2
The King [Ahmose] himself said ‘I remember my mother's mother, my father's mother, the Great King's Wife and King's Mother, Tetisheri the justified. She now has a tomb and cenotaph on the soil of the Theban province and the Thinite province. I have said this to you because my majesty wants to have made for her a pyramid estate in the necropolis in the neighbourhood of the monument of my majesty, its pool dug, its trees planted, its offering loaves established…’ Now his majesty spoke of the matter and it was put into action. His majesty did this because he loved her more than anything. Kings of the past never did the like for their mothers.1
When King Ahmose decided to honour the memory of Queen Tetisheri, the commoner wife of King Sekenenre Tao I, mother of Sekenenre Tao II and grandmother of both Ahmose and his consort Ahmose Nefertari, he was making an important public statement about the revised status of women, and in particular queens, within the new ruling family. In defiance of previous royal tradition, the Theban rulers of the late 17th and early 18th Dynasties accepted that their womenfolk were capable of assuming a prominent role in state affairs and, most importantly, were happy to acknowledge the unique significance attached to the positions of King's Wife and King's Mother. For the first time since the Archaic Period, 1,500 years before, the queen consorts of Egypt were to be openly celebrated in their own right. Consequently the early New Kingdom is now widely recognized as being remarkable not only for its succession of strong and effective warrior-kings but for its sequence of high-profile, influential and long-lived queens. It was the queens, and not the kings, who were to provide Egypt with an unbroken succession lasting for over a century from Queen Tetisheri, who should perhaps be regarded as the true founder of the 17th/18th Dynasty, to Queen Hatchepsut and beyond.2
Fig. 2.1 King Ahmose and his grandmother, Queen Tetisheri
The tradition of the semi-invisible queen consort is one which evolved during the Old Kingdom. The queens of the preceding Archaic Period – the 1st and 2nd Dynasties, an unsettled time of gradual consolidation which saw Egypt slowly evolving from a group of semi-independent city states into a single unit – seem to have been strong and politically active women whose role in the unification of their country has for a long time been greatly underestimated. Unfortunately, our information about the personalities of the Archaic Period is severely limited, but four queens (Neith-Hotep, Her-Neith, Meryt-Neith and Nemaathep) have left enough archaeological evidence to prove that women of high birth could wield real power, and indeed one of these ladies, Meryt-Neith, may actually have been a queen regnant rather than a consort.3 However, following unification and the acceptance of a single divine king ruling over a peaceful country, there was little need for a strong consort and the shadowy and now mostly unknown queens of the Old and (even more so) Middle Kingdoms made little impact on state affairs. Barring exceptional circumstances, such as the untimely death of the king or the lack of a male heir to the throne, royal women confined themselves to family and domestic concerns.
This queenly modesty was entirely in keeping with contemporary views on the conduct proper to married women, particularly during the Middle Kingdom when the sudden disappearance of the queen from royal monuments coincided with a marked decrease in non-royal titles accorded to women. Although Egyptian women could always be included amongst the most legally independent females in the ancient world, with accepted rights which would have been envied by their more protected sisters in Asia, Greece and Rome, there was a clear and well-understood gulf between the work considered appropriate to women and that done by men. As a general rule, men were expected to work outside the home while women remained inside.4 Similarly, the husband had overall control over external affairs while the wife became Mistress of the House. ‘Keep your wife from power, restrain her’, argued the Old Kingdom sages. Marriage and motherhood formed the axis of the woman's world and, like any good Egyptian wife, the pre-New Kingdom queen had her clearly defined female tasks which, while not exactly Kinder, Küche und Kirche (presumably the queen would not have been expected to do too much cooking), must have been something fairly close. Her duties involved providing her husband with as many children as possible, ensuring the smooth running of the palace, adding silent support to her husband's actions and even, if necessary, acting as regent for a fatherless son. Her primary role was, however, to provide an almost entirely passive complement to her active husband. She was not expected to become a prominent public figure, had no state duties, held few official titles and was powerful only to the extent that she could influence her husband.
From the late 17th Dynasty onwards, we can see a profound change in the nature of the role of queen consort. Casting off her cloak of invisibility, she now emerged to claim a highly public position since, even though her status was still ultimately derived from her relationship with the king, increasing emphasis was placed both on the individuality of each queen and on the divinity of her role. By the early 18th Dynasty, queens were routinely awarded a range of secular and religious titles, owned their own estates which came complete with land, servants and administrators, and were portrayed wearing a range of distinctive crowns. This newly expanded repertoire of queen's regalia was clearly designed not only to stress ‘royalness’ and the connection with the king, but also to emphasize links with various deities. It had always been recognized that the role of queen had semi-divine origins, but this aspect of queenship now became far more blatant. For example, the new double uraeus headdress, two flat snakes worn side by side on the brow, was directly associated with the Lower Egyptian cobra goddess Wadjyt and the Upper Egyptian vulture goddess Nekhbet, but also had connections with the cults of Hathor and Re. The vulture crown, which resembles a rather limp bird draped over the queen's head with the wings hanging down against the sides of her face and the head of the vulture rising above the wearer's forehead, was a long-established queen's crown again linked with Nekhbet, while the double plumes – tall falcon feathers attached to a circular base – had been worn since the 13th Dynasty to stress links with the male gods Min and Amen and with the sun cult of Re. Depictions of the goddesses Isis and Hathor now show them wearing similar crowns so that the distinction between the mortal queen and the immortal goddesses becomes deliberately blurred.
