Chapter 5
Looking at the Power Behind the Throne: Royal Women
In This Chapter
Exploring the roles of royal women
Housing the queens
Identifying the first feminists
I once made the mistake, when being introduced to someone, of asking, ‘You’re Toby’s girlfriend, right?’ To which this person responded, ‘No! I’m Clare.’
To modern women, being acknowledged by their connection to their husbands, brothers, or fathers is clearly not acceptable. In ancient Egypt though, this is exactly how women – especially royal women – were identified. This chapter uncovers the less-than-glamorous lives of these ancient mothers, wives, and sisters. (Chapter 2 has information about the lives of non-royal women.)
Nothing without Him: Considering the Roles of Royal Women
The role and relevance of royal women was defined solely by their relationship with the king. This relationship is identified by a number of titles which appear in temples, tombs, and documents of the period. Consider the titles of royal women:
King’s Principal Wife (or Great Royal Wife)
King’s Wife
King’s Mother
King’s Daughter
Royal weddings: Brothers and sisters
For many years, Egyptologists believed the royal line ran through the females. Thus the king needed to marry an heiress to the throne to legitimise his kingship. This theory developed as a means of explaining brother–sister marriages (common within the royal family, although a taboo for everyone else). However, because many kings didn’t marry royal women, this theory has now been dismissed and it’s clear that the throne ran through the male line – passed on from father to son.
Although the crown was not passed on via a woman’s family, princesses had to be married. The throne ran through the male line, but this only worked if male heirs were available. If there were no male heirs, and a princess married a non-royal, the non-royal would have enough of a claim to take over the throne. Through incestuous marriages, all princesses were effectively married off as soon as possible to prevent non-royals from taking the throne. Princesses might marry their brothers, father, or even grandfather to prevent a coup. Sometimes they got lucky and their father married them to a favoured, well-trusted official – no doubt only after the king had a male heir himself. This practice set the royal family apart from ordinary people; incestuous marriages were only for royalty and gods, which indicated the royal family was truly divine.
However, with the king’s express permission, the King’s Sister could marry outside the royal family if the chap was accepted and of suitably noble but non-royal birth (for example, a member of the royal court, including high military and administrative officials). Ramses II, for example, allowed his sister Tia to marry an official, also called Tia, who was vetted and greatly trusted.
The Great Royal Wife and others
Being the Wife of the King – whether his sister or not – wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Wives held no power, and potentially hundreds of women were allowed to hold this title.
The only powerful queen was the Great Royal Wife, who was the equivalent of the ‘first lady’ in the land. (Although kings normally had only one Great Royal Wife, Ramses II had two: Nefertari and Isetnofret.)
In the Old Kingdom, the Great Royal Wife was entitled to have her own pyramid, and in the New Kingdom, her name was written in a cartouche like that of a king (see Chapter 11 for more on cartouches).
The king would have a number of children with his many wives, although knowing whether all his wives bore his children is impossible – especially if it was a diplomatic marriage and the woman was sent to a remote harem. In most cases, we only know the name of the Great Royal Wife, sometimes giving the false impression of monogamy. In theory, the sons of the Great Royal Wife were superior to those of lesser wives, and the eldest son would be the heir to the throne.
Burial of a queen
The tomb of Hetepheres (the mother of king Khufu, who built the Great Pyramid) was discovered in 1925 at Giza and was surprisingly intact. Hetepheres may originally have been buried at Dahshur near her husband, Seneferu. Robbers may have violated her tomb and her body, causing her son to rebury her close to his own burial at Giza. However, no tomb has been discovered at Dahshur to support this theory.
The burial chamber at Giza was certainly full of goodies suitable for a queen. In addition to the alabaster sarcophagus and canopic chest (see Chapter 10 for more on these items), the tomb included loads of furniture. The collection has been reconstructed in the Cairo Museum and includes a large canopy frame (which was originally draped with linen to give the queen privacy as she sat beneath it), a carrying chair for when the queen was out on the razz, a couple of armchairs, and a bed.
Hetepheres was also accompanied in the tomb by a number of vessels made of gold, copper, and alabaster. These were originally filled with wine, beer, and oil. Some of the queen’s jewellery has also survived and consists of 20 beautiful silver bracelets, each inlaid with turquoise, lapis lazuli, and carnelian dragonflies.
