Renseneb is known primarily thanks to the Turin King List where he appears in Column 7, line 16 (Gardiner col. 6 line 6). He is credited a reign of four months.[1]
Renseneb is otherwise known from a single contemporary object, a bead of glazed steatite, last seen by Percy Newberry in an antique dealer shop in Cairo in 1929.[5] The bead reads "Ranisonb Amenemhat, who gives life".[5] The Danish EgyptologistKim Ryholt interprets this double name as meaning "Ranisonb [Son of] Amenemhat" thereby showing that he was a son of a king Amenemhat.[1] The closest predecessor of Renseneb whose nomen is known to have been Amenemhat was Seankhibre Ameny Antef Amenemhet VI, who ruled about 10 years earlier. However, the nomina of three intervening kings, Sehetepibre, Sewadjkare and Nedjemibre, are unknown and could have been Amenemhat. One of them could thus be Renseneb's father,[5] or (older) brothers in succession.
Other researchers such as Stephen Quirke do not follow him in this interpretation.[6]
Renseneb's successor, Hor, could have been of non-royal birth since he never reported his parentage. Consequently, Ryholt proposed that Hor usurped the throne.[1] In any case the ephemeral reigns of the rulers of the early 13th Dynasty point to the general political instability of the time.
^ abcdeK.S.B. Ryholt, The Political Situation in Egypt during the Second Intermediate Period, c.1800-1550 BC, (Carsten Niebuhr Institute Publications, vol. 20. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 1997), 339, File 13/14.
^Detlef Franke: Zur Chronologie des Mittleren Reiches. Teil II: Die sogenannte Zweite Zwischenzeit Altägyptens, in Orientalia 57 (1988)
^Jürgen von Beckerath: Untersuchungen zur politischen Geschichte der Zweiten Zwischenzeit in Ägypten, Glückstadt, 1964
^Jürgen von Beckerath: Chronologie des pharaonischen Ägyptens, Münchner Ägyptologische Studien 46, Mainz am Rhein, 1997
^ abcKim Ryholt: A Bead of King Ranisonb and a Note on King Qemaw, Gottinger Miszellen - Beitrage zur Agyptologischen Diskussion 156 (1997), p. 95–100.
^Stephen Quirke: In the Name of the King: on Late Middle Kingdom Cylinders, in Czerny (editor): Timelines, Studies in Honour of Manfred Bietak, Leuven (2006), ISBN90-429-1730-X, p. 263–274.
