Gilukhepa, a princess of the Asian kingdom of Mitanni, was sent by her father to marry King Amenhotep III. Their marriage agreement was the subject of a lengthy diplomatic correspondence which was fortuitously preserved on clay tablets in the Amarna state archives, while their eventual union was commemorated on the marriage scarab quoted above.7 Amenhotep was clearly happy with the new addition to his household, for several years later he started to negotiate for the hand of Tadukhepa, another princess of Mitanni, the daughter of King Tushrata and the niece of Gilukhepa. In these new marriage negotiations Tushrata stipulated that his daughter should be acknowledged as a principal queen and ‘Mistress of Egypt’, providing a huge dowry to support his daughter’s claim. In return, Amenhotep presented his new father-in-law with an even larger amount of gold. Unfortunately, the elderly groom died soon after the marriage contract was completed and his entire harem, including Tadukhepa, Gilukhepa and the daughter of the King of Babylon, was transferred to his son and heir, the future King Akhenaten.
Then His Majesty saw that her face was beautiful, like that of a goddess. The daughter of the prince of Khatti was beautiful in the heart of His Majesty. He loved her more than anything else… He had her named Queen Maatnefrure.
King Ramesses II on meeting his Hittite bride
Over a hundred years later, a Hittite princess left her home to become the bride of the 19th Dynasty King Ramesses II. The distant Hittite kingdom had entered into a diplomatic treaty with Egypt in Year 21 of Ramesses’ reign, with both sides pledging to respect each other’s territory and agreeing to act as allies in the event of attack from a third party. To mark the onset of cordial relations between the two lands Ramesses wrote personal letters to both the Hittite King Khattasulis and his queen, Pudukhepa, while the Queen of Egypt, Nefertari, also sent formal letters to the Hittite court. After years these friendly relations were still in place, and to add strength to the alliance Ramesses married the daughter of Khattasulis and Pudukhepa, giving her the Egyptian name of Maatnefrure and uniquely, for a foreigner, allowing her to assume the title of ‘King’s Great Wife’.
The large increase in the numbers of royal women and their associated households now made it logistically impossible for the entire harem to travel around the country with the court. Instead, a select band of women accompanied the king, and permanent harem-palaces were built to house the surplus ladies and their retinues. These harem-palaces were independent, both physically and economically, of the main royal residence. The archaeological site of Medinet el-Ghurab, lying near the village of Kahun, is the best surviving example of such a harem-palace. This settlement, known in ancient times as Mer-Wer, was founded during the reign of Tuthmosis III and remained in constant use until the Late New Kingdom.8 It consisted of a group of mud-brick buildings contained within an enclosure wall. Included in the complex was a central block of living rooms and lofty pillared halls, several narrow storerooms, and even a small mud-brick temple, while extensive cemeteries were situated in the nearby desert sands. Although it was primarily home to a community of women, their children and their servants, men were by no means barred from Mer-Wer, and we know that at least eleven male administrators were seconded to the harem-palace throughout its life. These administrators, who were married men rather than eunuchs, were not guards but scribes and accountants charged with the task of helping to control the considerable business interests of the royal women. As the New Kingdom Wilbour Papyrus confirms, Mer-Wer quickly became an important financial institution, owning all the surrounding land and its crops and with clear rights over the labour of the local peasant farmers.
Beware of loyal subjects who do not really exist! For you will not be aware of their plotting. Trust neither a brother nor a friend and have no intimate companions, for they are worthless.
