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 the 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
By the 12th Dynasty the more important royal women were allocated their own small pyramids, and the pyramid-complex of Senwosret I at Lisht provides us with a good example of a king providing for the proper burial of important royal females. The major pyramid, a small dummy pyramid which also belonged to the king and part of the main mortuary temple were all surrounded by a stone wall. Nine much smaller pyramids allocated
Fig. 30 The pyramid-complex of Senwosret I
to female members of the royal household were built around the outside of this wall, each having its own small mortuary temple, offering chapel and enclosure wall. The whole, together with the entrance to the main mortuary temple and a cloistered court, was enclosed by a substantial mud-brick outer wall. Seven of the female pyramid owners are now nameless, but we know that the two remaining tombs belonged to the principal queen, Neferu, and a princess named Itakayt.
During the New Kingdom, queens became more visible than they had ever been before, with an increasing emphasis being placed on both the individuality of each queen and the divinity of the role of the queen-consort. Queen Tetisheri, the commoner wife of the 17th Dynasty King Sekenenre Tao I, was the first of a succession of particularly forceful consorts which extended to include the queens of the 18th Dynasty, a remarkable group of women who managed to play a prominent role in the political life of the country at a time of economic and military expansion. These 17th and 18th Dynasty consorts were accorded more titles than their predecessors, becoming more firmly associated with the goddess Hathor in her role as both a divine consort and the mother of a king. At the same time, depictions of Hathor and Isis show them starting to wear the traditional queen’s regalia of uraeus, double feathers and vulture crown, so that the precise distinction between the mortal queens and the immortal goddesses becomes deliberately blurred.