Tati (18th/17th century BC) was an ancient Egyptian queen. She is the only queen known by name from the Fourteenth Dynasty. Her position is unknown. Unlike the other queens for the Fourteenth Dynasty, Tati seems to have played an official political role. A total of eleven scarab name seals of Tati have been found. They bear both her name and her royal titles enclosed in a

cartouche In Egyptian hieroglyphs, a cartouche is an oval with a line at one end tangent to it, indicating that the text enclosed is a royal name. The first examples of the cartouche are associated with pharaohs at the end of the Third Dynasty, but the fea ...

. Such seals are otherwise only known for kings,

heirs apparent An heir apparent, often shortened to heir, is a person who is first in an order of succession and cannot be displaced from inheriting by the birth of another person; a person who is first in the order of succession but can be displaced by the b ...

and royal treasurers of the Fourteenth Dynasty, and the use of the cartouche is attested otherwise mainly for kings. Tati's seals have been found at Leontopolis and Abydos. Since her scarabs are of two designs, this has allowed them to be dated to the reign of

Sheshi Maaibre Sheshi (also Sheshy) was a ruler of areas of Egypt during the Second Intermediate Period. The dynasty, chronological position, duration and extent of his reign are uncertain and subject to ongoing debate. The difficulty of identification ...

, since the designs correspond to a change that took place during his reign, as evidenced by his hundreds of surviving seals. The most likely explanation for her prominence is that she was the wife of Sheshi. The Egyptologist

Kim Ryholt Kim Steven Bardrum Ryholt (born 19 June 1970) is a professor of Egyptology at the University of Copenhagen and a specialist on Egyptian history and literature. He is director of the research centeCanon and Identity Formation in the Earliest Litera ...

suggested that Tati's marriage was probably part of a dynastic alliance between Sheshi and the

Kushite The Kingdom of Kush (; Egyptian: 𓎡𓄿𓈙𓈉 ''kꜣš'', Assyrian: ''Kûsi'', in LXX grc, Κυς and Κυσι ; cop, ''Ecōš''; he, כּוּשׁ ''Kūš'') was an ancient kingdom in Nubia, centered along the Nile Valley in what i ...

rulers of Kerma. This is suggested by the strong relations the Fourteenth Dynasty is known to have had with Kerma, as well as by the names of Tati and her presumed son. The name Tati is attested in earlier

execration texts Execration texts, also referred to as proscription lists, are ancient Egyptian hieratic texts, listing enemies of the pharaoh, most often enemies of the Egyptian state or troublesome foreign neighbors. The texts were most often written upon stat ...

naming a Kushite queen (spouse of Awaw) as one of the enemies of the

pharaoh Pharaoh (, ; Egyptian: ''pr ꜥꜣ''; cop, , Pǝrro; Biblical Hebrew: ''Parʿō'') is the vernacular term often used by modern authors for the kings of ancient Egypt who ruled as monarchs from the First Dynasty (c. 3150 BC) until the an ...

. It is possible that this earlier Tati was an ancestor and namesake of the Egyptian queen. A royal lineage for Tati would also explain why she of all the consorts of the Fourteenth Dynasty was accorded such high status, since her marriage was one of equals, forming an alliance between kingdoms. According to Ryholt, Tati's son by Sheshi was

Nehesy Nehesy Aasehre (Nehesi) was a ruler of Lower Egypt during the fragmented Second Intermediate Period. He is placed by most scholars into the early 14th Dynasty, as either the second or the sixth pharaoh of this dynasty. As such he is considered t ...

(''nḥsy''), whose name means "the

Nubia Nubia () (Nobiin: Nobīn, ) is a region along the Nile river encompassing the area between the first cataract of the Nile (just south of Aswan in southern Egypt) and the confluence of the Blue and White Niles (in Khartoum in central Sudan), or ...

n", referring to the region around Kerma. On this theory, Nehesy probably received his name from his mother. Since he is known to have been an old man at the time of his accession, it is likely that Tati had died by then. There are no references to her with the title of

queen mother A queen mother is a former queen, often a queen dowager, who is the mother of the reigning monarch. The term has been used in English since the early 1560s. It arises in hereditary monarchies in Europe and is also used to describe a number of ...

. Ryholt's interpretation has been challenged by a newly found

stela A stele ( ),Anglicized plural steles ( ); Greek plural stelai ( ), from Greek , ''stēlē''. The Greek plural is written , ''stēlai'', but this is only rarely encountered in English. or occasionally stela (plural ''stelas'' or ''stelæ''), whe ...

that places Nehesy at the end rather than the beginning of the

Second Intermediate Period The Second Intermediate Period marks a period when ancient Egypt fell into disarray for a second time, between the end of the Middle Kingdom and the start of the New Kingdom. The concept of a "Second Intermediate Period" was coined in 1942 by ...

. According to the stela, he was the brother of the "king's sister", Tany, who was most likely of Theban origin, making it unlikely that his mother was Tati.

Notes

Bibliography

* * {{Queens of Ancient Egypt Nubian people People of the Fourteenth Dynasty of Egypt 2nd-millennium BC deaths 2nd-millennium BC births 18th-century BC women 17th-century BC women Year of birth unknown Place of birth unknown Year of death unknown Queens consort of the Fourteenth Dynasty of Egypt