The Life of Harkhuf

By Scriptural Research Institute

The life of Harkhuf is one of the better-documented lives from the era of the Old Kingdom era of Egyptian history. Harkhuf lived during the reigns of kings Merenre I and Pepi II of the 6th Dynasty, at the same time as the more famous Weni, whom he may have mentioned in his autobiography. Like Weni, he is primarily known from the inscriptions on

• Language: English
• Publisher: Digital Ink Productions
• Release date: Dec 25, 2021
• ISBN: 9781990289330

Book preview

The Life of Harkhuf

SCRIPTURAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE

Published by Digital Ink Productions, 2023

COPYRIGHT

While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein.

The Life of Harkhuf

Digital edition. October 28, 2023

Copyright © 2023 Scriptural Research Institute.

ISBN: 978-1-990289-33-0

This English translation was created by the Scriptural Research Institute in 2021 and 2022, primarily from high-resolution photographs. Additionally, the English translation of the text published by A. Wallis Budge in Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology (X, pages 4-40) published in 1886, the French translation of Jacques de Morgan (Catalogue des monuments et inscriptions de l'Égypte antique) in 1894, and the English translation published by James Henry Breasted (Ancient records of Egypt; historical documents from the earliest times to the Persian conquest) in 1906 were used for comparative analysis.

The image used for the cover is an artistic reinterpretation of ‘La Rivière Blanche à El Kantara’ by Eugène Alexis Girardet, painted circa 1900.

Note: The notes for this book includes multiple ancient scripts. For your convenience, fonts correctly depicting these scripts are embedded in the ebook. If your reader does not support embedded fonts, you will need to install Unicode fonts that cover the ranges for Coptic, Egyptian hieroglyphs, Ethiopic, Greek, and Old Perisan cuneiform on your reader manually, or you may see blank areas, question marks, or squares where the scripts are used. The Noto fonts from Google cover most of the scripts used, however, will not depict Egyptian hieroglyphs correctly due to current limitations in Unicode.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Title Page

Copyright

Forward

Tomb Inscription of Harkhuf

Autobiography of Harkhuf

Letter of Pepi II

Map of Egypt and Nubia

Available Digitally

Available in Print

FORWARD

The life of Harkhuf is one of the better-documented lives from the era of the Old Kingdom era of Egyptian history. Harkhuf lived during the reigns of kings Merenre I and Pepi II of the 6th Dynasty, at the same time as the more famous Weni, whom he may have mentioned in his autobiography. Like Weni, he is primarily known from the inscriptions on his tomb, however, unlike Weni, he only seems to have had one tomb. On the front of his tomb were carved two inscriptions, one promising to intercede in the afterlife for those who prayed for him at his tomb, and the other was his autobiography, telling of his three expeditions into Nubia for King Merenre I. This appears to have been the original design of the tomb, as the front of the tomb was completely covered in the two