Extract from the Instructions of King Amenemhat I
Mer-Wer, situated at the mouth of the Faiyum, was obviously isolated from the main centres of Egyptian government. Was this an attempt to provide a stable background for the royal women and their children, away from the bustle of the court? Or should it be interpreted in a more sinister light, as a deliberate attempt to keep royal women out of political life? Certainly the harem-palace, housing ambitious royal wives and their even more ambitious sons, always had the potential of becoming a focus of civil unrest and political intrigue. Treason within the royal household was a very serious matter which was generally hushed-up by government officials as it contradicted the official doctrine of divine kingship. However, we do know of three palace plots which at different times threatened the stability of the country. The first and possibly the least serious of these occurred during the 6th Dynasty rule of King Pepi I. The long autobiography carved in the tomb-chapel of the official Weni tells how the deceased, a favourite of the king, had been asked to adjudicate in a top-secret case of unrest within the women’s quarters. We are not told of the outcome of this trial, although we do know that Weni received royal assistance with the furnishing of his tomb as a reward for his loyal services to the throne:
When there was a secret charge in the royal harem against Queen Weretkhetes, His Majesty made me hear the case alone, without any judge or vizier, because I was firmly planted in His Majesty’s heart and in his confidence. I put the matter in writing, together with an Overseer, even though I was merely an Overseer of the Tenants myself. Never before had anyone in my position heard a secret of the royal harem, but His Majesty asked me to hear it because he regarded me as worthy beyond any official of his, beyond any noble of his and indeed beyond any servant of his.
The theme of royal assassination forms the basis of the 12th Dynasty Instructions of King Amenemhat I to his son Senwosret I, in which the spirit of the king speaks directly to his successor, begging him to be aware of the potential treachery of his disloyal subjects. Experts originally believed that this piece had been composed by the king himself in the wake of an unsuccessful coup, but it is now thought to have been written by the royal scribe Khety following the assassination of Amenemhat in his thirtieth regnal year. The rhetorical questions ‘Has any woman previously raised troops? And has rebellion previously been raised in the palace?’ strongly imply that this was a plot hatched within the harem. Precise details of the fatal assault upon the king are included within the text, and it is made clear that he was killed by those whom he had previously trusted while alone and off his guard:
It was after supper and night had fallen. I was lying on my bed and resting, for I was very weary. As I began to drift into sleep, the very weapons which should have been used to protect me were turned against me… Had I been able to seize my weapon I would have beaten the cowards back single-handed. But no one is strong at night. No one can fight alone, and no success can be achieved without a helper.
Equally serious was the 20th Dynasty intrigue which threatened and possibly ended the life of Ramesses III. The 20th Dynasty was a period of sporadic civil unrest with high inflation leading to a succession of wildcat strikes in the Theban necropolis. The internal discontent was made worse by constant troubles along the western border and a spate of abortive invasions by the so-called ‘Sea Peoples’ who attempted to enter Egypt via the Mediterranean coast. A group of conspirators led by the royal concubine Tiy and the supervisor of the harem, Paibekkamen, attempted to capitalize on the mood of dissatisfaction by inciting a national uprising with the ultimate aim of placing Tiy’s son Pentawert on the throne. The plot was hatched in the ‘harem of the accompanying’, presumably the small harem which escorted the king in his travels, and involved many trusted officials including the deputy overseer, six inspectors and even the wives of the doorkeepers. We don’t know whether or not the conspirators succeeded in assassinating Ramesses III,9 but we do know that the planned national uprising failed and that Ramesses IV, the rightful heir to the throne, became the next king. The leaders of the plot were caught and sentenced to death either by execution or suicide, while the more minor participants had their noses and ears cut off.
The Prince of Nahrin had only one child, a daughter. He built for her a house whose windows were seventy cubits from the ground. He sent for all the sons of all the Princes of Syria, and said to them ‘Whoever leaps up and reaches my daughter’s window shall have her as a bride…’
From the New Kingdom Tale of the Doomed Prince
Although all Egyptian kings were polygamous, routinely marrying several women and maintaining a succession of royal concubines, only one wife was chosen from the harem to act as the official queen-consort and be the acknowledged queen of Egypt. Her name and image were linked with those of the king in the official records, she was the mother in the royal nuclear family and it was her children who would rightfully inherit the throne. The secondary wives and mistresses played a far more peripheral role in court life; although their presence added to the monarch’s prestige and, we must assume, provided him with an interesting diversion, they only became important at times of national crisis when the consort was unable to provide the king with a suitable son and heir.
