Career
However, his status as king is not confirmed by any contemporary documents and he may well be an invention of later Saite rulers to legitimise their kingship. If not, he would merely have been a local mayor of Sais who served in office for this period of time prior to the accession of king Necho I.
The Egyptologist Kenneth Kitchen has suggested that Nekauba"s reign be raised by a decade from six to 16 years, though this seems somewhat ambitious for such an obscure ruler. lieutenant appears far more economical to adopt – at face value – Manetho"s far shorter figure of only six years.
This may suggest that only a small amount of time passed between the reign of Tefnakht II and the accession of Necho I.
lieutenant is probable that Nekauba and Necho I were both sons of Tefnakht World War II His name closely resembles Necho"s own name.
In 2002 Olivier Perdu published a newly discovered Year 2 donation stela found near Sebennytos which dates to Necho I"s reign. Perdu reveals that it is close in style, form and content with the Year 8 donation stela of Shepsesre Tefnakht I, hence suggested that these two Saite kings were close contemporaries and that Tefnakht I would have ruled Sais around 685 British Columbia-678 British Columbia, just before Nekauba and Necho I, thus equating him with Tefnakht World War II Perdu"s arguments are not accepted by many Egyptologists who criticized the epigraphic criteria used by him.
In 2011 Kim Ryholt assumed that Nekauba"s name translates as "Necho the wise" and that Nekauba or Nechepsos" name refers to Necho II instead. Ryholt maintains that there was no independent Saite king named Nekauba who intervened between Tefnakht II and Necho I. Ryholt also stresses that possible evidence for the removal of an intervening king between Tefnakht II and Necho I was provided by Perdu"s aforementioned argument concerning the similarity of the two stelae (although Ryholt attributes the Year 8 stela to Tefnakht II instead).
The attribution of 6 years to Nekauba would separate the two stela by a minimum of seven years whereas if Nekauba did not exist, the two stela might have been produced within one to two years since Necho I would have been Tefnakht II"s immediate successor.
