Sewadjare Mentuhotep

Sewadjare Mentuhotep
Sewedjare Mentuhotep V
Photography of a relief showing the cartouches of Sewadjare Mentuhotep from the mortuary temple of Mentuhotep II at Deir el-Bahri.
Pharaoh
Reign	very short reign, some time between 1662 BC and 1649 BC, most probably 1655 BC(13th Dynasty)
Predecessor	unknown
Successor	uncertain, "[...]mosre"
Royal titulary
Consort	Sitmut (?)
Children	Herunefer (?)

Sewadjare Mentuhotep (also known as Mentuhotep V or Mentuhotep VI depending on the scholar) is a poorly attested Egyptian pharaoh of the late 13th dynasty who reigned for a short time c. 1655 BC during the Second Intermediate Period. The egyptologists Kim Ryholt and Darrell Baker respectively believe that he was the fiftieth and forty-ninth king of the dynasty, thereby making him Mentuhotep V. Thus, Sewadjare Mentuhotep most likely reigned shortly before the arrival of Hyksos over the Memphite region and concurrently with the last rulers of the 14th Dynasty.

Ryholt, Baker and Jacques Kinnaer refer to Sewadjare Mentuhotep as Mentuhotep V because they believe that he lived at the very end of the 13th Dynasty. On the other hand, in his studies of the Second Intermediate Period, Jürgen von Beckerath leaves Sewadjare Mentuhotep's position within the 13th Dynasty completely undetermined, but names him Mentuhotep VI nonetheless.

Sewadjare Mentuhotep is a poorly attested pharaoh. Unfortunately, the Turin canon is severely damaged after the record of Sobekhotep VII and the identity and chronological order of the last 19 kings of the 13th Dynasty are impossible to ascertain from the document. According to Nobert Dautzenberg and Ryholt, Mentuhotep's prenomen Sewadjare is nonetheless partially preserved on column 8, line 20 of the papyrus, which reads [...]dj[are].

The only contemporary attestation safely attributable to Sewadjare Mentuhotep V is a single fragment of a relief showing his cartouches. The relief was found in the ruins of the mortuary temple of Mentuhotep II during the excavation of Édouard Naville at the beginning of the 20th century.

Another possible attestation of Sewedjare Mentuhotep V is given by a fragment of a wooden coffin, now in the British Museum under the catalog number BM EA 29997. The coffin bears the following text: