Royalty's Role
As we have seen, an important female member of the priesthood was the God's Wife. She served the cult of the gods Amun of Thebes and Min of Akhmim already in the Middle Kingdom. This period was followed by a long Second Intermediate Period, a time of political fragmentation of the country with the northern half under foreign dynasts. The Eighteenth Dynasty, which reunited the country under a strong centralized government, resurrected this God's Wife position for the queen who functioned at Karnak, in what became the greatest temple of the land, the home of Amun-Re in his new role as King of the Gods. The position was probably held first by the pharaoh Ahmose's strong queen, Ahmose-Nefertari, whose gigantic coffin and later deification give us an indication of an unusually high standing in the land. A badly broken text, the so-called Donation Stela, has been interpreted in various ways by scholars (B. Menu 1977), but seems to indicate that this God's Wife also gained control over the position of Second Prophet of the Amun cult. The text indicates the God's Wife had considerable financial and political support from the king and was promised the continuation of her religious office and the right to pass it on to future royal women. Chapels built in the reign of Amenhotep I, her son, contained scenes on their walls depicting Ahmose-Nefertari and the king performing the ritual for Amun.
After Ahmose Nefertari, the title of God's Wife of Amun was passed to her daughter Meritamun, and next to her grand-daughter, the princess Hatshepsut who was God's Wife during her early career as wife of the pharaoh Thutmose II. Some scholars think that this religious role for the queen may have been negated later in the dynasty when kings who followed Hatshepsut (the female pharaoh who began her career as a God's Wife) may have feared that another strong woman could use the office to gain power and influence and become a political threat. When Hatshepsut became regent for Thutmose III and a
defacto pharaoh, her daughter, Neferure, assumed the cultic role. The princess is portrayed at Karnak, on the walls of her mother's so-called Red Chapel, holding a mace, the insignia of her office. The mother of Hatshepsut's successor is also credited with this rank, and it can be traced through royal women (Troy,1986, 165-66) until the tangled political morass which ushered in the reign of Amenhotep III. This pharaoh's non-royal wife, Queen Tiye, played the role of Hathor on earth to her husband's sun-god role in his royal jubilee ceremonies, while their daughter, Sit-Amun, was pronounced the Daughter of Amun. (Troy, 1986, 181).
During this time another title appears used by an unidentified royal woman on the wall of Amenhotep's Luxor temple. This is "God's Hand" and has been assumed by G. Robins (1993,153) to relate to the woman's cultic role as a manipulator of the King of the God's sex organ. However, a god is generally understood as the most virile of males, and this is certainly true of Amun-Re who is often portrayed in the state of erection. Thus why he would need help from the hand of any woman is mystifying, and suggests that the title may refer to the active role of carrying out the god's will (as in our "right hand man" expression) of the queen in the realm--an authority that texts of the time definitely indicate Queen Tiy possessed. Indeed other Egyptologists, such as Kitchen recently, translate the title as "Divine Hand," and it is found used by goddesses unrelated to the Amun cult. Later human holders of the title also occupied the highest position in the temple hierarchy so again our explanation may have some credibility.
The monotheistic revolution of Akhenaten and Nefertiti, which did away altogether with support for Amun and the pantheon he headed, did not of course record these roles for the queen and princesses, but Queen Nefertiti was frequently portrayed alone or with her daughter sacrificing at the high altar of her god, thus assuming a high sacerdotal role in the Aten cult, even as she seems to have functioned as a goddess (the earthly manifestation of Tefnut to her husband's Shu).
