Early Woman Ruler of Egypt

by Damien F. Mackey At the approximate time of Moses’s impending return from his exile in the land of Midian, the rulership of Egypt had fallen into the hands of a woman, due, apparently to the lack of male heirs (Exodus 4:19): “And the Lord said to Moses in Midian, ‘Go, return to Egypt; for all the men who sought your life are dead’.” The Hebrew specifically says “the men” (הָ֣אֲנָשִׁ֔ים) here. I have identified this woman ruler variously with Khentkaus of the Fourth and Fifth Dynasty; Nitocris of the Sixth Dynasty; and Sobekneferu(re) of the Twelfth Dynasty, thereby further securing my amalgamating of these dynasties (and kingdoms) in the one era: Triplicating woman ruler Khentkaus (DOC) Triplicating woman ruler Khentkaus | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu I have written on this: Her 6th and 12th dynasty manifestations What happens when kingdoms, rulers and dynasties are set out in a ‘single file’ fashion, instead of being recognised as, in some cases, contemporaneous, is that rulers become duplicated and, hence, tombs, pyramids and sun temples, and so on, attributed to various ones, go missing. This is not because these are missing in reality, but simply because they have already been accounted for in the case of a ruler under his/her other name, in a differently numbered dynasty. However, with my revision of dynasties, these ‘missing links’ can be satisfactorily accounted for. According to an historical scenario that I am building up around the biblical prophet, Moses, the great man’s forty years of life in Egypt (before his exile to Midian) were spanned by only two powerful dynastic male rulers, with a woman-ruler rounding off the dynasty - presumably due to the then lack of male heirs. Women rulers in Egypt, being scarce - and now even scarcer, due to my revision - can be chronologically most useful. For three of my four re-aligned-as-contemporaneous dynasties, the Fourth, Fifth and the Twelfth, have a powerful woman-ruler, or, in the case of Khentkaus (Khentkawes), Fourth Dynasty, at least a most significant queen who possibly ruled. I can only conclude, in the context of my revision, that these supposedly three mighty women, Khentkaus; Nitocris; and Sobekneferu(re); constitute the one woman-ruler triplicated. And hence arise shocks and problems (e.g., the famous “Khentkaus Problem”), “amazement and even sensation” (see below) for Egyptologists, as well as those exasperating anomalies of missing buildings to which I have alluded above. N. Grimal, writing about Nitocris last ruler of the Sixth Dynasty (A History of Ancient Egypt), tells of her yet to be discovered pyramid (p. 128): “Nitocris is the only genuine instance of a female ruler in the Old Kingdom, but unfortunately the pyramid that she must surely have been entitled to build has not yet been discovered”. Yet there is another “instance” of an Old Kingdom female ruler, and that is Khentkaus. Better to say, I think, that there was only one female ruler during Egypt’s Old-Middle Kingdom period. The semi-legendary and shadowy figure of Nitocris needs to be filled out with her more substantial alter egos in Khentkaus and Sobekneferu(re). Grimal (on p. 89) tells of how archaeologically insubstantial Nitocris is: …. Queen Nitocris … according to Manetho was the last Sixth Dynasty ruler. The Turin Canon lists Nitocris right after Merenre II, describing her as the ‘King of Upper and Lower Egypt’. This woman, whose fame grew in the Ptolemaic period, in the guise of the legendary Rhodopis, courtesan and mythical builder of the third pyramid at Giza … was the first known queen to exercise political power over Egypt. …. Unfortunately no archaeological evidence has survived from her reign. …. On p. 171, Grimal, offering a possible reason for the emergence of the woman ruler, Sobekneferu(re), at the end of the Twelfth Dynasty, likens the situation to that at the end of the Sixth Dynasty: The excessive length of the reigns of Sesostris III and Ammenemes III (about fifty years each) had led to various successional problems. This situation perhaps explains why, just as in the late Sixth Dynasty, another [sic] queen rose to power: Sobkneferu. …. She was described in her titulature, for the first time in Egyptian history [sic], as a woman-pharaoh. Whist the conventional history and archaeology has failed to ‘triplicate’ as it ought to have (i) Khentkaus, as (ii) Nitocris, and as (iii) Sobekneferu(re), it has, unfortunately, managed – as we shall now find – to triplicate Khentkaus herself into I, II and III. Here I am following the intriguing discussion of Khentkaus as provided by Miroslav Verner, in his book, Abusir: The Necropolis of the Sons of the Sun (2017). The “obscure and confused period which set in at the end of the Fourth Dynasty”, to which Verner will refer, is due in large part, I believe, to the failure to fill out the period with the other portions of contemporaneous Egyptian history. P. 91 Three Royal Mothers Named Khentkaus. …. But, beside Shepesekaf, there was yet another figure who came to the fore during the obscure and confused period which set in at the end of the Fourth Dynasty. This figure was Queen Khentkaus. In almost every respect she is surrounded by mystery, beginning with her origins and ending with her unusual tomb. P. 95 Among the many extraordinary discoveries from Khentkaus’ tomb complex in Giza, one in particular produced amazement and even a sensation. This was the inscription on a fragment of the granite reading “Mother of two kings of Upper and Lower Egypt, daughter of the god, every good thing she orders is done for her, Khentkaus”. The inscription contained the never before documented title of a queen, and its discovery immediately raised a fundamental controversy amongst archaeologists, since, from a purely grammatical point of view, two translations … were possible …. King of Upper and Lower Egypt, and mother of the king of Upper and Lower Egypt. Pp. 99-100 All the available evidence concerning the titulary of Khentkaus and the form and location of her tomb in the royal cemetery in Giza clearly suggests that she not only belonged to the royal line buried there but that, at the end of the Fourth Dynasty, she played a very important role in dynastic politics …. Importantly, in the vicinity of Khentkaus’ tomb were found several artifacts bearing the name of King Khafre which may indirectly suggest a closer relationship …. between the two personalities. This possibility seems to be supported by an (intrusive?) fragment of a stone stela, discovered in the adjacent building abutting Menkaure’s valley temple, with a damaged hieroglyphic inscription reading “[beloved of] her father, king’s daughter… kau”. According to some Egyptologists, the inscription might refer to Khentkaus and suggest that she could have been a king’s daughter. …. … The confusing array of different but incomplete historical sources and theories attempting to interpret them finally earned the question its own telling title in Egyptological literature: the ‘Khentkaus problem’. Khentkaus II While Miroslav Verner will take the conventional line that centuries separated the Fourth from the Sixth Dynasty, my view is that ‘they’ were one and the same dynasty. P. 105 The mortuary cult of Queen Khentkaus II lasted … for about two centuries up until the end of the Sixth Dynasty. P. 106 The most significant result of the excavation of the pyramid complex of Khentkaus at Abusir was the surprising discovery that there were two different royal mothers bearing the same name as Khentkaus and the same unusual title “Mother of the two kings of Upper and Lower Egypt”, each of them enjoying high esteem and a high-level cult at the place of her burial – Khentkaus I in Giza and Khentkaus II in Abusir. Khentkaus III P. 108 Quite recently a third Fifth Dynasty queen named Khentkaus was discovered in Abusir. ….