Ahmose Nefertari
| Ahmose-Nefertari in hieroglyphic |
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Ahmose Nefertari was an Ancient Egyptian queen at the beginning of the 18th Dynasty (circa 1540 BC).
It is the Hellenized name of Iahmes Neferitary (Iˁḥ ms Nfr i t r y).
Biography
She was one of the daughters born of the marriage formed by the Theban king Seqenenra and his sister, the lady Ahhotep. Because the country was going through a civil war, in which the Theban troops faced the Hyksos from the North, who had conquered the country a hundred years before, from the first moment Amosis Nefertari was betrothed to her brother Amosis..
When Seqenenra died because of the war, and his successor (brother or son) Kamose also died, the next king was the boy Ahmosis I, and the royal couple, less than ten years old, had to be advised by the queen mother Ahhotep, turned regent. When Ahmose finally reached maturity and was able to continue the war with optimum results, Egypt entered the most prosperous and attractive phase of its history, the New Kingdom, the time of great pharaohs such as the Tuthmose, the Ramses and the Amenhoteps.
Ahmose-Nefertari did not separate from her husband and the influence she exerted on him must have been immense, as she enjoyed great honors and political prerogatives never before seen in a Great Royal Wife. She held the position of second prophetess of Amun, but the one she seemed to like to wear the most was that of "Wife of the god", a powerful title that ended up being transferred from mother to daughter throughout the dynasty as a seal of the purity of royal blood.
On Ahmose's death, the queen watched as her eldest son became King Amenhotep I, and carried on as though she were still the great royal wife. Perhaps this was due to the matriarch's undeniable leadership skills, added to the affection that he undoubtedly inspired in her son. Furthermore, very little is known about the great royal wife of Amenhotep I, so it is possible that she was not qualified to exercise her position and therefore she was replaced by her mother.
Queen Ahmose-Nefertari died at an advanced age, in the early years of Thutmose I. She is depicted in Nubia alongside the viceroy of Kush named Turo in the company of Ahmose and the newly enthroned king. A vase fragment found in KV20 was inscribed with the double cartouche of King Tuthmosis and Queen Ahmose-Nefertari and the epithet indicates that the queen was alive. A large statue of the queen found at Karnak may have been one of the last statues created in her honor before she died, probably in the fifth or sixth year of the reign of Thutmosis I. Her death is recorded on the stele of a wab priest named Nefer. Wolfgang Helck proposed that the annual feast of the queen's cult at Deir el-Medina would commemorate the day of her death. She was probably buried at Dra Abu el-Naga and had a mortuary temple there. Ahmose Nefertari and her son Amenhotep I were deified after her death by the tomb builders of Deir el-Medina, considering them the founders of the order and offering them worship for many generations until the town was abandoned in the time of Ramses XI..
The rank of "Wife of the God" she would pass from generation to generation among the great women of the royal family as a sign of descent from the first of them, considered as the mother of all, Ahmose-Nefertari.
Mummy
At the end of the New Kingdom his mummy was one of those transferred to the cache at Deir el-Bahari. Emile Brugsch unwrapped it in 1885, and it gave off such an offensive odor that he ordered it buried on the grounds of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo until the stench subsided. Her body had been damaged by tomb raiders and her right hand was missing. When she died, she was an elderly woman in her 70s, almost bald, so to hide it, false braids of natural hair had been placed among her few.
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