Tetisheri was the

matriarch Matriarchy is a social system in which women hold the primary power positions in roles of authority. In a broader sense it can also extend to moral authority, social privilege and control of property. While those definitions apply in general En ...

of the

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Medit ...

ian royal family of the late

17th Dynasty The Seventeenth Dynasty of Egypt (notated Dynasty XVII, alternatively 17th Dynasty or Dynasty 17) was a dynasty of pharaohs that ruled in Upper Egypt during the late Second Intermediate Period, approximately from 1580 to 1550 BC. Its mainly Theba ...

and early 18th Dynasty.

Family

Tetisheri was the daughter of Tjenna and Neferu. The names of Tetisheri's parents are known from mummy bandages found in

TT320 The Royal Cache, technically known as TT320 (previously referred to as DB320), is an Ancient Egyptian tomb located next to Deir el-Bahri, in the Theban Necropolis, opposite the modern city of Luxor. It contains an extraordinary collection of mum ...

Aidan Dodson Aidan Mark Dodson (born 1962) is an English Egyptologist and historian. He has been honorary professor of Egyptology at the University of Bristol since 1 August 2018. Academic career Dodson, born in London on 11 September 1962, studied at Langl ...

and Dyan Hilton, ''The Complete Royal Families of Ancient Egypt'', 2004. She was selected by Senakhtenre, despite her non-royal birth, to be not only his wife but his Great Royal Wife. Tetisheri was the mother of

Seqenenre Tao Seqenenre Tao (also Seqenera Djehuty-aa or Sekenenra Taa, called 'the Brave') ruled over the last of the local kingdoms of the Theban region of Egypt in the Seventeenth Dynasty during the Second Intermediate Period. He probably was the son and ...

, Queen

Ahhotep I Ahhotep I ( egy, jꜥḥ- ḥtp (.w), alternatively Anglicized ''Ahhotpe'' or ''Aahhotep'', " Iah (the Moon) is satisfied") was an ancient Egyptian queen who lived circa 1560–1530 BC, during the end of the Seventeenth Dynasty of Egypt. She was ...

and possibly

Kamose Kamose was the last Pharaoh of the Theban Seventeenth Dynasty. He was possibly the son of Seqenenre Tao and Ahhotep I and the uncle of Ahmose I, founder of the Eighteenth Dynasty. His reign fell at the very end of the Second Intermediate Peri ...

. Pharaoh Ahmose I erected a stela at Abydos to announce the construction of a pyramid and a "house" for Tetisheri. Ahmose refers to the Queen as ''"the mother of my mother, and the mother of my father, great king's wife and king's-mother, Tetisheri"'' ( Breasted).

Burial, cenotaph, and pyramid

Tetisheri was likely buried in Thebes and she may have been reinterred in the royal cache in

. No tomb at Thebes has yet been conclusively identified with Queen Tetisheri, though a mummy that may be hers, known as "Unknown Woman B", was included among other members of the royal family reburied in the Royal Cache. Pharaoh Ahmose had a memorial structure or

cenotaph A cenotaph is an empty tomb or a monument erected in honour of a person or group of people whose remains are elsewhere. It can also be the initial tomb for a person who has since been reinterred elsewhere. Although the vast majority of cenot ...

at Abydos erected in her honour, in the midst of his own extensive mortuary complex at that site. This mudbrick structure was discovered in 1902 by the Egypt Exploration Fund, and was found to contain a monumental stela detailing the dedication by

Ahmose I Ahmose I ( egy, jꜥḥ ms(j .w), reconstructed /ʔaʕaħ'maːsjə/ ( MK), Egyptological pronunciation ''Ahmose'', sometimes written as ''Amosis'' or ''Aahmes'', meaning " Iah (the Moon) is born") was a pharaoh and founder of the Eighteent ...

and his sister-wife Ahmose-Nefertari of a pyramid and enclosure (or shrine) to Tetisheri. Tetisheri 1

Its discoverer, C. T. Currelly, believed the textual reference to a "pyramid" of Tetisheri to refer not to the building in which the stela was found, but rather to the more imposing pyramid associated with a large mortuary temple at its base discovered in 1900 by A. C. Mace. Based on recent discoveries, however, this view can no longer be maintained. The foundations of the structure, originally described by Currelly in 1903 as a "shrine" or " mastaba," was demonstrated in 2004 through the renewed excavations of the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago under the direction of S. Harvey to have actually formed the lowest courses of a brick pyramid, the last queen's pyramid to have been built in Egypt. Portions of the limestone

pyramidion A pyramidion (plural: pyramidia) is the uppermost piece or capstone of an Egyptian pyramid or obelisk. Speakers of the Ancient Egyptian language referred to pyramidia as ''benbenet'' and associated the pyramid as a whole with the sacred ...

or capstone were discovered as well, demonstrating conclusively that this structure was pyramidal in form. Magnetic survey also revealed a brick enclosure some 70 by 90 meters in scale, a feature not detected by earlier archaeologists. These accordingly may now be identified as the features described in Ahmose's stela found within: a pyramid and an enclosure, built in the midst of Ahmose's own mortuary complex. A statuette long in the collections of the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

bearing an inscription naming Tetisheri was identified as a forgery by W. V. Davies, based on the slavish imitation of its inscription from a fragmentary lower portion of a similar statue of the queen (now lost). However, some scholars question this attribution, and have been raising questions as to the potential authenticity of the statuette itself, if not the inscription. In 1980, James Harris and Edward F. Wente conducted a series of X-ray examinations on New Kingdom Pharaoh's crania and skeletal remains, which included the mummified remains of Tetisheri. The analysis in general found strong similarities between the New Kingdom rulers of the

Seventeenth Dynasty The Seventeenth Dynasty of Egypt (notated Dynasty XVII, alternatively 17th Dynasty or Dynasty 17) was a dynasty of pharaohs that ruled in Upper Egypt during the late Second Intermediate Period, approximately from 1580 to 1550 BC. Its mainly Theba ...

and Eighteenth Dynasty and contemporary

Nubians Nubians () ( Nobiin: ''Nobī,'' ) are an ethnic group indigenous to the region which is now northern Sudan and southern Egypt. They originate from the early inhabitants of the central Nile valley, believed to be one of the earliest cradles of ...

with slight differences.

References

{{Queens of Ancient Egypt Queens consort of the Seventeenth Dynasty of Egypt 16th-century BC women

Family

Burial, cenotaph, and pyramid

See also

References