Why should such a change have come about at this time? For over a century egyptologists, heavily influenced by now largely outdated theories of kinship and social evolution,5 have speculated that the new royal family must have been organized along matriarchal rather than patriarchal lines. The more prominent role allowed to the queens, an otherwise inexplicable deviation away from normal Egyptian behaviour patterns, could then be understood as something unfortunate but unavoidable. However, the theorists, in their desire to provide a simple explanation for the otherwise inexplicable, were somewhat haphazard in their classification. In its strictest sense a matriarchy involves the complete domination of the female line with all property and inheritance rights being held by women and transmitted from mother to daughter, and with the women holding all the power within the family unit.6 In such a system the women may be said to control the men. It is clearly distinct from both matrilocal kinship systems (where the women remain in their own homes following marriage) and from matrilineal systems (where descent is traced through the female line rather than the male); in both these cases the male, either the spouse or the brother, still retains overall family control. It is also, unhappily for the theorists, clearly distinct from the situation in the Theban royal family, where there is no suggestion that the kings ever relinquished their control to their queens.
Although the idea of an archaic female-dominated state has been a popular one amongst both old-fashioned anthropologists and extreme feminist historians, it is now widely recognized that such a state has never existed anywhere in the world. The Theban royal family may have allowed its queens to play a more prominent role in matters of state, but that role never allowed the queen to take precedence over the all-powerful pharaoh while Hatchepsut, the seeming exception to this rule, only sought the powers of a king when she had actually transformed herself into a female king. She would have probably been as horrified as anyone to think that a mere consort could rule in the place of a divinely appointed monarch. The ‘power’ of the Theban women should instead be seen in its true perspective as an increase in status and perhaps influence rather than a complete reversal of domestic custom.
Perhaps a more accurate explanation for the change in attitude towards the higher-ranking royal women can best be found by considering conditions in Egypt at the start of the Theban royal family's rule. This was a period when, as during the Archaic Period, Egypt was suffering from profound civil unrest. The kings who emerged during the late 17th Dynasty were warrior-kings, their reigns characterized by successive successful military campaigns. Under normal circumstances, and apart from a somewhat vague reference to Queen Ahhotep commanding troops which is discussed in further detail later in this chapter, it is the active Egyptian men who provide military leadership while their passive womenfolk attend to their separate domestic concerns; when the Middle Kingdom pharaoh Amenemhat I asked, ‘Has any woman previously marshalled troops? And has rebellion previously been plotted in the palace?’ he was posing intentionally ridiculous questions.7 However, at times of national crisis we often find that traditional roles no longer apply, and that women may be actively encouraged to leave the shelter of their hearths and seek employment without incurring public disapproval. This is precisely what occurred during the First and Second World Wars in Britain when women were expected to play an active part in the war effort, taking over jobs previously reserved exclusively for men.
When a monarchy feels itself to be under threat, we might expect to find the royal family relying on its most loyal and devoted supporters – other family members – to provide much-needed strength and support, regardless of sex. This is particularly true of the close-knit Theban royal family where the queen was often the full or half-sister of the king, was equally descended from the founders of the dynasty and would presumably have the same interests vested in her family. At such a time, when family might be set against family, it would be an act of great folly to overlook the potential contribution of an intelligent and politically astute woman, and a queen or queen mother who could effectively deputize for the king would be a valuable asset. It is, therefore, perhaps not surprising to find that the late 17th and early 18th Dynasty kings followed their Archaic Period predecessors in utilizing their womenfolk far beyond their ability to produce male children.
It is certainly not hard to find parallels for a ruling family where the influence of the royal women is both acknowledged and respected. African kingships have traditionally allowed their royal women to play a conspicuous part in state affairs and it should be remembered that the city of Thebes was geographically close to Nubia whose royal family also included powerful women. However, if we really need a parallel for the Theban royal family we should perhaps look closer to our own time; Kennedy-like clans where the women, although themselves not the holders of supreme office, play an important role in the functioning of the family as a single effective unit of government are not particularly rare, while the British monarchy itself has recently found that a suitable spouse, correctly presented, can help to boost the status of the entire royal family.
Respect for mothers was already a long-established Egyptian custom and not necessarily one which needed to be imported from further south. The Egyptian mother was both loved and revered by her children, particularly her sons, and New Kingdom scribes were constantly stressing the obligation which a young man owed to his long-suffering mother:
Double the food that your mother gave you, and support her as she supported you, for you were a heavy burden to her yet she did not abandon you. When you were born after your months she was still tied to you as her breast was in your mouth for three years. As you grew and your excrement was disgusting she was not disgusted. 8
Nor were the royal family the only family to emphasize the importance of the female line at this time. We have already met Ahmose, son of Ibana, the mighty warrior from el-Kab. His grandson, Paheri, also a native of el-Kab, was a bureaucrat who rose to become a respected Scribe of the Treasury and Mayor of both el-Kab (ancient Nekheb) and Esna (ancient Iunyt). His magnificent tomb lacks an autobiography like that provided by his grandfather, but includes conventional images of agriculture and feasting which are considerably enhanced by the inclusion of the comments of the participants in each scene. The banqueting scene is particularly illuminating; here we have the opportunity to eavesdrop on the female members of the Paheri family as they relax after a hard day's work. Their comments are perhaps not all we would expect from a collection of well-bred young ladies:
In the third row are the daughters of Kem, viz. [Thu]pu, Nub-em-heb and Amen-sat; also Paheri's second cousin Nub-Mehy, and his three nurses… Amen-sat refuses the bowl, and the servant says jestingly, ‘For thy Ka, drink to drunkenness, make holiday; O listen to what thy companion is saying, do not weary of taking (?).’
Her companion and distant cousin Nub-Mehy is saying to the servant ‘Give me eighteen cups of wine, I want to drink to drunkenness; my throat is as dry as straw.’9
Paheri's tomb provides us with details of his descent which is always traced through the female line; it is his mother, Kam, who is the child of Ahmose while his father, Itruri, was apparently tutor to Crown Prince Wadjmose, son of Tuthmosis I, a post which may also have been held by Paheri himself. Ahmose's father is recorded as Baba, son of Reant (his mother), and the maternal ancestors and cousins are recorded in preference to the paternal line. So striking is this preference for the female branch of the family that the tomb of Paheri was for a long time cited in support of the theory of a Theban matriarchal tradition. It is now accepted, however, that Paheri was simply following human nature, and claiming kinship with the highest-ranking members of his family, regardless of their sex.
