Khui

This article is about the pharaoh. For the Russian profanity, see Russian profanity § Khuy.

Khui (fl. c. 2150 BC) was an ancient Egyptian king and/or nomarch during the early First Intermediate Period. Khui may have belonged to the Eighth Dynasty of Egypt, as Jürgen Beckerath has proposed,^[2] or he may instead have been a provincial nomarch who proclaimed himself king.

Khui
Relief fragment with the cartouche of Khui from a mastaba in Dara.[1]
Pharaoh
Reign	Duration unknown, c. 2150 BCE?
Royal titulary Nomen Khui ḫwj The protector
Burial	Pyramid of Khui?
Dynasty	possibly 8th Dynasty or a local kinglet

Attestation

Khui is not known from historical sources and the only certain attestation of his existence is a fragmentary relief on a stone block showing his cartouche which was published in 1912 by the Egyptologist Ahmed Bey Kamal and later republished by Raymond Weill. The block was excavated from a mastaba tomb of the necropolis of Dara near Manfalut.^[1] This necropolis is dominated by a massive funerary structure which was hastily attributed to this obscure king (the so-called Pyramid of Khui), assuming that the block came from its almost disappeared mortuary temple.^[3][4]

King or nomarch

Based on the cartouche surrounding Khui's name on the relief from Dara, Egyptologists including Jürgen Beckerath have proposed that he was a king of the early First Intermediate Period, belonging to the Eighth Dynasty.

On the other hand, Egyptologists Barry Kemp and Toby Wilkinson believe it more likely that Khui was a nomarch, that is a provincial governor, who took advantage of the power vacuum following the collapse of the Old Kingdom and proclaimed himself king, in the same way as the coeval and neighboring Heracleopolite founders of the 9th Dynasty.^[5][6]