Whispered from the tongues of ancient historians, NITIQRETI
is a contender for the first female pharaoh.
Her story a mystery, her existence questionable, but her name spoken since
the days of Herodotus and Manetho and found on the Turin Royal Canon.
Herodotus—remembered as the first historian to collect his
research and study its accuracy—claimed only to report the stories he was told;
however, he was known to write them in a vivid folklore manner. In The
Tale of Nitocris (Nitiqreti translated to Greek as Nitocris) he wrote: “...she
succeeded her brother. He had been the king of Egypt, and he had been put to
death by his subjects, who then placed her upon the throne. Determined to
avenge his death, she devised a cunning scheme by which she destroyed a vast
number of Egyptians. She constructed a spacious underground chamber and, on
pretense of inaugurating it, threw a banquet, inviting all those whom she knew
to have been responsible for the murder of her brother. Suddenly as they were
feasting, she let the river in upon them by means of a large, secret duct.”
Yet, “brother” and “sister” in ancient Egypt was a term of
respect. Was it her brother? Her husband, lover? Or someone close? Did it really happen or was it just a
tale? The truth will forever be a
mystery and the stories will write their own but if she did exist, she lived
after the Old Kingdom during the beginning of the First Intermediate
Period. Believed to be the second or
third pharaoh after Pepi II, Manetho states, “...she was the noblest and loveliest woman of her time.”
It wasn’t until the Middle Kingdom that the
first known female pharaoh
appears. SOBEKNEFERU, meaning “beauty of
Sobek” was the daughter of Amenemhat III whose predecessor, Amenemhat IV died
without an heir. Uncertain as to whether
he was the brother of Sobekneferu, the crowns were nonetheless passed onto her
where they remained for just less than four years. During her reign, Sobekneferu ruled under
both feminine and masculine titles but it was her name, encircled by a
cartouche that gave her a seat amongst the kings. Cartouches were reserved for pharaohs as were
pyramids; Sobekneferu received both,
making her decidedly a pharaoh—king of Egypt.
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