[1] The Whm Mswt forms part of the reign of Ramesses XI, a king who ruled around the end of the New Kingdom and the start of the Third Intermediate Period.
[7] It is often (tacitly) assumed that the start of the Whm Mswt coincided with the accession date of Ramses XI, but this is nothing more than a hypothesis.
It is often believed to mark a final waning of the power of the centralised monarchy, with Ramesses XI still nominally pharaoh, but with Herihor as High Priest of Amun in Thebes and Smendes in Tanis ruling respectively Upper and Lower Egypt.
[12] However, this interpretation rests on the theory that the career of the High Priest Herihor preceded that of Piankh, which has been challenged by Jansen-Winkeln.
For example the Whm Mswt has been interpreted as marking the restoration of order by Ramses XI following his expulsion of the Viceroy of Kush Pinehesy, after the latter suppressed the Theban High Priest of Amun Amenhotep.
Ambras (an inventory of stolen papyri, explicitly dated to year 6 of the Whm Mswt);[19] an oracle mentioning the High Priest of Amun Piankh, explicitly dated to year 7 Whm Mswt under Ramesses XI,[20] and the corpus known as the Late Ramesside Letters.
[29][30] and [2] the identification of several tomb robbery papyri from the reign of Ramesses XI with documents listed in P. Ambras, a papyrus which stems from year 6 of the Whm Mswt:[31] In year 6 of the Whm Mswt two jars of papyri which apparently had been stolen earlier, probably during the suppression of the High Priest of Amun Amenhotep (see above), were bought back from the people.
In the Hypostyle Hall of the Temple of Khonsu, there are ample depictions of Herihor as High Priest of Amun, serving under Ramesses XI.