Neither Nefer nor I attended the welcoming banquet that evening, completely exhausted as we were from the long journey. We ate a simple meal together, talked a bit, then sought our beds in the same rooms we’d slept in as children.
***
One of Aachel’s granddaughters gently shook me awake the next morning. Barely a hint of light spilled through the long window beside my bed. By it I saw her cheeks were stained with tears. I knew.
Together we slipped into Nefer’s darkened room, my heart lead. A single oil lamp flickered on a stand near the bed. More of Aachel’s granddaughters sat in chairs nearby. One had her hands over her face, her body wracked with sobs. Nefer lay under a thin linen sheet, completely still.
I moved to the side of the bed. Even now, in death, she was a most beautiful woman. I sat on the bed, took hold of her left hand. It was cold to my touch.
Nefer was the granddaughter of a king and the daughter of two kings and the wife of a king and she should have been the mother of one. She’d been an exceptional woman – smart, capable, gifted, magnificent. But once I was dead, and Aachel’s granddaughters, and the rest who had known her in life, she’d be forgotten, remembered only by the gods – that thanks only to carved blocks of stone buried deep with Thut’s pylon. Her brother–husband, my husband, had eradicated every other trace of her. For that I sorrowed. Nefer had done much for the Two Lands. She’d deserved better.
I climbed into Nefer’s bed, lay beside her, draped my arm over her body. I linked her fingers in mine and kissed her one last time.
I knew I would live on – for a year, for five, maybe more. But for me life would never be the same. Nefer was dead, and the beauty had gone out of it.
Afterword
The third Thutmose was, in fact, the greatest of Kemet’s kings, and one of the greatest leaders and generals in world history. Never again would Kemet’s borders stretch so far, or the land have such wealth, as during his long reign. His body was moved from his tomb in the Great Place, now designated KV34, around 1000 BC, by priests who sought to protect it from tomb robbers. In the 1880s it was found in a cache, TT320, near Mentuhotep’s temple, along with the mummies of his father and grandfather and Ahmose I and Amenhotep I and Seqenenre Tao II and many of the Ramesside kings – more than 50 bodies in all – kings and kings’ wives and priests and priestesses. Today Thutmose rests with them in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.
Some of Thutmose’s obelisks, taken from Egypt, now stand in London, New York City’s Central Park, Rome, and Istanbul.
The ruins of Djeser Djeseru disappeared beneath the sand and lay hidden for almost 3,500 years, and with it disappeared all trace of Hatshepsut and Neferure. Only in the past few decades has the temple been uncovered and restored. It is now recognized as one of the most beautiful buildings ever constructed. Some of its shattered statues have been repaired and stand on the terraces where they were originally placed; others are in museums around the world.
Djeser Akhet is unrecognizable, the platform it stood on shaken apart by earthquakes, the temple buried under rock fallen from the cliffs above.
During a restoration project on the Eighth Pylon at Ipet–Isut, now known as Karnak Temple, the quartzite blocks of Hatshepsut’s Red Chapel were discovered. Reconstructed, the chapel now stands in the Open Air Museum in that temple complex, its carvings of Hatshepsut and Neferure revealed once more.
Much of the jewelry and other burial goods that accompanied Thutmose’s three foreign wives are now on display in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, as well as those of Senenmut’s parents. His shattered sarcophagus, reconstructed, is now exhibited there as well, along with colossal statues of Hatshepsut.
Hatshepsut’s long–lost body, moved from her original tomb in the Great Place, was recently identified using a molar saved in a box inscribed with her cartouche.
Neferure’s body has never been found.
Additional Publications
Predynastic Egypt
Daughter of the Falcon God
The Potter
The Women and the Boatman
Ancient Egypt
The Beadnet Dress
Beauty of Re
The Four Lakes Saga
Wingra
Madison, Wisconsin History
Forest Hill Cemetery
A Biographical Guide to the Women and Men Who Shaped Madison, Wisconsin, and the World
Bishops to Bootleggers
A Biographical Guide to Resurrection Cemetery: the Women and Men Who Shaped Madison, Wisconsin, and the World
Beauty of Re Page 55