Although Hetepheres’s canopic chest contained remnants of her preserved internal organs, the sarcophagus was disappointingly empty. Whether the sarcophagus was empty because the queen was reburied or her remains were stolen continues to be an archaeological mystery.
Honour your mother: The King’s Mother
King’s Mother was a particularly important female title. A woman could hold this title alongside other titles she may have held before her son became king. In an ideal world, the King’s Mother (mother of the current king) was also the King’s Principal Wife (wife of the current king’s dead father – showing that her son descended from a king), or God’s Wife (see the section ‘Marrying Amun’, later in this chapter). If she didn’t hold these titles before her son came to the throne, the son often bestowed them on her as honorary titles after he became king, in order to revere her and reinforce his own divinity and importance by proving he came from a line of kings.
Like the King’s Principal Wife, the King’s Mother was a semi-divine title and represented the female aspect of divine kingship. Both the King’s Principal Wife and the King’s Mother accompanied the king in rituals and the worship of the gods, although neither participated.
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Daddy’s girl: The King’s Daughter
The title King’s Daughter was never given as an honorary title, although it was used by both daughters and granddaughters of the king. The King’s Daughter was sometimes also the King’s Wife, in reference to real or political marriages between the individuals, their fathers, or even their grandfathers. The King’s Daughter did not hold any real power other than that from her close relationship with the king.
Some of these father–daughter and grandfather–granddaughter marriages resulted in children, which shows some arrangements were marriages in every sense of the word.
The Politics of Marriage
For royal Egyptian women, getting married was never simple – and certainly not romantic. The women had little or no say in who they married and when, and were simply pawns in a wider political game. The challenges were numerous, as the following sections discuss.
Marriage as foreign relations policy
Most New Kingdom kings had diplomatic marriages to cement alliances between two nations. Political marriages have nothing to do with love and attraction.
A number of letters have been discovered that describe two types of diplomatic marriages:
If the foreign king was on equal terms with the Egyptian king, both parties referred to one other as ‘brother’, and the arrangements were more on equal terms.
If the foreign country was a vassal state, the Egyptian king was addressed as ‘my lord, my god’. These brides were regarded as booty.
Get rich quick
Ramses II had a number of diplomatic marriages. In at least one instance, the negotiation texts have survived. The Marriage Stela of Ramses records a diplomatic marriage in year 35 between Ramses and the daughter of the Hittite king. Ramses seemed quite excited at the prospect of a new wife and rather impatiently sent numerous letters to her parents enquiring as to her estimated time of arrival.
One letter is particularly surprising, as Ramses asks the Hittite queen why her daughter, and more importantly her dowry, was delayed. He even claims the absence of the dowry is taking its toll on the Egyptian economy. Queen Padukhepa, the bride’s mother, was not impressed and sent a letter of rebuke back to him:
that you my brother should wish to enrich yourself from me . . . is neither friendly nor honourable
The princess, her dowry, her entourage, and her mother (I bet Ramses was pleased about that) eventually travelled to southern Syria, where they were met by the Egyptian authorities. The bride was described as ‘beautiful in the heart of his [Ramses’s] majesty and he loved her more than anything’ and he celebrated the wedding with a long inscription, which gives the impression that the marriage is in fact nothing more than tribute offered by a lesser king to his master:
Then he caused his oldest daughter to be brought, the costly tribute before her consisting of gold, silver, ores, countless horses, cattle, sheep, and goats.
At least he mentioned his wife before the goats. Ramses’s new wife had at least one child before being sent to live in the Faiyum region (see the section ‘Earning their keep: The harem at the Faiyum’, later in this chapter). A laundry list belonging to her has been found and shows that the Faiyum was her home.
This queen soon disappeared from the records, perhaps dying young. Ten years after the marriage – perhaps at her death – the Hittite king agreed to send another daughter and a large dowry to Ramses.
