| Horus Sa | |
|---|---|
| Weneg ?Senedj ?Sanakht ? | |
 Vessel fragment bearing the inscriptionḤwt-k3 Ḥrw-z3. | |
| Pharaoh | |
| Reign | 2nd or3rd Dynasty |
| Burial | uncertain, gallery tomb atSaqqara ?,Gisr el-mudir ? |
Horus Sa (alsoHorus Za,Sa andZa) was a possibleearly Egyptianpharaoh who may have reigned during theSecond orThird Dynasty of Egypt. His existence is disputed, as is the meaning of the artifacts that have been interpreted as confirming his existence.
Horus Sa is known from vessel fragments with blackink inscriptions showing his name. These vessels were found in the east galleries beneath Djoser'spyramid atSaqqara. The inscriptions are short and written in cursive handwritings. In all cases the name "Horus Sa" does not appear within aserekh and its identification as theHorus-name of a king is disputed.[1][2]
The name "Horus Sa" always appears within the inscriptionḤwt-k3 Ḥrw-z3 ("House of theKa of Horus Sa"), regularly found together with the names ofInykhnum andMa'a-aper-Min, two high-ranking officials who served in theKa-house. During theEarly Dynastic Period of Egypt, the House of the Ka was a forerunner of the mortuary temple, a place where a cult to the Ka of a deceased ruler was performed. A further inscription,Ḥwt-k3 Ḥrw-z3, was found in the 1980s at Saqqara in the area of the tomb ofMaya and very close to that ofMeryra-Meryneith.[3] Maya and Meryra-Meryneith were both late18th dynasty court officials who reused 2nd dynasty tombs for themselves, some 1,500 years after the death of their original owners.[3][4]
Jürgen von Beckerath, Dietrich Wildung andPeter Kaplony proposed that "Sa" is a short form of the Horus-nameSanakht.[5]Wolfgang Helck rejects this argument on the grounds that the ink inscriptions from the east-galleries of Djoser's pyramid complex date predominantly from the reign ofNynetjer or shortly thereafter, while Sanakht reigned during the mid-3rd dynasty. Furthermore, inscriptions mentioning the "House of the Ka ofHotepsekhemwy" are stylistically similar to that of Horus Sa which would place Sa in the 2nd dynasty since Hotepsekhemwy was the first ruler of that dynasty. Thus, Helck proposed that Horus Sa is the Horus-name of another shadowy ruler of the 2nd dynasty,Weneg, whose Horus-name is otherwise unknown.[6]
The EgyptologistJochem Kahl recently challenged this hypothesis, identifying Weneg withRaneb.[7] Alternatively, Kaplony reconstructed the Horus-name of Weneg from the Cairo fragment of thePalermo stone as Wenegsekhemwy.[8] In both cases, Horus Sa cannot be the Horus-name of Weneg and the two would not designate the same king. Consequently, Kaplony equated Horus Sa withnjswt-bity Wr-Za-Khnwm, "The king of Upper and Lower Egypt, Wersakhnum" and credited him a reign of 2 months and 23 days during the interregnum betweenKhasekhemwy andDjoser.[9] However, Kaplony's hypothesis has been undermined by the discovery of clay seals of Djoser in Khasekhemwy's tomb, indicating that the former immediately succeeded and buried the latter.[10] Horus Sa could instead be the Horus-name ofSenedj or another 2nd dynasty king, ruling inMemphis during the troubled period following the reign ofNynetjer.[11]
However, Egyptologists such asJean-Philippe Lauer,Pierre Lacau and Ilona Regulski call for caution of the correct reading of the inscriptions. Especially the bird-sign at the top of theKa-house might also depict aswallow, which would make the inscription to be read asWer-sa-hut-Ka ("great protection of the Ka-house"). Regulski prefers the reading as a Horus-bird, though she doesn't explicitly see it as the name of a king. She dates the inscriptions to the end of Khasekhemwy's reign.[1]
The burial place of Horus Sa is unknown.Nabil Swelim associated Horus Sa with the unfinished enclosure ofGisr el-Mudir in westSaqqara.[12] This hypothesis has not gained wide acceptance and the Gisr el-Mudir has been attributed to various second dynasty kings, in particularKhasekhemwy.[13] Alternatively, the Egyptologist Joris van Wetering proposed that the gallery tomb used by the high priest ofAten,Meryra-Meryneith, in northSaqqara was originally that of Horus Sa, since an inscriptionḤwt-k3 Ḥrw-z3 was found in the close vicinity of the tomb.[3][4]
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