To some modern observers – writing with the obvious benefit of hindsight – this sudden change in policy was a disaster waiting to happen, as a newly powerful queen would be unable to resist making an attempt on the throne itself:
The stubbornness and driving ambition of the queens could not help but precipitate a conflict with the males of the family, at least if the women persisted in grasping after what must have been the ultimate aspiration, viz. the crown. After five generations of rule this is precisely what happened.10
Perhaps a move from queen to king would seem an obvious promotion to a modern consort dissatisfied with her secondary function. However, it is doubtful whether an Egyptian queen, particularly one who held a secure and influential role of her own, would ever under normal circumstances consider such a dramatic step. The Egyptian abhorrence of change, the ingrained belief in a correct way of doing things which always included a divinely appointed male pharaoh on the throne, and the fact that the king was more than likely to be a close relation (brother, son or father) all make a female coup, under normal conditions, highly unlikely.
It can be no coincidence that the queen acquired her enhanced status at exactly the time that the king was throwing open the doors of the royal harem to welcome increased numbers of secondary wives and concubines into the shelter of his protecting arms. Indeed, it may well be that the queen needed her new titles and regalia simply to distinguish her, as the consort and mother of the future king, from all the other women who could now with some justification claim to be a wife of the king and even, given a bit of good luck, a future King's Mother. Polygamy had always been something of a royal tradition; it was an easily affordable luxury and in many ways it made sense to ensure that the king had as much opportunity as possible to father a male successor. However, the kings of the Old and Middle Kingdom seem to have been satisfied with one queen consort plus a rather discreet harem of concubines about whom we know very little, and it is only during the 13th Dynasty that we encounter the use of the title ‘King's Chief Wife’ which suggests the need to distinguish the queen consort from a host of other, lesser, wives. With the advent of the New Kingdom there came a dramatic increase in royal brides and, we must assume, a corresponding increase in the numbers of royal children, until the 19th Dynasty King Ramesses II was able to boast of fathering seventy-nine sons and fifty-nine daughters by his various wives who included his sister, three of his daughters and at least five foreign princesses.
These secondary wives should by no means be regarded as mere concubines, a term which has almost come to be synonymous with prostitute or harlot in our (theoretically) monogamous society. There was no disgrace in being included amongst the king's wives and, indeed, the occupants of the harem included high-bred Egyptian ladies and the daughters and sisters of Egyptian kings. These ladies could not all become queen consort, but they were all legally the wives or dependants of the king, and all were entitled to a recognized and respected position in Egyptian society. It would be fascinating to learn how the Egyptian harem women were selected – did they volunteer, were they donated by their parents, or were they press-ganged? It is probably fairly safe to assume that to introduce a daughter into the royal palace could bring a family nothing but good, particularly if she managed to attract and hold the attention of the king or crown prince. Parallels have often been drawn with the Chinese Han Dynasty harem, where kings and their high officials occasionally married their concubines and where it was not unknown for a concubine of non-royal birth to become both the wife and the mother of a king. A favourite concubine could use her influence for the good of her family, and for this reason Chinese nobles worked to get at least one daughter accepted into the royal harem.11 However, non-royal Egyptian males seem curiously reluctant to acknowledge association with the palace through a woman, to the extent that Anen, brother of the commoner Queen Tiy, fails to mention this important link on any of his monuments. We have no record of any Egyptian donating his wife or daughter to the king, and no means of ascertaining how useful a daughter or sister in the royal harem could be.
A miracle brought to his Majesty Gilukhepa, daughter of the prince of Naharin, and the members of her entourage, some 317 women.12
By the time of Tuthmosis IV, the harem was also home to a number of important foreign princesses and their not-insubstantial retinues. These princesses, the daughters of strong political allies, travelled to Egypt with a rich dowry which was exchanged for a reciprocal bride price or tribute paid by the groom. They married the king, and sank into obscurity. Other, lesser, princesses were the daughters of vassal states sent as tribute to the Egyptian king; they remained in the royal harem providing an effective guarantee of their father's loyalty to the pharaoh:
Send your daughter to the king, your lord, and as presents send twenty healthy slaves, silver chariots and healthy horses.13
Yet other foreign women were sent in groups as gifts for the king. We must assume that these women rarely, if ever, saw their new husband/ master. They appear to have lived their whole lives within the harem without the chance of either marriage or returning to their own lands; when they died they were buried in the nearby desert cemetery.
The women of Egypt have the character of being the most licentious in their feelings of all females who lay any claim to be considered as members of a civilised nation… Most of them are not considered safe unless under lock and key.14
While the queen consort seems to have enjoyed the luxury of her own palace and estates, the remaining royal wives and concubines, their young children, wet-nurses, nursemaids and attendants, lived together in the permanent women's palace or the harem. The word harem is today an unfortunate one; a word which instantly conjures up images of spoiled and scantily dressed eastern beauties reclining on silken cushions as they await the bidding of their lord and master. All too often our ideas of the Egyptian harem are based on what we imagine we know of the harem in other oriental monarchies, in particular the harem of the Grand Seraglio, the court of the Ottoman sultans at Istanbul, a harem which functioned from the Middle Ages until the First World War, when the Sultanate itself was deposed on the creation of the modern republic of Turkey. The secret world of the Turkish harem remained an impenetrable mystery for centuries, and rumours rather than facts about life in the Grand Seraglio have fed European notions about all harems. This, combined with a deep-seated belief in the innate decadence of ancient Egypt and its enviably abandoned women, has found expression in many forms of western culture. From Mozart to Mailer, the combination of exotic locations, hot sun and captive women kept for sexual delectation have been used to entertain and titillate supposedly sophisticated audiences.15
This vision is far from the truth. It would be far more correct to regard the Egyptian women's palace as a permanent dormitory used to house all the female dependants of the king, not just those tied to him for sexual purposes. These women, for reason of sheer numbers, could not be expected to travel with the king and his entourage. The harem was therefore home to a varied assortment of wives, daughters, sisters, infant sons, attendants, slaves and anyone else who could be legitimately found in the women's quarters of a private dwelling house. Included amongst the harem staff were a number of male administrators who found themselves responsible for the smooth running of a very large community. These officials bore titles ranging from ‘Overseer of the Royal Harem’ and ‘Inspector of the Harem-Administration’ to ‘Gate-Keeper’; this last appears to have been employed to protect the harem and keep undesirable members of the community out rather than to keep the women in – as yet we have no evidence to suggest that free-born Egyptian women were ever forced to remain in the harem against their will. All the administrators appear to have been married men, and we find no direct evidence for that classic harem servant, and butt of many a tasteless joke, the eunuch. While there might have been obvious advantages in employing castrated men to work with a collection of attractive, isolated, bored and possibly frustrated women, this does not appear to have been standard practice in dynastic Egypt. There is no ancient Egyptian word which has been convincingly demonstrated to mean eunuch, and representations of harem scenes in the Amarna tombs of Ay and Tutu do not show any individuals with classic eunuchoidal appearance. We do have examples of mummified male bodies without testicles, but these seem to be the result of post-mortem damage during mummification itself, rather than a deliberate amputation. The mummified body of Tuthmosis III, known to be a father, was lacking both penis and testicles, while the hard-man military exploits of the Pharaoh Merenptah certainly suggest that he metaphorically possessed what his mummy now lacks.