After these diplomatic brides entered Egypt with their entourages of sometimes more than 300 people, they were no longer allowed to communicate with their families for fear that they would give away state secrets. In fact, one letter from the Hittite king to Ramses II enquires after the Hittite king’s daughter, who was sent to Egypt as a diplomatic bride, and indicates that there was no communication from her at all. (The Hittites had a large empire, with the capital in Turkey.)
Although Egyptian kings married foreign princesses, Egyptian princesses did not marry foreign princes. This distinction is made very clear in one of the Amarna diplomatic letters following a request from the Babylonian king to Amenhotep III for an Egyptian bride. The Babylonian king is told in no uncertain terms:
From old, the daughter of an Egyptian king has not been given in marriage to anyone.
This statement would have been rather insulting to the Babylonian king, because his sister was already part of the Egyptian harem.
Vanishing wives
The problem of vanishing wives was particularly rife in the New Kingdom – although it wasn’t caused by any supernatural phenomenon or evil wrong-doer. Women were frequently sent to the harem in the Faiyum (see the section ‘Earning their keep: The harem at the Faiyum’, later in this chapter) never to be heard of again by the king or by the wife’s foreign family.
Marrying Amun
As well as marrying the king, royal women might also marry the god Amun. Amun was a solar-creator deity worshipped primarily at Thebes at Karnak Temple. From the 18th dynasty on, the title God’s Wife of Amun was very important and held only by royal women.
Taking on responsibility
Ahmose I introduced the title of God’s Wife of Amun as a means of honouring his mum Ahhotep (ahh, bless). He gave his wife Ahmose-Nefertari the title of Second Prophet of Amun, which was a title normally held by men only. As Second Prophet of Amum, Ahmose-Nefertari worked as a deputy to Ahhotep, with the understanding that she would inherit the role.
The title God’s Wife of Amun was initially passed on from mother to daughter, although by the 23rd dynasty and the reign of Osorkon III, these royal women were forced to be celibate and had to adopt a ‘daughter’ to take over the role.
God’s Wife of Amun was a position of great power, especially within the temple of Karnak. In the 19th and 20th dynasties, this title enabled the royal family to possess equal power within the temple complex to the High Priests – and through bribery of local officials, that power expanded even further.
Although the names of a number of God’s Wives of Amun are known, their exact duties are still unclear. From the 21st dynasty (around 1080 BC), historians know the God’s Wives of Amun performed a number of tasks closely associated with kingship, reflecting the power of the role. Specifically, they
Wrote their names in cartouches (see Chapter 11 for more information about cartouches)
Adopted throne names (a second name after they took the title, a privilege normally reserved for kings)
Were depicted in their personal chapels being suckled by the goddess Hathor, which shows their divinity
Were addressed by subordinates as ‘Your Majesty’
From the reign of Osorkon III (23rd dynasty), the God’s Wife of Amun was the power behind the throne. Osorkon forced the High Priest of Amun to donate all his wealth to the God’s Wife, diminishing the priest’s power. Because the God’s Wife of Amun was a relative of the king, she was under his control, which essentially gave the king the power that she held – a cunning if somewhat complicated plan.
Enjoying the privileges
When a queen received the title of God’s Wife of Amun, she also received an agricultural estate and personnel. Through these resources, she was able to produce a life-long income, which she kept for herself or used to bribe local officials.
The power associated with being God’s Wives of Amun continued into the afterlife. These women were buried in their own small chapels at Medinet Habu. Their tombs were beneath the chapels and included an array of funerary goods befitting their station. Their spirits were nourished through the offering of food and drink in the chapels for a number of years after their death.
The God’s Wives of Amun also constructed their own monumental chapels at Karnak temple, which is unusual, because women, royal or otherwise, didn’t have their own monuments. (Women were normally depicted on tomb walls and in inscriptions of their husbands.) Yet at Karnak temple, the chapels of the God’s Wives of Amun show the women standing before the image of the god Amun, as well as carrying out rituals and ceremonies that the king normally carried out.
Living with the King
Many royal women, whether siblings, wives, or children, rarely – or never – saw the king. The king lived most of the year in his palace in the capital city or travelled the country, staying at various palaces along the way. By contrast, royal women didn’t always go with the king and lived in one of several harems sprinkled throughout the country (see the following section).
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Location, location, location
The further away a royal wife lived from the king, the further down the royal hierarchy she existed.
