was placed in his reign as an age of wise officials.

Djedkare sent expeditions in many directions. They mined turquoise and copper in Sinai, sailing from the Red Sea port of Ain Sukhna, quarried stone in Nubia, where an inscription of his time gives the earliest mention of the "land of gold", and traded with Byblos. One expedition went to Punt for myrrh and brought back a dancing dwarf for the pharaoh. More than a century later the young Pepi II still remembered it in his famous letter to the explorer Harkhuf. A tomb of this period at Deshasha also shows one of the earliest scenes of a siege of a fortified town in Canaan.

Djedkare's pyramid at South Saqqara, called today Haram el-Shawwaf, "the pyramid of the sentinel", was about 52 metres high with a base of about 79 metres. Its casing was stolen long ago. In the burial chamber remains of a mummy were found, probably of the pharaoh, belonging to a man who died at about fifty or older. North-east of it stands the pyramid of his queen, unusually large and with its own small cult pyramid. The queen's name, Setibhor, was only identified in 2019 on blocks of her temple.

Djedkare Isesi gave Egypt about forty years of stable rule. He closed the era of the sun temples, reshaped the class of officials who ran the country and sent expeditions to distant lands. Later generations remembered his reign as a time of wise viziers, and his own cult was maintained to the end of the Old Kingdom.