Userkaf's position before ascending to the throne is unknown. Grimal states that he could have been a high-priest of Ra in Heliopolis or Sakhebu, a cult-center of Ra mentioned in the Westcar papyrus. The hypothesis of a connection between the origins of the Fifth Dynasty and Sakhebu was first proposed by the Egyptologist Flinders Petrie, who noted that in Egyptian hieroglyphs the name of Sakhebu resembles that of Elephantine, the city that Manetho gives as the cradle of the Fifth Dynasty. According to Petrie, positing that the Westcar papyrus records a tradition that remembered the origins of the Fifth Dynasty could explain Manetho's records, especially given that there is otherwise no particular connection between Elephantine and Fifth Dynasty pharaohs.