The food was neither plain nor wholesome. As to the hours spent lolling in Turkish baths, naked and sleek, ladling perfumed water over each other, twisting pearls and peacock feathers in their long hair, nibbling sugary comfits, gossiping, idling away the hours, becalmed in the dreamy, steamy limbo-land…16
So Lesley Blanch describes daily life in the eighteenth-century harem of the Seraglio, a description which must owe a certain amount to imagination, as the harem was strictly out of bounds to all non-inmates, but which is probably correct in its assumption that the Turkish odalisques led a life of pampered luxury. Things were very different in Egypt, where the harem-palace itself was a self-contained and self-supporting unit, fully independent of the king's palace and deriving its income from its own endowments of land and the rents paid by tenant farmers. Many of the lesser harem women, far from idling away the hours, were expected to work for their keep; the harem itself must have required numerous cooks, washerwomen, nursemaids and general servants while Mer- Wer, a large harem-palace established by Tuthmosis III on the edge of the Faiyum, seems to have been home to a flourishing textile business. Here the finest Egyptian linen was produced under the supervision of the ladies of the harem.
The plans of surviving New Kingdom harem-palaces show groups of independent mud-brick buildings including living quarters, storerooms and a chapel or shrine, all surrounded by a high mud-brick wall. The living quarters took the form of enclosed structures focused inwards towards a central open area or courtyard which sometimes contained pools of water. This may be compared with the traditional modern Islamic harem of the early twentieth century, a large house built around a courtyard which might include a pool or fountain, and surrounded by high walls.17 The physical setting of the more modern harem was very firmly focused inwards towards the central open space which became the scene of the daily activities of the harem-women. Here food was prepared, cosmetics were applied, and the days and evenings were spent singing, dancing and telling stories.
The dynastic Egyptian harem-palace served both as a nursery for the royal infants and as the ‘Household of the Royal Children’, the most prestigious school in the land. Here the young male royals, under the supervision of the ‘Overseer of the Royal Harem’ and the ‘Teacher of the Royal Children’, received the instruction which would prepare them for their future lives as some of the highest-ranking nobles in the land. The title ‘Child of the Palace’ (that is, a royal child, or one important enough to be brought up as one) is one often used by high officials from the Middle Kingdom onwards, the full reading in the New Kingdom being ‘Child of the Palace of the Royal Harem’. Important 18th Dynasty officials who chose to emphasize their childhood connection with the royal court include the Viziers Rekhmire, Ramose and Amenemope, the High Priest of Amen, Hapuseneb, and the Mayor of Thebes, Sennefer. Childhood networking in the royal harem must have been of crucial importance to those living in a state where everyone's career and status was dependent upon their relationship with the king.
At any time of civil unrest, given the high mortality rates amongst the male élite engaged in physical combat, we might expect to find the embattled monarchy placing a great reliance on the production of male children both to ensure the royal succession, be it father to son (for example, Sekenenre Tao to Kamose) or brother to brother (for example, Kamose to Ahmose) and to provide loyal subordinate military leaders. However, this does not appear to be the case at the start of the New Kingdom when the more minor male royal personages – the second sons and younger brothers of kings – take their turn at becoming invisible. With the younger males this is not so remarkable as both male and female royal children tended to be relatively obscure in infancy and childhood; their early invisibility did not necessarily prevent them from achieving fame later in their careers. However, the lack of adult princes is something of a puzzle, particularly at a time when the vast increase in numbers of royal wives might have led us to expect a dramatic increase in royal children.
In part, the invisibility of the royal sons must be a result of the selective preservation of the historical records, and in particular the royal monuments. The temples and funerary monuments of Thebes and the West Bank are covered with texts and scenes depicting various kings who are occasionally shown together with their queens and the royal princesses. However, the royal family only appear in these scenes as symbolic appendages of the king; they are not intended to be seen as independent individuals in their own right and indeed New Kingdom royal art is full of images of dependant royal woman who often appear as minuscule figures barely reaching to the knees of the colossal king who is their husband, father or both. The fact that sons are unlikely to appear as royal dependents in these scenes should therefore not be taken as an indication that they lacked importance, but rather as confirmation that they were expected to live a more independent existence. The princess was given respect as the daughter (or property?) of the king; the prince had to earn his own respect. This in turn implies that while the position of King's Daughter was very much seen as a role in its own right, the role of King's Son was merely an accident of birth, not a fulltime career. The crown prince was obviously an exception to this rule; as heir to the throne he was born with a clearly defined role and was often given the post of Great Army General to reinforce his status, just as the British heir to the throne is traditionally created Prince of Wales.