The importance of each harem was in direct relation to how close it was to the main residence of the king. The location changed from king to king. A number of New Kingdom harems or women’s quarters are known today from various towns in Egypt:
Memphis in the north of Egypt
Gurob in the Faiyum
Malkata, the palace of Amenhotep III
The North Palace at Amarna
Pi-Ramesses, the capital city of Ramses II in the Delta region
Medinet Habu (the mortuary temple of Ramses III) on the West Bank of Thebes
Each king needed a place to house his many royal wives, so more harems probably existed, although they are now lost. Ramses II is said to have had more than 300 wives, and Amenhotep III is rumoured to have had more than 1,000 women, so more harems are clearly left to find.
Living it up: The harem at Medinet Habu
The favoured wives lived at harems close to the king – such as Ramses III’s harem at Medinet Habu, Thebes, the centre of the religious capital of Egypt. Thebes was a very metropolitan city in the New Kingdom – the place to be. The king spent much of his time here. The wives at Medinet Habu travelled the country with the king and stayed at other comfortable and luxurious harems on the way on a temporary basis.
The gateway of Medinet Habu is hollow and is decorated with intimate scenes of Ramses III caressing his wives. The inscriptions on the gateway don’t say what it was used for, and for many years Egyptologists believed the gateway itself was the harem. However, logically speaking, the royal women are not going to live in a gateway, at danger from people outside the enclosure wall, and with the added risk of them running away.
The gateway was more probably their holiday home, because in addition to a number of chambers (none of which is a bedroom), the site included a roof complex with small structures enabling the women to sit outside and look at the scenery. From this retreat, they could see the landscape, witness processions and religious rituals, and generally watch the world go by without being seen.
The Medinet Habu women were permanently housed at the palace, firmly within the enclosure walls, which has a number of suites of rooms consisting of a bedroom, a dressing room, and a sitting room. The audience chamber has raised daises, where the King’s Principal Wife sat on her throne. The palace also includes two showers, complete with drains for run-off, and a pleasure garden with a lake.
The king clearly visited this harem, as drawings on the Window of Appearances leading from the palace to the first court of the temple show. The king appeared here in festivals to bestow gold jewellery on his favoured courtiers – and then perhaps bestowed other favours on his royal favourites later.
Earning their keep: The harem in the Faiyum
Royal women must have found it terribly depressing to be sent to the Faiyum harem, because they knew they would never leave. And the king was unlikely to visit Faiyum often, which lessened these women’s chances of gaining the king’s favour through producing a son.
However, the women at Faiyum were quite productive and worked in the on-site textile workshop, producing linen for the other royal palaces. This activity was a means for them to earn their keep, as well as to help them pass the time. The senior women were probably involved in embroidery and close, fiddly work, as well as teaching newcomers the skills for the job. Women not involved in cloth production performed household tasks. Lower levels of the harem women were responsible for serving the King’s Principal Wife and other senior wives. Probably not the lifestyle imagined by many princesses.
The Faiyum harem also had a cemetery, which means that those who lived and died there were also buried there. These women had no chance to get close enough to the king to be buried in the more prestigious Valley of the Queens (see the section ‘Burying the queens’, later in this chapter). Additionally, young princes were buried at Faiyum as well, showing that these males were low princes with little or no chance of ever becoming heir to the throne.
Burying the queens
The more favoured wives and children of the New Kingdom kings were given a tomb in the so-called Valley of the Queens in Luxor, very close to the Valley of the Kings. The use of the Valley changed over the years, and it wasn’t used solely for queens’ burials:
From the 18th dynasty, the Valley was used for the burial of the royal sons (more than 60 burial shafts in total).
From the beginning of the 19th dynasty, queens were buried here, the most famous Nefertari, the wife of Ramses II, who was given a richly coloured tomb.
From the reign of Ramses III (20th dynasty), the royal princes were once again buried here.
From the third intermediate period, the site was used for non-royal burials and continued to be used as a cemetery until the fourth century AD.
