According to the Egyptologists Kim Ryholt and Darrell Baker, he was the third king of the dynasty, reigning for a short time in 1796 BC.

[2][3] Alternatively Jürgen von Beckerath sees Nerikare as the twenty-third king of the 13th Dynasty, reigning after Sehetepkare Intef.

[2][3] Ryholt points out that known Nile records, which are similar to the one he attributes to Nerikare, all date to the time period from the late 12th to early 13th dynasties.

He thus concludes that Nerikare too must have been a king of this time period, and since "Nerikare" does not appear on the Turin canon, Ryholt proposes that he was mentioned in the wsf lacuna affecting the third king of the dynasty in the Turin canon (column 7, line 6).

[8] In his 1997 study of the second intermediate period, Kim Ryholt proposes that Nerikare's nomen may have been "Sobek".