If royal sons are less likely to appear on royal monuments than their sisters then where, apart from their tombs, are we likely to find them? Even the location of their tombs poses a problem, as princely burials dating to the early 18th Dynasty are virtually unknown, although recent discoveries in the Valley of the Kings suggest that groups of princes may have been buried in batches in mass burial chambers. We do have examples of 18th Dynasty individuals classifying themselves as ‘King's Son' but, for some reason, we have no one claiming to be a ‘King's Brother’. This had led to the intriguing suggestion that royal princes may have in some way lost their royalty once the crown prince had produced an heir, thereby casting them outside the direct line of succession. This would have the effect of restricting the royal family to the king, his unmarried sisters, his spinster aunts, his mother and grandmother and his children; his brothers and uncles would no longer be regarded as fully royal, although they would still be entitled to a respected place in the community.18 This automatic pruning of the royal family would have the advantage of reducing the number of individuals with a potential claim to the throne and would presumably keep the royal family securely exclusive. Whatever their official status, we can see that those princes who grew to adulthood before the death of their father received high-ranking appointments in the priesthood, the army and the civil service. The fate of their younger, orphaned brothers is less certain.
The best place to look for the missing 18th Dynasty princes is the workmen's village of Deir el-Medina. Here, throughout the 19th Dynasty and particularly during the reign of Ramesses II, the early 18th Dynasty royal family was regarded with great reverence. On a general level they were honoured as both the (theoretical) ancestors of the current kings and as excellent role models for military kingship, while on a more personal level the inhabitants of Deir el-Medina worshipped the Theban royal family as both the founders of their village and the initiators of the ultimate in job-creation schemes in the Valley of the Kings. The villagers had good reason to worship their partially deified patrons Amenhotep I and Ahmose Nefertari, and it is not surprising that these two demi-gods appear on many small monuments, sometimes standing alongside other Theban deities such as Hathor, Lady of the West. Occasionally, however, the inhabitants of Deir el-Medina chose to commemorate the lesser members of the Theban royal family, including some of the missing princes. The best-known example of this is found in the tomb of a man named Khabekhnet, where the northeastern wall shows two rows of seated, named individuals who are identified as ‘Lords of the West’. Included amongst these are some who are clearly the sons of kings who did not succeed their father to the throne. Unfortunately, beyond their names, we have little further information about these lost princes.
From the scanty records surviving from the beginning of the Eighteenth Dynasty, it emerges that a remarkable part was played in the history of the newly unified state by three ladies, Tetisheri and Ahhotpe… and Ahmose Nefertiry… There can be little doubt that their behaviour served as an inspiration to the leading women of the country (of whom Hatchepsut is the leading example) throughout the Eighteenth Dynasty.19
King Ahmose was blessed with not only a strong grandmother but with a forceful and politically active mother. Ahhotep I (or Ahhotpe, as above), consort and possibly sister of Sekenenre Tao II, exerted a profound and long-lasting influence on her son; on a stela recovered from Karnak, Ahmose encourages his people to pay homage to his mother as the ‘one who has accomplished the rites and taken care of Egypt’:
She has looked after her [that is, Egypt's] soldiers, she has guarded her, she has brought back her fugitives and collected together her deserters, she has pacified Upper Egypt and expelled her rebels.20
The precise meaning of this curious stela is now lost to us. However if, as it seems to maintain, Ahhotep herself had truly been able to thwart a rebellion by mustering the Egyptian troops, she must have been a woman capable of wielding real rather than ceremonial power. We may even deduce that Ahhotep had been called upon to act as regent following the untimely death of Kamose because we know that when Ahmose died at the end of his 25-year reign he was relatively young, possibly only in his early thirties. We know of no formal declaration of a regency, but there was certainly a well-established precedent for the dowager queen to act as regent for her young son; the 2nd Dynasty Queen Nemaathep had acted as regent for King Djoser and the 6th Dynasty Queen Ankhes-Merire had ruled on behalf of her six-year-old son Pepi II. Why the queen should be chosen to act as regent in preference to a male relation (perhaps father's brother) is now unclear, although we can speculate that it would be the mother above all who would safeguard her son's inheritance. If the theory of the royal princes losing their royalness on the assumption of their brother holds true, there would in any case be no close male member of the royal family available to take on the role.
There was certainly a clear divine precedent for a mother taking care of her son's inheritance. The story of Isis and Osiris tells how Osiris, rightful king of Egypt in the time of the gods, was murdered by his jealous brother Seth. Seth cut Osiris' body into many pieces which he scattered all over Egypt. Isis, his devoted wife and sister, toiled to collect the bits together and, with her magic powers, granted Osiris temporary life. So successful was her magic that nine months later their son Horus was born. The dead Osiris then became king of the Afterlife. Meanwhile the resourceful Isis hid Horus from his uncle in the marshes until he became a man, able to avenge his father's death. The women of Egypt were not routinely expected to display such initiative; they generally took a more passive role in society. However, decisive behaviour was acceptable and even to be encouraged in a female if that behaviour was intended to safeguard the rights of either a husband or child.
After her death Ahhotep was accorded a splendid burial on the West Bank at Thebes. Her mummy in its elaborate coffin was recovered in the mid nineteenth century, and is now housed in the Cairo Museum.
Although both Tetisheri and Ahhotep had been honoured by Ahmose it was his wife, Ahmose Nefertari, who first received the formal accolades which were to become the right of future queens of Egypt. Ahmose Nefertari, ‘King's Daughter and King's Sister’, ‘Female Chieftain of Upper and Lower Egypt’, wife and probably sister of Ahmose, mother of Amenhotep I, granddaughter of Tetisheri and possibly daughter of Kamose, was even more influential than her redoubtable mother-in-law. Unfortunately we have no text detailing her specific achievements, but we do know that Ahmose Nefertari was either given, or sold, the prestigious title of ‘Second Prophet of Amen’, a post which was intended to belong to the queen and her descendants for ever.
