CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Early Studies in Queenship Henri
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CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Early studies in queenship Henri Gauthier, in his three volumes recording the names and titles given for members of the Egyptian royal families laid the foundation for all subsequent studies that had as their theme tne study of these people, The year after Gauthier’s first volume appeared Janet Buttles published her volume on the better-known Egyptian queens of the pharaonic 2 . period. These two studies were the only substantial scnolarly works that were written about the wives of the kings until Wilfrieq Seipel’s dissertation appeared in 1980.3 During this interval of over seventy years a number of 4 articles on the titles of queens, reports from archaeologists , . 5 6 7 8 ;such as Jequier, Hassan, Emery, Farag and Iskander ), and 9 special studies that focused on individual queens" were produced, put none of these included studies that looked at the overall pattern of queenship. This overview had to wait until 1359, when a orief chapter by Sleeker appeared in m s study of the religious aspects of kingship. In this chapter, which provided a very general view of the role of the queen , 10 during the pharaonic period, Bleeker decried the lack of comprehensive studies in this field, but another two decades were to pass before Seipel’s work on queens appeared. Seipel’s work, which focused only on Dynasties I - VI, in its detailed descriptions of the extant material has provided an invaluable record of each of the occasions on which the individual queens were mentioned. The general theme of his work centred on the titulary of the queens,' presenting for the first time, a study on the development of this aspect of queenship. Like many of the dissertations submitted in this field, unfortunately, it has not been published, A rigorous investigation of the genealogical network, titulary and iconography of the early New Kingdom queens was , 12 presented by Gay Robins in another unpublished work in 1981. Another important aspect of her work was an examination of the role of the so-called ’heiress princess’ in determining the heir to the throne. Robins was able to demonstrate that neither the hmt ntr n Jmn, nor any ’heiress princess’ determined the succession in this New Kingdom period. In 1982 Lisa Kuchman Sabbahy completed her study on the 3 1 3 titulary and Iconography of queens from Dynasty I - XVII, This work provided a valuable extension to both Seipel’s study and that of Robins. Thus, the queens from Dynasties I - XVIII had now been collected into a series of studies, mainly occupied with their titulary, for the first time since 1908, Kuchman Sabbahy’s work, however, also remains unpublished, ana some of the Dynasty XVII material has now been superceded by a 14 15 number of articles from Vandersleyen, Robins,' 16 17 B1ankenberg-van Delden, and Troy, so that major adjustments to the historical place of some of the kings’ wives needed to be made. Some of these studies have rendered several generalisations (especially concerning the titulary of queens) invalid, and this information also needs to be incorporated into some holistic work. 1 8 With so much work having been done in numerous fields there has been for some time a need to gather these studies together to examine and evaluate the various developments in titulary, iconography, and political activity that must have taken place over the centuries and, from this synthesis, to attempt to ascertain the roles played by the wives of the kings in Egyptian history. The first of such syntheses was published in 1986 with Troy’s work on the role of the queen in 1 9 regard to Egyptian myth and history. The breadth of this study, spanning the period from the First Dynasty to the end of the Pharaonic period (and, briefly, including some discussion on the role of the Ptolemaic queens), has provided some of the much needed synthesis hitherto lacking. It was also the first occasion on which an intensive study of religion vis a vis the queen had been attempted. Although its focus is religious, rather than historic (as the title suggests), Troy’s work has been a benchmark for our understanding of the role of the Egyptian queen, and her work exposes the different Egyptian concepts concerned with the royal women as daughters, wives and mothers of kings. Her conclusions demonstrate that the role of the royal women was critical in the Egyptian belief in the regeneration of the kingship.* u 20 Two years later Peter Janosi submitted his dissertation 21 on the pyramid complexes of queens, only one article as yet 22 appearing in published form. This was the first time that a comprehensive study of the queens’ monuments had been undertaken and, as a result, a number of misconceptions 2 3 concerning these tombs nave been cleared up. " In looking at the development of the queen’s pyramid complex, and its difference from that of the king’s, Janosi’s research has added another dimension to our understanding of the importance a 24 of the queen, particularly in her role as king’s mother.’ Janosi’s findings have given further emphasis to the conclusions already reached by Robins, Kuchman Sabbahy and Troy concerning the special position given to the queen mother within Egyptian society. His additional observations on the 25 non-pyramidal forms of tombs for the wives of the kings have also revealed the value of a comprehensive study for understand!ng the religious, as well as the architectural changes that took place during the Old Kingdom. Together with the work of Seipel, and the individual contributions made by those scholars mentioned earlier, research within these past ten years has resulted in an enormous development in our understanding of a field which previously had lain neglected. Aims of this study The present work is, necessarily, heavily indebted to the work of these scholars, but the aim of this study differs from theirs, in that its primary attempt has been to focus on the historic position of the individual queens from Dynasty I - XVII. As a consequence, the prosopographlcal aspect of tne individual has taken a priority in the research. A prosopographical register of queens is provided in Volume III of this study. The entries are not intended to be major studies of individual queens but, rather, a compendium of source material for further research. To this end a fairly comprehensive bibliography accompanies each entry, as well as a summary of significant elements relating to the queen’s tomb - where these details are known. Each entry provides a list of titles held by the queen, together with any discussion that had bearing on the individual but, unlike the previous studies, I have not listed every occasion on which the individual’s titles appeared, since that has been adequately covered by the works already mentioned. To avoid unnecessary discussion within the entries, a commentary on each of the titles has been given in Chapter 2. Volume I of this work consists of a collection of studies on aspects of queenship between Dynasties I - XVII. However, while it is appreciated that the king’s mother had an even more esteemed role to play than that of the king’s wife, the royal mother has not been the central focus of this study. Rather, the aim of these separate chapters has been to select major issues affecting the wives of the kings during the designated period. The major issue of the religious implications inherent in the role of the royal women has not been discussed as a unitary issue (although comments on particular individuals regarding this aspect have been made in 26 the prosopographical register). Troy’s study has already dealt more than adequately with this aspect of queenship, and the present dissertation aims not at reiterating material already provided elsewhere, but at reviewing the position of the queen from an historical perspective. For the same reason, the iconographic aspects of queenship have not been collected into a unit, but the significant iconographi c instances relating to individual queens have been discussed in the prosopographical entries. However, in those chapters which survey the position of the queen for the major periods (Chapters 4, 5 and 7), an overview of the evidence from the monuments, the titulary and the iconography for that period is provided there. The earliest chapter looks at the titles given to the queen throughout the period indicated and, as was the intention of the dissertation as a whole, the treatment of this subject has taken an historic, rather than a generic perspective. The same approach has been taken in the 8 discussion on the harim, in Chapter 3. The remaining chapters look at problems and issues arising from the Ear 1y Dynastic period, the Old Kingdom and 27 the period from Dynasty XI - XVII. These separate studies conclude with a chapter on the hmt ntr n Jmn, one of the most •_____ az______ , prestigious offices held by some of the queens at the end of the Seventeenth Dynasty, and already the subject of two 28 important monographs. In that chapter an examination of Gitton’s thesis has been undertaken, in the light of the re-evaluation of the genealogy of the late Seventeenth 29 Dynasty, some of which has bearing on Gitton’s conclusions. As a result of these studies it is hoped that some further understanding of the status of the wives of the Egyptian kings may begin to emerge, and significant patterns and alterations to their roles in Egyptian society may become apparent. Definitions and scope of this study In attempting this research, one of the priorities was the definition of the word ’queen’, as used in this dissertation.