This increasing prominence encouraged early egyptologists, already heavily influenced by the fallacious theory of a matriarchal origin for the Egyptian state, to speculate about an 18th Dynasty tradition of female royal descent with the right to rule being passed directly along the female line. Under this system it would not be enough that the rightful king should be the son of the previous monarch; he had to reinforce his claim to the throne by marrying the heiress who was ideally a daughter of the previous king and queen-consort and therefore either his full or half-sister. Through this predestined marriage the heiress transmitted the right of kingship to her husband-brother, herself becoming the principal queen. This so-called ‘heiress-princess’ theory neatly explained away all the complexities of 18th Dynasty royal family life, and had the added attraction of providing an explanation for the brother–sister and father–daughter incest which was otherwise both unnatural and abhorrent to early egyptologists. However, it is now largely discredited as being based on incorrect assumptions.14
We now know that by no means all of the principal queens of the 18th Dynasty were of royal descent, and that the sons of these less exalted union s were not in any obvious way handicapped by their non-royal mothers. Indeed, the consecutive kings Tuthmosis I, Tuthmosis II and Tuthmosis III all had non-royal mothers while Queen Tiy, daughter of the commoners Yuya and Thuyu and ‘Great Wife’ of Amenhotep III, was widely respected both at home and abroad throughout the reigns of both her husband and her son. Nevertheless, all evidence suggests that although a blood-tie with the royal family was not a prerequisite of queenship, it was a relationship which was fully exploited whenever it occurred. Titles such as ‘King’s Daughter’ or ‘King’s Wife’, indicating a close relationship with the ruler, were certainly very important. They had a definite cumulative effect, with a succession of royal titles conveying increasing prestige. Therefore, the woman who started out in life as a mere ‘King’s Daughter’ and progressed to become ‘King’s Sister’, ‘King’s Wife’ and finally ‘King’s Mother’ was undoubtedly a powerful lady. These titles expressed the relationship of the woman with the kingship rather than an actual monarch, so that when the dowager queen Ahmose-Nefertari was described as ‘King’s Daughter’ during the reign of her son (Amenhotep I), the king in question was her royal father.
… His sister was his guard… The mighty Isis who protected her brother, seeking him without tiring, not resting until she found him… She received his seed and bore his heir, raising their child in solitude in an unknown hiding place…
New Kingdom hymn to Osiris
The prevalence of brother–sister marriages within the New Kingdom royal family, a custom in obvious contrast to contemporary non-royal marriage patterns, appears to have been an attempt to reinforce the links between the royal family and the gods who themselves frequently indulged in brother–sister union s. Often, the gods were forced to make their incestuous matches through an undeniable lack of eligible marriage partners; for example, when Geb (the earth) wished to reproduce the only available female was his sister Nut (the sky). Together they produced Isis, Osiris, Nephthys and Seth. Isis and Osiris again had little choice but to mate with each other, while some legends state that Nephthys and Seth also married. Since Osiris had married Isis, albeit for a very practical reason, it was considered highly suitable that the king should follow the divine example and marry his sister. This custom certainly had the additional benefit of restricting entry to the royal family, thereby preserving the purity of the dynastic line, preventing the dissipation of the royal estates and reducing potential squabbles over the succession. It also provided a suitably royal husband for the higher-ranking princesses who, by tradition, were not married into foreign royal families but who may not have wished to marry an Egyptian man of less rarefied descent.
Four queen-consorts of the 18th Dynasty are worthy of special consideration as powerful women who had a profound influence on the development of the Egyptian state, while two further queens, Hatchepsut and Nefertiti, are discussed in Chapter 7. Queen Ahhotep was the first of these dominant consorts. She was the wife, and possibly the sister, of King Sekenenre Tao II and the mother of Ahmose, the southern warrior who defeated the Hyksos and founded the 18th Dynasty. She appears to have been a clever and courageous woman who had a profound influence on her son; in a curious stela recovered from Karnak Ahmose urged all his people to give due reverence to his mother as she had at one time rallied all the troops of Egypt and so prevented civil unrest from spreading throughout the land. Ahhotep lived to be at least eighty years old, and was given a magnificent burial by Ahmose. Her tomb was excavated at the end of the nineteenth century, and her mummy is now housed in Cairo Museum.