Unfortunately, we have no idea how the principal queen was selected although it is clear that, as a general rule, the honour went most often to ladies of royal birth. Indeed, at least during the 18th Dynasty, the queen was often a full or half-sister of the king. However she was chosen, the ‘Great Royal Consort’ or ‘Great King’s Wife’ was undoubtedly the most important woman to reside within the royal harem. In private, she was likely to be a lady of considerable personal wealth and breeding who was able to use her feminine influence over one of the most powerful monarchs in the ancient Near East. In public, she was set apart from other wives as the companion and consort of a semi-divine ruler, and the potential mother of future semi-divine kings. Her political position was reinforced by her numerous honorary titles and by the granting of impressive privileges, such as the right to write her name in a cartouche10 or the right to be buried in a pyramid, which were otherwise reserved for the king alone. Given that the pharaoh was accepted as a living god, it is not surprising that the role of the queen-consort became very closely identified with several goddesses, principally Hathor and Maat, hinting at a divine origin for the queen herself and offering a further link between the secular and the sacred aspects of the monarchy.
It is very frustrating that we have virtually no information concerning either the private lives or the public duties of the queens of Egypt, and consequently no real understanding of the perceived role of the queen-consort. Although we can see that the queen’s titles, her official regalia and even her religious affiliations slowly evolved as the Dynastic period progressed, we can only draw the most tentative of conclusions from this combined evidence.11 We can see that the queens of the Old Kingdom, who did not adopt a standard diadem or crown, often served as priestesses for the cult of Hathor. This Hathoric tradition had died out by the end of the 11th Dynasty and the later Middle Kingdom queens, who are seldom mentioned in any official capacity, were rarely associated with any particular cult. Where they are depicted, these shadowy ladies wear a distinctive headdress of two tall feathers. The queens of the New Kingdom emerged from this relative obscurity as fully formed personalities wearing a complex range of royal insignia apparently intended to stress the links between the potentially divine queen and the gods. These New Kingdom queens did not as a rule serve as priestesses although the queenly title of ‘God’s Wife of Amen’ became very important at this time. By the Late Period, queens were again functioning as priestesses, but the suggestions of a connection between the queen and the gods had become somewhat muted.
Official illustrations almost invariably present the queen as a dutiful wife providing loyal but entirely passive support for her husband. In the approved Egyptian tradition the queen was literally expected to stand by the king, and indeed Queen Merytre, consort of the New Kingdom ruler Tuthmosis III, earned high praise as ‘one who is never absent from the side of the Lord of the Two Lands’. This essentially inactive role is constantly reinforced by the numerous scenes which show the queen observing her husband as he performs a royal duty, just as non-royal tomb scenes depict more humble wives watching their husbands at work. In the vast majority of these scenes the queen is totally static. She keeps her hands by her sides and, although she may carry an ankh sign symbolizing life or a sistrum to stress her link with Hathor, she has no formal role to play at the official function. It is not until the 18th Dynasty that we see a queen actually shake her sistrum, while only in very specialized and female-orientated scenes such as those depicting royal births, or those included on the walls of her tomb, do we see the queen acting independently of her husband.
