[2] In her treatise, Decoration in Egyptian Tombs of the Old Kingdom: Studies in Orientation and Scene Content, historian Yvonne Harpur offers a more precise range, linking Meresankh IV to either of the last two kings of the Fifth Dynasty, Djedkare, or less likely, Unas.

Field Egyptologist George Andrew Reisner proposed that Meresankh IV was a wife of Djedkare, and that with him she bore prince Raemka, and possibly the officials Isesi-ankh and Kaemtjenent,[2] a proposition later largely supported by The Cambridge Ancient History,[11] where it is observed that a number of apparently Fifth Dynasty figures were interred alongside the enclosure wall north of the Step Pyramid belonging to Third Dynasty king Djoser.

Though this casts doubt on the family ties of these two figures, it does not preclude the possibility that Meresankh IV was the wife of Djedkare, a position favoured by Seipel and historian Lana Troy.

[15] German Egytpologist Peter Munro separately speculated that Meresankh IV was the mother of the king Unas,[16] the last ruler of the Fifth Dynasty.

Baud prefers to date Meresankh IV to the reigns of either Nyuserre or Menkauhor, though he acknowledges the possibility she might have lived later in the dynasty.

However, in a 2016 journal article, in an apparent contradiction, Dodson later simply elevates Troy's earlier position that Meresankh IV was a wife of Djedkare.

[22] The mastaba was re-explored by British Egyptologist James Quibell at some time between 1907 and 1908[23] while surveying tombs in the Saqqara necropolis that might potentially be dismantled and sold to Western museums.

Jánosi observes that the burial of Meresankh IV is one of only a few peculiar cases in Saqqara of queens seemingly buried out of context, away from whomever their husband might have been.

[25] In an attempt to link the two figures, Seipel has speculated that Meresankh IV's intended burial was a grave adjacent to the Pyramid of Djedkare, but that she fell out of favour,[6] however this theory has been questioned on the grounds that it lacks supportive evidence.