Fig. 2.2 The god Osiris
The queen later renounced this title for an even more prestigious position, the priestly office of ‘God's Wife of Amen’, an honour which came with its own endowment of goods and land plus a staff of male administrators and which, given the rising importance of the cult of Amen at this time, was a clear indication of the enhanced status of the queen. It is perhaps cynical to suggest that the position may have been deliberately contrived to allow the royal family some measure of control over the increasingly powerful and wealthy cult. Ahmose Nefertari obviously saw this as her most important role, and used the title of ‘God's Wife of Amen in preference to any other. Contemporary illustrations show the queen dressed in a distinctive short wig and strangely archaic-looking clothes as she performs the religious duties associated with her new office. Unfortunately, we have little understanding of the precise function of the God's Wife; the title suggests that it should have been borne either by those queens who had coupled with Amen to produce a king (that is, by queen mothers), or by unmarried women who had dedicated themselves to the service of Amen, but a quick survey of the women who held the post shows that neither explanation can be correct. Hatchepsut, for example, was neither a virgin nor the mother of a king. It is possible, however, that the role related in some (theoretical) way to the sexual stimulation of the god which would ensure the renewal of the land: a second and less deli-cate title, ‘God's Hand’, which is occasionally used in conjunction with ‘God's Wife’, is an unmistakable reference to the masturbation which produced the first gods, Shu and Tefnut.
Fig. 2.3 The god Horus
The role of ‘God's Wife of Amen' was passed down from Ahmose Nefertari to her daughter Meritamen, and then to Hatchepsut who used it until she became king, when it was transferred to her daughter Neferure. The title fell into decline during the solo reign of Tuthmosis III – perhaps the new king had experienced enough powerful women – and died out completely after the reign of Tuthmosis IV, only to be revived during the Third Intermediate Period when, having merged with the position of ‘Divine Adoratrice’, it developed into a politically and economically highly significant post. The God's Wife of Amen now had theoretical control over the vast wealth of the estates of Amen.
Ahmose Nefertari fulfilled her wifely duties by presenting her husband-brother with at least four sons and five daughters, five of whom died in infancy or childhood. However, she was not content to restrict herself to breeding and abandoned the traditional shelter of the queen's palace:
To judge from the number of inscriptions, contemporary and later, in which that young queen's name appears, she obtained as celebrity almost without parallel in the history of Egypt.21
Setting a precedent now followed by modern royal couples, the queen accompanied her husband as he performed his many civic duties; we know that when Ahmose opened a new gallery at the Tura limestone quarry in his regnal Year 22, he was accompanied by his queen who stood modestly behind her husband in a typical wifely pose. The queen also seems to have assisted her husband in developing his building projects and, as we have already noted, Ahmose consulted his wife over his plans to honour their dead grandmother, Tetisheri. She was certainly active in the religious sphere; her piety, or perhaps her independent wealth, led her to dedicate far more religious offerings than any previous queen and offerings presented by Ahmose Nefertari have been found in temples as far apart as Karnak in the south and Serabit el-Khadim in the Sinai Peninsula.
Following the death of Ahmose, Ahmose Nefertari took on the role of regent for her young son, Amenhotep I, handing over the reins of state when her son became old enough to rule. Throughout his 21-year reign, Amenhotep I consolidated the successful foreign policies started by his father, uncle and grandfather. There was no further military action in Palestine, but the army ex- further south into Nubia where a viceroy was appointed to take care of Egypt's interests in the Upper Nubian Kingdom of Kush. The ubiquitous Ahmose, son of Ibana, was present to witness the new king's triumph:
Fig. 2.4 The cartouche of King Amenhotep I
I transported the King of Upper and Lower Egypt Djeserkare [Amenhotep I], the justified, when he sailed south to Kush to make wider the borders of Egypt. His Majesty smote those Bowmen of Nubia in the midst of his army. They were brought away in a stranglehold, none escaping. The fleeing were laid low, as if they had never existed. I was at the head of the army and truly I fought. His Majesty saw my bravery. I brought away two hands to bring to his Majesty… Then I was rewarded with gold. I brought away two female captives as plunder, apart from those which I brought to his Majesty, and I was made ‘Warrior of the Ruler’.22
Internally, there was an ambitious building programme encompassing several Upper Egyptian sites, and the arts and sciences flourished. Dying before his mother, Amenhotep I became the focus of a funerary cult at Deir el-Medina, where he was worshipped as ‘Amenhotep of the Town’, ‘Amenhotep Beloved of Amen’, or ‘Amenhotep of the Forecourt’. When she, too, flew to heaven, Ahmose Nefertari was also deified and worshipped at Deir el-Medina as patron goddess of the Theban necropolis. She eventually became ‘Mistress of the Sky’ and ‘Lady of the West’ and her cult lasted throughout the New Kingdom.
Ahmose Nefertari's forceful personality completely eclipsed that of her son's consort and sister, Queen Meritamen. Although we are told that Meritamen also bore the title of ‘God's Wife of Amen’ we know little else about this lady, beyond the fact that she did not provide her husband with a living male successor. Amenhotep I was therefore followed as king by a man whom he himself had chosen, a middle-aged general who was to become King Tuthmosis I. As the early 18th Dynasty was a time when the ruling élite formed a close-knit and well-defined group almost invariably linked by marriage, the new heir to the throne may well have been a descendant of a collateral branch of the royal family.23 Tuthmosis himself, however, makes no claim to royal blood. His father is never named and remains a man of mystery, although it seems safe to assume that had he been of noble or royal birth Tuthmosis would have been the first to acknowledge him, while his mother was a non-royal woman named Senisenb who was never a queen and who was always given the simple title of ‘King's Mother’. Tuthmosis himself confirmed his mother's relatively humble origins when he required his loyal troops to swear an oath of loyalty on his accession ‘by the name of His Majesty, life, health and strength, born of the Royal Mother Senisenb’. This choice of successor seems to have met with general approval and in the fullness of time Tuthmosis I became pharaoh of Egypt. The Tuthmoside era had begun.
