Editing Nynetjer (section)

===Reign Duration===
[[File:Statue of Ninetjer Rijksmuseum van Oudheden 04.jpg|thumb|upright=1|alt=Light brown statuette of a man seated on a throne with high rounded crown, hieroglyphs inscribe on his right on side.|Seated statue of Nynetjer wearing the sed-festival robe]]
The duration of Nynetjer's rule may be appraised from several historical sources. The oldest of these is the Old Kingdom royal annals now known after the name of its main fragment, the [[Palermo Stone]]. These annals were likely first compiled during the early [[Fifth Dynasty of Egypt|Fifth Dynasty]], possibly under [[Neferirkare Kakai]] (mid-25th century BC) around whose reign the record stops.{{sfn|Bárta|2017|p=2}}{{sfn|Grimal|1992|p=77}} These annals are considered to be a reliable witness to Nynetjer's rule notably because they correctly give his name "in contrast to the corrupt, garbled variants found in later king lists" (Wilkinson).{{sfn|Wilkinson|2000|p=24 & 119}}
The surviving fragments of the annals record the main events and Nile flood levels from what is likely the seventh year of Nynetjer's reign until the 21st. The remainder of the records concerning his rule are lost. Nonetheless given the space afforded for each year on the annals and the position of subsequent reigns, reconstructions have been attempted from the surviving fragments to estimate the total of Nynetjer's  years on the throne. With a single exception,{{efn|group=note|With the exception of Ricci who proposed only 15 years of reign for Nynetjer in his 1917 appraisal of the Palermo stone.{{sfn|Wilkinson|2000|p=256}}}} all the Egyptologists who studied this problem have proposed long reigns{{efn|group=note|Following Helck who points to Nynetjer's celebrating a sed-festival to support a reign of at least 30 years,{{sfn|Helck|1979|p=128}} Wilkinson sees 35 years as the minimum possible duration for Nynetjer's reign given the space devoted to it on the royal annals.{{sfn|Wilkinson|2005|p=71}}}} lasting between 38 years{{sfn|Edwards|1971|p=31}} up to 49 years.{{sfn|Wilkinson|2000|p=256}} The most recent reconstruction of the royal annals by Wilkinson in 2000 concludes that Nynetjer's reign as recorded on the Palermo stone was most probably of 40 complete or partial years.{{sfn|Wilkinson|2000|pp=79–80}}

The [[Turin King List|Turin Canon]] suggests an improbable reign of 96 years{{sfn|Gardiner|1959|p=15|loc=Table I}} and Egyptian [[historian]] [[Manetho]] suggested that Nynetjer's reign lasted 47 years.<ref name=WGW>William Gillian Waddell: ''Manetho (The Loeb Classical Library, Volume 350)''. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.) 2004 (Reprint), {{ISBN|0-674-99385-3}}, page 37–41.</ref> Egyptologists question both statements as [[misinterpretation]]s or [[exaggeration]]s. They generally credit Nynetjer with a reign of either 43 years or 45 years.

Archaeological evidence in favor of a long reign includes the seated statuette of Nynetjer showing him wearing the ceremonial tight-fitting vestment of the [[sed festival]], a feast for the rejuvenation of the king that came to be celebrated for the first time only after the king had reigned for 30 years.{{sfn|Hornung|Lorton|1999|p=11}}