The tombs in the Valley of the Queens were smaller than those in the Valley of the Kings and less complex in design. The queens’ tombs were carved in inferior rock, and many tombs were abandoned half way through construction, leaving many unfinished tombs in the valley. Those that were completed were plastered and painted rather than being decorated with carved relief. (See Chapter 13 for more on the evolution and construction of tombs.)
Plotting revenge
With a large number of women living in such confined quarters as a royal harem, trouble was bound to pop up. And trouble is certainly what happened in the reign of Ramses III when a bungled assassination attempt known as the ‘Harem Conspiracy’ was discovered. The trial of the main defendants is recorded on the Harem Conspiracy Papyrus, written during the reign of Ramses IV.
Fourteen men from many walks of life were called to stand as judges – rather like a modern jury. They were given the power to call for any evidence or witnesses needed to conduct the case fairly and were responsible for dispensing the verdict and punishments.
More than 40 people, all close to the king or the harem, were tried for the conspiracy. There were two plots – one to kill the king and the other to cause a fracas outside the palace at the same time, ensuring the king was not as well guarded as usual.
The chief defendant was Ramses III’s minor wife Tiy, who wanted her son Pentewere to be king, even though he was not an heir. Her name is real but her son’s was changed as a punishment for this crime, which made repeating his true name impossible and denied him an afterlife (see Chapter 10 for more on this funerary belief).
The papyrus records four separate prosecutions:
Twenty-eight people, including the major ringleaders, were all condemned to death, possibly by public execution.
Six people were condemned to commit suicide immediately in the court in front of the judges.
Four people, including Prince Pentewere, were probably condemned to commit suicide within their cells after the trial.
Three judges and two officers were accused of entertaining some of the female conspirators (tut tut). One judge was innocent, but the others were condemned to be mutilated by having their nose and ears cut off. One committed suicide before the sentence was carried out; clearly mutilation was too much for him to bear.
Whether Ramses III would’ve given the same verdicts is uncertain; he died before the verdicts were pronounced. Some say his death was a direct result of the assassination attempt – the plot thickens!
Remembering the First Feminists
Over the 3,000 years or so of Egyptian history, not many women have stood out as strong personalities or powerful individuals, because they were all overshadowed by the dominant personalities of kings.
However, a few women did make their mark, including some who worked against the system to rule in their own right, and others who had to take things in hand in order to get the job done, either due to weak kings or political circumstances.
Perhaps the following three women were products of circumstance – or perhaps they really were some of the world’s first feminists.
Ahhotep: Warrior queen
Queen Ahhotep of the 17th and 18th dynasties was the first powerful royal woman of the New Kingdom, although this was more by accident than design. She was married to Seqenenre Tao II and had at least two sons – Ahmose, the founder of the 18th dynasty, and Kamose. Both Queen Ahhotep’s husband and her son Kamose died in the battles against the Hyksos (see Chapter 3), and she watched her youngest son, Ahmose, follow in their footsteps.
While the men in her life were at war, Queen Ahhotep was effectively ruling Egypt from the capital city at Thebes. After her husband died and while her son Kamose was too young to rule alone, she acted as queen regent on his behalf. After her first son’s death, she ruled again for her second son Ahmose. This was a very unusual role for a woman, but she was clearly a take-control kinda gal.
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She is one who has accomplished the rites and cared for Egypt. She has looked after Egypt’s troops and she has guarded them. She has also brought back fugitives and collected together the deserters. She has pacified Upper Egypt and expelled her rebels.
This inscription indicates that Ahhotep learnt military skills, which is feasible because the palace was probably overrun with soldiers and generals. She would have dealt with the military men because Kamose and Ahmose were too young to rule alone.
Her funerary equipment reflects these military concerns, because it included a necklace of the Order of the Fly, a military honour rather like a medal. Her tomb also included weapons, such as a jewelled dagger and a lapis axe detailed with Ahmose’s cartouche in the centre of a smiting scene.
Hatshepsut: The female king
The most notorious royal woman is Hatshepsut, a queen from the 18th dynasty who eventually ruled Egypt as a king rather than a queen and upset virtually everyone in the country.
When her father, Thutmosis I, died, Hatshepsut married her half-brother, Thutmosis II, and they had a daughter before Thutmosis II died. On his death, Hatshepsut married her husband’s son by another wife, and he became Thutmosis III. He was less than three years old when he came to the throne, so Hatshepsut ruled on his behalf until he was old enough to rule alone.
