Djedkarê Isési

Djedkarê Isési is a sovereign of the Egyptian woman. It reigned in the neighborhoods of -2381 with -2353 and would have succeeded Menkaouhor and precedes Ounas. Its bonds with its immediate predecessors are not clearly established but no trace of disorders is attested by the contemporary sources while the recent discovered ones made in Abousir militate in favor of a direct link with the royal family.

Genealogy

Titulature

Reign

The Papyrus of Turin gives him twenty-eight years of reign, while Manéthon gives some to him forty-four. The date attested highest concerning its reign is that of the twenty-second census, date raised on one of the discovered papyri with Abousir. However these censuses of the cattle were not carried out annually with the Ancient Empire, but every year and half even every two years. On this basis, the Egyptologists are thus more inclined to follow the assertion of Manéthon, the more so as one knows a mention of a Fête Sed, registered on a vase in Albâtre in the name of Djedkarê, jubilee which was traditionally carried out at the end of the thirtieth year of reign.

Two forwardings with the Ouadi Maghara, in the the Sinai, are attested, as well as pacification campaigns at the borders of the country, in particular in Nubie narrow, and commercial links with the Proche the East in particular with Byblos. By the autobiography of Hirkhouf, nomarque of Aswan under the reign of Pépi {{II}}, one also knows that a forwarding in the middle of the African continent took place. In addition, several posterior accounts with the reign give a report on the period as being one era of happiness, which tallies well with the artistic production of the time which reaches one of its apogees. One will quote in particular the reliefs found in the mastabas of three of the viziers of Djedkarê, Akhethotep, Ptahhotep and Rachepsès, which appears among chief-of works of the necropolis of Saqqarah.

Under his reign, one witnesses a multiplication at the same time titles and number of courtiers of the palate. Some make appear in their tomb of true biography informing us about the facts of the reign like that of Itush or Gemni in Saqqarah. One also has three letters of the king addressed to some of his closer ministers, distinguished honor which the interested parties did not fail to make be reproduced in good place on the walls of their Mastaba:

one in the mastaba already quoted of sound vizier Rachepsès with Saqqarah;
two in the mastaba of another of its viziers Senedjemib Inti this time at Gizeh.

It is for this period also that the maxims sapientiales of Ptahhotep, preserved on the Papyrus Took, would have been written.

Djedkarê did not make build solar temple contrary to its immediate predecessors, apparently marking time with theology héliopolitaine, which the choice of the site of pyramidal sound complex seems to confirm. Indeed, it chooses to return to Saqqarah to build its complex funerary, but that does not mean abandonment of the dynastic necropolis of Abousir because the files discovered in the funerary temples of Néferirkarê Kakaï, Khentkaous {{II}} and Néferefrê, ancestors probable of Djedkarê, go back for the majority to its reign. On these papyri were consigned lists of priests in service at that time as their function but they are especially the decrees reforming the worships and ensuring the provisioning of the temples which hold the attention of the historians. Lastly, it will be also noted that part of the courtiers and the royal family was buried in Abousir in the south of the roadway of the funerary complex of Niouserrê, whose mastabas were put at the day recently and make it possible to clarify a little more the reign. Thus one knows to him two wire Néserkaouhor, and Rêmkoui, crown prince, who died prematurely leaving the throne to Ounas, other wire probable to Djedkarê, like two girls Khekeretnebti and Hedjetnebou.

Burial

Djedkarê thus chooses to turn over to Saqqarah to build its pyramid breaking with the site of Abousir chosen by its predecessors like necropolis royal. With many regards, this complex has the appearance of a model for the royal funerary units which will follow so much in the architecture of the funerary temple than in that of the royal funerary apartments of which the number of part and the proportions “are standardized”. In the north of the royal pyramid a secondary pyramid was released with its own complete funerary complex closely related to that of Djedkarê.

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