There is some rather weak archaeological evidence to suggest that Amenhotep I may have associated himself in a co-regency with his intended successor. On the wall of the chapel of Amenhotep at Karnak, Tuthmosis I is shown dressed as a king, performing royal tasks and with his name written in the royal cartouche. If, as has been suggested, this scene was commissioned during the lifetime of Amenhotep I, there must have been two kings on the throne at the same time. Unfortunately, we have no means of knowing when the carving was made and, while it would certainly have made good sense for Amenhotep to associate himself formally with Tuthmosis, the case for a joint reign must rest unproven. It is, after all, equally possible that the building, started by Amenhotep, was finished after his death by Tuthmosis. The fact that Tuthmosis I started to count his regnal years from the death of his predecessor is of little help in determining whether or not the two shared a reign.
The tradition of the co-regency, a regular feature of 12th Dynasty reigns and one which reappears during the early 18th Dynasty, appears a strange one to those of us accustomed to seeing a single divinely appointed monarch on the throne. Joint rule must have posed many practical difficulties – how could the country be ruled by two kings at the same time? Were the royal duties performed in stereo or were they divided on some mutually agreed basis? Was there to be a ‘junior’ and a ‘senior’ king? And how was the joint reign to be dated? Egyptian
Fig. 2.5 The cartouche of King Tuthmosis I
theology decreed that the attributes of divine kingship were passed from father to son, the son becoming the living Horus at the precise moment that his dying father became the dead Osiris yet, as Gardiner has pointed out, ‘… there is no hint that the Egyptians ever felt scruples on this score. In matters of religion logic played no great part, and the assimilation or duplication of deities doubtless added a mystic charm to their theology.’24
The question of how such a joint reign was to be dated was no trivial matter – the Egyptians always described their years with reference to the current pharaoh. We now know that there were in fact two types of co-regencies, each employing a different dating system. Where there was clearly a ‘senior’ and a more ‘junior’ king, the joint reign was dated by reference to the regnal years of the senior partner with the junior king counting his own years only from the death of his senior. Such unequal co-regencies leave very little evidence and are consequently very hard for the historian to detect. Other co-regencies, where the newest king started to count his regnal years from the beginning of the co-regency while his co-ruler continued with his own regnal years, may be viewed as a more equal partnership. However, this equality led to a certain amount of chronological confusion as each year of such a co-regency had two equally valid regnal dates, and indeed we occasionally find ‘double-dated’ texts and monuments giving the regnal years of two contemporary kings, while the anniversaries of the succession of each king created two New Year's days which were not necessarily synchronized with the third New Year's day, that of the civil calendar.25 Given these not inconsiderable drawbacks, it is perhaps not surprising to find that double-dated co-regencies were rare during the New Kingdom.
In spite of the theological, political and dating problems posed by joint reigns, they remained a feature of Egyptian kingship. There must, therefore, have been enough compensating advantages to make a co-regency appear worthwhile. Perhaps the main advantage was that the co-regency made the intended succession absolutely clear; no one could dispute the intentions of a king who had already announced his successor. At times when the new king was not an obvious choice (for example, when there was no legitimate male heir), the co-regency must have seemed a sensible precaution which would deter any other claimant to the throne and ensure continuity of rule in a land where so much depended on the presence of a pharaoh on the throne. The additional benefit of allowing the new king to learn the art of government while the old king eased into a semi-retirement must have been appreciated by both monarchs.
King Tuthmosis I was married to a lady named Ahmose, a popular female name in New Kingdom Egypt. There is some disagreement over the origins of this lady, with some authorities classing her as a daughter of Amenhotep I and others placing her as the daughter of Ahmose and Ahmose Nefertari and therefore a full sister of Amenhotep I. Whatever her parentage, until recently all experts were in agreement that Ahmose must have been a princess of the royal blood, and that Tuthmosis must have married her in order to make his position as king even more secure. It is relatively common for a legally dubious claimant to a throne to seek to enhance his position by marrying a close female relative of his predecessor, a match which consolidates his claim while removing any potential challenge from the children or grandchildren of the previous king. In Egypt, such political matches appear to have been standard procedure; indeed, the first pharaoh of the Archaic Period, the victorious southern King Narmer, contracted a similar marriage when he married Neith-Hotep, a northern Princess. We should therefore not be too surprised to find that Tuthmosis appeared to follow this prudent plan.
However, Queen Ahmose, who bears the title of ‘King's Sister’ (senet nesu) is never accorded the more important title of ‘King's Daughter’ (sat nesu). The Egyptians were not generally shy of recording their ranks and achievements, and this unusual reticence may therefore be an indication that Ahmose was not the daughter of a king, and by extension that she could not be either the daughter or the sister of Amenhotep I. Instead, she may actually have been the sister or half-sister of Tuthmosis I. If this is the case, we may speculate that their brother–sister marriage must have occurred after Tuthmosis's promotion to heir apparent, as such incestuous marriages are extremely rare outside the immediate royal family. This would suggest that Hatchepsut, and indeed her full brothers and sister, may have been born after Tuthmosis had become co-regent, and that Hatchepsut may therefore have been little more than twelve years old when she married her half-brother to become queen consort.