Initially Hatshepsut used traditional queenly titles like King’s Chief Wife or God’s Wife, although after a couple of years she used titles modelled on those of kings, like Mistress of the Two Lands. After seven years, she completely abandoned her queenly titles and adopted the fivefold titulary of a king. She is represented on monuments wearing the masculine attire of a king. She probably figured if she was ruling Egypt in the absence of a king suitable for the job, she wanted the power that went with it.
Hatshepsut ruled as king alone for about 15 years and then completely disappears from the records when Thutmosis III took over his rightful place as king. Her body has never been found, so historians don’t know if she died of old age (she was about 36 years old in the latest record) or whether she was assassinated. Either way, she made her mark on the history books – even if the later kings tried to pretend she had never existed by erasing her name from documents, monuments, and historical king lists. Even today she is making headlines, and in June 2007 it was announced that her mummy may have been identified, and that this formidable woman died of stomach cancer.
Hatshepsut’s shopping trip to Punt
The most spectacular event of the reign of Hatshepsut was a shopping expedition to the city of Punt. The expedition was very lucrative for Egypt, and Hatshepsut was remembered for her participation – even though it was an act of a king and not a queen.
The excursion is recorded on Hatshepsut’s mortuary temple at Deir el Bahri in Luxor. The location of Punt has been questioned over the years. Many places, from the Indian Ocean to Somaliland (modern Ethiopia), have been suggested as the location; the only thing that is known is that it was reached via the Red Sea.
The trading expedition was primarily for incense trees. Incense was used extensively in Egypt by the cult of Amun as well as by ordinary people as a fumigator. Because incense was not a natural resource of Egypt, it had to be imported. Ever industrious, Hatshepsut wanted to plant the trees in Egypt and make incense a natural resource. She did indeed plant these trees along the causeway leading to her mortuary temple, and some of the pits can still be seen today.
In addition to the trees, the expedition brought back a number of other goods that were valuable to the Egyptian economy, including aromatic wood, tree gum, ebony, ivory, gold, eye paint, baboons, monkeys, hounds, panther skin, and labourers.
While in Punt, Hatshepsut’s expedition was welcomed by the King and Queen of Punt, the latter depicted as being extremely obese. Images of obese Egyptians and non-Egyptians are highly unusual, so loads of discussion between scholars has developed trying to figure out whether the Queen of Punt has a disease or whether artists were trying to indicate that she was wealthy. No decision has been arrived at, and it doesn’t look as if one is likely to be reached any time soon.
Tiye: One scary lady
One woman who is often presented as a dominant individual is queen Tiye, the mother of Akhenaten. In reality, historians don’t know whether she was dominant, but she was definitely prominent.
Tiye was married to Amenhotep III and gave birth to a number of children, including Akhenaten. She held the title of King’s Great Wife, making her the most important royal woman in the palace.
Tiye has a reputation for being a strong, formidable woman. Some Egyptologists believe she ruled Egypt in the later years of Amenhotep III’s reign, when he was more interested in his harem than politics. Some also believe she influenced Akhenaten in his religious revolution (see Chapter 4).
The influence Tiye held over her husband and son remains unknown, but evidence does show Tiye was privy to diplomatic issues. A letter from a foreign king is addressed to her, in which the foreign king complains that since Akhenaten came to the throne, he has sent only wooden statues covered in gold rather than solid gold statues like the previous king Amenhotep III sent. The foreign king appeals to Tiye to talk to Akhenaten and persuade him to send good-quality gifts. Whether she had words with Akhenaten is not recorded, but I wouldn’t have messed with her.
Both Tiye and Amenhotep III were deified in life and were worshipped at the temple of Sedinga at Nubia. Here Tiye was worshipped as the goddess Hathor-Tefnut Great-of-Fearsomeness, and is shown making offerings to herself. This title must have been chosen for a reason. Perhaps she had a fearsome reputation even then. Tiye is also shown in this temple as a sphinx trampling female prisoners, an assertive depiction that places her as a counterpart to her divine king/husband rather than in a supporting role.