Shepsesre Tefnakht (in Ancient Greek: Τνέφαχθος, romanized: Tnephachthos)[3] was a prince of Sais and founder of the relatively short Twenty-fourth Dynasty of Egypt; he rose to become a Chief of the Ma in his home city.

Consequently, Tefnakht was not actually descended from either lines of Chiefs of the Ma and of the Libu as traditionally believed but rather came from a family of priests, and his ancestors being more likely Egyptians rather than Libyans.

His Year 38 stela from Buto is significant not only because Tefnakht employs the rather boastful epithet of "Great Chief of the entire land" but due to its list of his religious titles as prophet of Neith, Edjo and the Lady of Imay.

Kahn has also stressed at an Egyptological Conference at Leiden that Perdu's epigraphic criteria here in the famed Athens stela—such as the use of the tripartite wig, the method through which the falcon-headed god keeps his head upright in the same stela and on temple wall reliefs contemporary with Tefnakht I's time, the decoration of the stela scene: Heaven supported by wAs scepters—appear already in use in the 24th or early 25th Nubian dynasty during Piye, Shabaka or Bakenranef's reign.

[11] The invisible back side of the tripartite wig can be found on the donation stela of Shebitku from Pharbaitos and on the Bakenranef/Bocchoris vase dating to the last days of Piye and the beginning of Shabaka—all appear close in time to the presumed reign of Tefnakht I.

[12] Unlike Necho I, neither of this king's presumed Saite royal predecessors, a certain Nekauba and Tefnakht II, are monumentally attested in Lower Egypt.

After all, the 24th dynasty Saite rulers Tefnakht and Bakenranef had fought Taharqa's father Piye and resisted Shabaka's expansion of Kushite power into the Delta region.