Names: Khasekhemui-Nebuihotpimef, Ninutjer or Nutjeren

Dynasty: II (2950-2700 BC) Years of reign: [ ? BC] Thinita age: 3000-2700 BC

The name of this pharaoh isn’t present on any list of kings that has reached our days, but it has been found on various monuments. On the fifth line of the Stone in Palermo it’s mentioned the building of a copper statue of Khasekhemui, and a fragment with his name on it was discovered in Biblo. The tomb, of an incredibly long shape, of Khasekhemui, was discovered by Petrie in Umm el-Kacab.
Khasekhemui’s serekh shows two symbols of Horo and Seth, one before the other, both with a double crown.
This remarkable process is cleared also by the name Khasekhemui that here is followed by the added Nebuihotpimef.
Translated, the two names joined mean: The Two Powers have risen, the two Gods are in peace in him.
In other words king Khasekhemui personifies now the two divinities among whom there was a conflict because Peribsen had repudiated the traditional ancestor for his mortal enemy.
It’s clear that these graphic revolutionary innovations hide some serious political dispute, but it’s impossible to know its nature.
Some theories tend to identify Khasekhem’s monuments, limited to Iearcompoli, include a broken stele, two great stone cups and two statues of the sitting king, one in limestone and the other in slate.
The one in slate is more complete although half of the face is missing, while in the one in limestone, now in Oxford, the features are more visible. The pose, the style and the manufacture of the two monuments exclude that they are works from the beginning of the II dynasty, and this puts the sovereign’s placing around the end of it. The base of the statues is decorated with rough inscriptions that represent the killed enemies in every possible attitude of suffering and even the number of the dead is reported: 47209. Who they were is revealed by the stele where a bearded head, decorated with a feather on a pillow-shaped support, as it’s seen in the Narmer Tablet, report them as Libian.
The drawing on the cups represent the vulture goddess Nekhbe of El-Kab who offers to Khasekhem the emblem of the unification of the Two Countries and it has the behind leg above a round cartouche that encloses the symbols of the word Besh: it’s probable that this is Khasekhem’s actual name and not the one of a defeated tribe master or a conquered country.
On the right side of the drawing there is the hieroglyphic of a year, accompanied by the words of battle and defeat of the northerners .
On all these objects there is the white crown of Upper Egypt but, going back to our problem, what is the relation between Khasekhem of Ieracompoli and Peribsen on a side, and the same sovereign and Khasekhemui on the other?
The most considered hypothesis is that Khasekhem was Peribsen’s immediate successor, and his name doesn’t refer to Ieracompoli, and that, after he had conquered the delta again, he was followed by Khasekhemui.
But it seems strange that the latter, succeeding a faithful Horo, wanted to remember in his name the past dispute between Horo and Seth.
It can’t be excluded the possibility that horo Khasekhem and Horo-Seth Khasekemui were the same person, supposing that he had preferred this last form of his name while the memory of the conflict with Perbsen was still alive, but to this hypothesis it’s opposed the fact that khasekhemui’s monuments in Ieracompoli are distinguished by Khasekhem’s ones.
The most important one is a great jamb of the pink granit portal, and on its back the event of an important ceremony for the foundation of a building is represented. Another objection concerns the thesis that made Khasekhem an intermediary monarch between Khasekhemui and Djoser, the founder of the III dynasty, in fact a seal found in Khasekhemui’s tomb in Abido has the name of a certain queen Hepenmae, mother of the king’s children and this same queen is called mother of the king of Upper and Lower Egypt on another seal discovered in the great tomb in Bet Khallaf in Abido, where the emphasis given to the name Djoser made it believe that he was its owner. From this it was deduced that Khasekhemui and Hepenmae were Djoser’s parents; although the hypothesis is alluring it’s questionable why, in this case, there was a change of the dynasty.