The 18th Dynasty was to become remarkable for the number of times that the king was married to a close female relation, often his half- or full sister and occasionally even his daughter. Hatchepsut herself was married to her half-brother Tuthmosis II, bearing him at least one daughter who was herself almost certainly intended to marry her half-brother Tuthmosis III. Nor was this phenomenon confined to the early 18th Dynasty. A century after Hatchepsut's reign, King Amenhotep III married his daughter Sitamen and elevated her to the rank of King's Chief Wife alongside her mother, Queen Tiy. Amenhotep III was followed on the throne by his son Akhenaten who married at least one and possibly three of his six daughters, and he was followed in turn by the boy-king Tutankhamen who married his sister(?) Ankhesenamen who bore him at least two still-born children. It is clear that the tradition of fully consummated incestuous marriages was well established within the royal family, and we must not assume that these unions would have been considered in any way distasteful or even unusual by the parties concerned. Indeed, a Late Period papyrus now housed in the Cairo Museum tells the story of Prince Neneferkaptah and Princess Ahwere who had fallen head over heels in love with each other and who wished to marry despite the opposition of their father, who worried aloud about the situation:
If it so happens that I have only two children, is it right to marry one to the other? Should I not rather marry Neneferkaptah to the daughter of a general and Ahwere to the son of another general, so that our family may increase?26
The king was concerned about the match not because the bride and groom were brother and sister, but because it was an insular marriage which would not introduce new members into the royal family. Eventually he relented, gave his children his blessing and his daughter a dowry, and, as Ahwere frankly tells us:
I was taken as a wife to the house of Neneferkaptah… He slept with me that night and found me pleasing. He slept with me again and again and we loved each other.27
To egyptologists working in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many of whom had developed their interest in egyptology as a by-product of their primary interest in Biblical studies, these shamelessly incestuous unions appeared both unnatural and repugnant; ‘a very objectional custom' according to Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson,28 speaking for many of his contemporaries. Such marriages could only be explained as a necessity which could not be avoided. Already heavily influenced by the erroneous theory of a matriarchal Theban royal family, egyptologists now developed the so-called ‘heiress theory’; a theory which neatly explained the intra-family marriages by deducing that the right to rule must be transmitted downwards through the generations via the royal women. It was not enough to be born a royal prince or to be crowned king as it would be in a western-style monarchy – the true ruler of Egypt had to marry the royal heiress who was always the daughter of a king and his consort and who carried the essence of ‘royalness’ in her veins. The heiress then in turn became queen, and mother of both the next king and the next royal heiress.
More recent research, and perhaps a greater willingness to accept the realities of incestuous unions, shows that this heiress theory must be incorrect. Many of the most successful kings of the 18th Dynasty, including Tuthmosis I, II and III, were clearly not the sons of royal women and yet were fully accepted by their people. Conversely Tuthmosis III, Amenhotep I and Amenhotep III, and possibly Tuthmosis I, had non-royal consorts who were treated with at least as much respect as their better-born sisters. We must, therefore, seek some other explanation for the prevalence of incestuous royal marriages at this time.
The dynastic Egyptians, in contrast to most other peoples, ancient and modern, were remarkably relaxed in their attitudes to marriage. They do not seem to have felt the need to impose any state or religious control over the choice of partners and, although the idea of the family was always an important one, the impression given is that marriage – or, more accurately, a sexual union – was of little interest to any but the immediate families of the couple concerned. Co-habitation with slaves, with foreigners, with brothers or sisters and even with relatively young children were all legally permissible, as was polygamy and, it would appear although we have no known examples, polyandry. Therefore, it was possible for any Egyptian man to openly marry or sleep with his sister or one or all of his unmarried daughters without incurring legal penalties. Whether he would have been allowed to sleep with his mother – indeed whether he would have wished to – is another question.
Despite their legal validity, brother–sister unions are very rare until the Roman period when a complex system of inheritance laws forced families to favour brother–sister marriages in an attempt to keep their property intact. Unfortunately, the Egyptian habit of referring to wives and lovers as ‘sisters’ has caused a great deal of confusion in this area; the New Kingdom poet who sighed, ‘My sister is come, my heart fills with joy as I open my arms to enfold her’, was longing for his girlfriend, who was presumably not a close blood relation, and it would appear that most Egyptian males simply did not fancy their sisters and chose to look outside the nuclear family for a mate. We may suggest a variety of reasons for this: local custom, the wish to extend the basic family group, the wish to extend bonds with other families and perhaps a lack of sexual attraction between children raised together, may well have combined to make non-sibling marriage the preferred choice.
The royal family were, however, in an entirely different position. They were unique, exclusive, and had no desire to either increase in numbers or unite with other families. Indeed, they were even prepared to exclude brothers and sons from the immediate family in order to preserve their select status. Incestuous marriage was therefore a convenient means of ensuring the purity of the royal line and restricting the size of the royal family by concentrating ‘royalness’ within a small group of closely related individuals. As an added advantage, brother-sister marriage ensured that a suitable husband could always be found for the highest-ranking princesses who might otherwise have been unable to marry. Whether they were concerned that the husband of a princess might attempt to seize the throne for his own descendants, or whether they simply felt themselves to be superior to all others, the 18th Dynasty royal family was always very careful when it came to marrying off its daughters. Egyptian princesses never made diplomatic foreign marriages and when the King of Babylon, whose own daughter was married to Amenhotep III, inquired about an Egyptian bride for his own harem he was given short shrift: ‘Since the days of old, no Egyptian king's daughter has been given to anyone.’ Ankhesenamen, the young widow of Tutankhamen, broke with 18th Dynasty tradition when she wrote to Suppiluliuma, King of the Hittites, asking him to send a suitable prince: ‘If you could send me one of your sons I would make him my husband.’ Unfortunately, the bridegroom was murdered on the way to meet his bride, and it was not until the 21st Dynasty that an Egyptian princess was sent as a bride to the Jewish King Solomon.
Brother–sister marriages were a useful means of reinforcing the links between the pharaoh and the gods while emphasizing the gulf between the immediate royal family and the rest of mankind. Isis and Osiris, Geb and Nut and Seth and Nephthys had all enjoyed brother–sister unions, although as these six existed at a time when there were no other eligible marriage partners this was perhaps less through choice than through necessity. Whatever the reasons, what had been good enough for the gods was good enough for pharaoh. For those who believed that their royal blood made them profoundly different from other mortals, a sister made the logical choice of spouse, while an Egyptian princess was surely the best possible mother for a future king of Egypt.