Merenre Nemtyemsaf II

Attestations Merenre Nemtyemsaf II is attested on the 4th line, column 6 of the Turin canon, a king list redacted in the early Ramesside Period. Although his name is lost in the canon, the duration of its reign is still readable as 1 year and 1 month, following the reign of Pepi II Neferkare.

Nemtyemsaf II is also attested on the 39th entry of the Abydos King List,

There is only one contemporary artefact known for sure to belong to Nemtyemsaf II. It is a damaged false door inscribed with Sa-nesu semsu Nemtyemsaf, meaning "The elder king's son Nemtyemsaf", and was discovered near the site of the pyramid of Neith, Pepi II's half-sister and queen and most likely Nemtyemsaf II's mother.

A second artefact may possibly belong to Nemtyemsaf II: a decree to protect the funerary cults of queens Ankhesenpepi I and Neith discovered in the mortuary temple of queen Neith. If this decree was indeed issued by Nemtyemsaf II, his Horus name would be S[...]tawy meaning, "He who causes the two lands to...".

Reign Nemtyemsaf II succeeded his father Pepi II after his extremely long reign, believed to have been around 64 years. Nothing is known for certain of Nemtyemsaf's activities but he likely had to face the collapse of the royal power and the rise of the provincial nomarchs. Less than 3 years after his death, the Old Kingdom period ended and the chaos of the First Intermediate Period started. Nemtyemsaf II may possibly have started a pyramid for himself and, if so, it would likely have been in Saqqara,

Herodotus story In his Histories, the Greek historian Herodotus records a legend according to which an Egyptian queen Nitocris took revenge on the murder of her brother and husband by a rioting mob, allegedly Nemtyemsaf II, by drowning all his murderers during a banquet where she had gathered them. It is now suggested that the name "Nitocris" is a result of conflation and distortion from the name of a real male pharaoh, Neitiqerty Siptah, who succeeded Nemtyemsaf II.