The individual queens of the turbulent and unsettled Archaic Period are now very remote figures, better known for their funerary monuments than their deeds. However, four prominent women have emerged from the mists of historical obscurity to suggest that royal females played a far more prominent role in the unification of their country than the present dearth of evidence would suggest. Three of these women (Neith-Hotep, Her-Neith and Meryt-Neith) bear names compounded with that of the goddess Neith, the patron deity of the town of Sais in the Nile Delta, and this strongly implies that all three may have been born into prominent northern families; an important distinction at a time when Upper and Lower Egypt were still very much separate entities. One of these women, Queen Meryt-Neith, may have been a queen regnant rather than a queen-consort; the evidence for and against her reign is therefore considered in detail in Chapter 7.12
Queen Neith-Hotep may well have been the first queen-consort of the newly unified Egypt; the evidence recovered from her tomb certainly suggests that she was an important element in 1st Dynasty political life. We know that in spite of her northern name Neith-Hotep was buried at the southern site of Nagada, where her enormous tomb (measuring over 53 × 26 metres) contained objects inscribed with the names of both King Aha and his predecessor, King Narmer. Aha has been very tentatively identified as King Menes, the traditional unifier of the country, while we know that Narmer was a highly successful southern warrior king. It is perhaps not stretching the available evidence too far to suggest that Neith-Hotep, a princess from the north, was married to the southerner Narmer in order to add strength to his ambition to rule over both north and south. Aha, or Menes, would therefore be the son of both Neith-Hotep and Narmer, and a man with an impeccable right to claim the throne of a united Egypt. This suggestion of a dynastic marriage is supported by a decorated mace-head recovered from Hierakonpolis which shows Narmer participating in an unidentified ceremony while wearing the distinctive crown of Lower Egypt; this may well represent the celebration of his marriage with Neith-Hotep. History shows that such calculating alliances are certainly not unknown and, for example, some 4,500 years after Neith-Hotep’s marriage King Henry VII followed exactly the same line of reasoning when he married Elizabeth of York, the daughter of his defeated enemy, in order to emphasize his right to the throne of England and Wales.
The following queen-consort, Her-Neith, has been tentatively identified as the wife of the 1st Dynasty King Djer, the successor of Aha. Although we know little about her life, Her-Neith’s large and impressive Sakkara tomb is of considerable architectural and historical importance as it consists of a traditional rectangular mud-brick superstructure built over a pyramid-like mound of earth which is itself faced with brick. Experts disagree on the precise implication of hiding one tomb-type within another, but it is at least possible that this represents a rather unsatisfactory attempt to combine the tumulus-style burial mounds of the south with the linear tombs of the north, again hinting at a dynastic marriage between the two warring provinces. The last queen-consort of the Archaic Period, Queen Nemaathep, has also left little trace in the archaeological record. We know, however, that she was the wife of the last king of the 2nd Dynasty, Khasekhemwy, and was required to act as regent for her young son Djoser, the first king of the 3rd Dynasty. In recognition of her services Nemaathep was accorded the prestigious title of ‘Mother of t
he King’, and she was later worshipped as the ancestress of the kings of the 3rd Dynasty.
The queens of the Old Kingdom, living under more settled conditions, played a less obtrusive role in matters of state than their Archaic Period predecessors. The most prominent Old Kingdom consort was probably Queen Ankhes-Merire, the second wife of the 6th Dynasty King Pepi I. She acted as regnant for her son Pepi II who succeeded his half-brother to the throne at six years of age. Ankhes-Merire was actually the full sister of the first wife of Pepi I, also named Ankhes-Merire, who was the mother of his immediate successor Merenre. These sisters were the daughters of a local hereditary prince named Khui and, although not themselves of royal blood, they clearly belonged to an influential family as their brother Djau eventually became vizier of Egypt. Tradition decrees that the Old Kingdom ended with the rule of the Queen Regnant Nitocris.
With the exception of the 12th Dynasty Queen Regnant Sobeknofru, we know surprisingly little about the lives of the individual queens of the Middle Kingdom. This sudden disappearance of women from royal statuary and art coincides with a definite decrease in higher-ranking female job titles, and lends weight to suggestions that the women of the Middle Kingdom were expected, or forced, to play a far less conspicuous role in public life than had hitherto been accepted. Our main evidence for the queens of this time therefore comes from the royal burials. As in the Old Kingdom, the queens and princesses of the Middle Kingdom were traditionally interred close to their king, and the impressive 11th Dynasty funeral temple of Nebhepetre Mentuhotep at Deir el-Bahri appears to have been fairly typical in including provision for the burial of six royal ladies, including a five-year-old girl, in addition to his two queens. The sarcophagi recovered from two of these subsidiary tombs have provided us with a series of delightful reliefs showing events in the daily life of the royal women; these include the performance of the daily toilette and preparations for a dinner party.13
Daughters of Isis - Joyce Tyldesley Page 19