After this heretical interlude, the traditional pantheon was restored; Amun remained its king; and the title of his God's Wife was resurrected for royal women of the Ramesside dynasties, rathering than dying out as Robins contends in her often-quoted article on the title (Cameron and Kuhrt, 1993, 76). The God's Wife title is indeed found on the monuments of the wife of Ramses I (mother of Seti I) (Kitchen, I, 5); on those of the wife of Seti I (Kitchen II, 752:10; Kitchen II, 846:4 ), and those of the favorite queen of Ramses II, Nefertari (Kitchen II, 851:1 and as pointed out already by Lana Troy (1986, 168-171). Queen Nefertari is shown (in her own tomb's wall paintings) sacrificing at the high altar, just as Nefertiti of the previous dynasty had been so often depicted on more public monuments. This may indicate a role for her similar to the God's Wife. We cannot know whether Nefertari actually did preside at the altar of an important temple or whether, as some have suggested, she is only depicted doing this in the privacy of her tomb. However, the earlier representations of the women officiants on Hatshepsut's and Nefertiti's monuments makes clear that the queen did have an important religious role to play. Queen Nefertari is recorded as present at the investiture of a new First Prophet at Karnak (Kitchen, III, 282:12), and there remains the possibility that she could, in certain cults, within the inner sanctum of the temple, approach the great deities directly. She is also depicted in the smaller temple at Abu Simbel being crowned by goddesses, and it is clear from a contemporary document (Kitchen, 2000, 186, 9) that this Hathoric temple was as much for honoring her as for the great goddess. Ramses II's daughter Merytamun bore the rather incongruous sounding title of God's Wife of Hathor and also held the position of Chief of the Heneret of Amun-Re at Karnak (Kitchen,1996, 845:10). Although sporadically attested due to the poor preservation of monuments of royal women, the title God's Wife continues into the next dynasty, found with a wife of Ramses III, who was also a Divine Votaress, and for a daughter of Ramses VI.
Like the King of Egypt, the principle queen and mother of the heir to the throne was also considered a divinity, be it Hathor (daughter-wife of the sun-god with whom the king was equated) or as Isis (the personified throne and mother of the god Horus, another divinity equated with the king). Artistic portrayals of queens as the earthly manifestation of the goddess Hathor (in the case of Tiy of the Eighteenth Dynasty and Tuya and Nefertari of the Nineteenth), or the primeval mother-goddess Tefnut (as has been suggested for Nefertiti) are supplemented by frequent portrayals in temples and colossal statuary of the royal wives and daughters of the New Kingdom, in comparison to the royal sons who almost never appear on existing monuments. This has led some (beginning with Troy, 1986) to suggest that divine kingship was really an androgynous, or bi-polar concept dependent on both the male and female element that kept the cosmos functioning properly. However, the much greater prominence given to the king on the monuments and in the burial place casts some doubt on this theory. On the other hand, it must be significant that the queen and princesses are usually present (if not prominent) on a large number of pharaonic monuments, and the queen and her fecundity (as wife and mother of the most important person on earth, i.e. pharaoh) gave her a major role to play in the responsibility for the continual well-being of the nation and the divine order of the universe. The mother of king Ramses II, was celebrated with a towering but elegant statue in her mortuary cult chapel at her son's temple on the West Bank at Thebes (B. Lesko, 1998, 158) and his daughter, Merytamun, was depicted in an even more colossal statue at the temple of Min and Isis in Akhmim (Hawass, 2000,189). That Min was a fertility god gives impetus to the theory that the princess played an important role as an intecessor with the divine sphere to ensure the fertility of the Nile valley and the prosperity of the country. Interestingly, the mummy of a young daughter of Ramses II was actually found at Akhmim (Llagostera, 1998, 691-96), which suggests that some royal women were resident at this temple of a god, important for the very survival of the land. Recently a German-Egyptian expedition discovered another colossal statue of a queen of Ramses II at Tel Basta in the Delta which suggests again that royal women played leadership roles at major temples. There also remains a record of a sister of Ramses II who served as Chief of the Heneret of the sun god, Pre (Kitchen, 2000, 270).
The queens of the Twentieth Dynasty, judging from wall scenes in the temple of Ramses III at Medinet Habu on the West Bank at Luxor, continued to take part in great national religious events, such as the Feast of Min, in which, by her presence, she probably represented the female element inherent in the sustenance and creation of life. Women of the royal harem of that reign are depicted wearing head dresses associated with performers in some cults, such as Hathor's, and it would not be surprising if this is a continuance of a long tradition, seen already in the Eleventh Dynasty temple at Deir el-Bahri, of the pharaoh's women being priestesses for that deity, the goddess of love and one of the divine mothers of the pharaoh. Documentation is far from adequate. Too many tombs and temples of this period are in ruins or remain unexcavated at present to allow adequate reconstruction of the religious roles of royal women at the end of the New Kingdom. The fact, however, that a wife of Ramses III held the position of Divine Votaress suggests her presence at Thebes and her identity with the "Noble Lady" referred to in some Late Ramesside letters.
