After driving the Hyksos out of Egypt to the east, King Ahmose first sacked and then rebuilt their capital city of Avaris. His new Delta citadel included a fortified palace whose frescoed walls were decorated with vibrant scenes of bull jumping against a labyrinthine background representing the bull jumping arena. These scenes are so familiar to those found on the walls of the contemporary Minoan palace of Knosses that we must conclude that Ahmose employed Minoan artists. Bulls had religious significance in Egypt, where they were associated with solar cults, but jumping bulls and bulls were purely Minoan rituals. So why did Ahmose, in all other respects a very traditional Egyptian, choose to decorate his northern palace in this extravagant foreign style? We have no idea, but some scholars have suggested that he may have designed his palace to please a Minoan wife. This idea ties in well with an inexplicable title held by the Mother of King Ahhotep, ‘Mistress of the Shores of Hau-nebut’. Hau-nebut is an unknown land that could well be Crete. But there is still no more concrete evidence to support this theory, and some scholars believe that Hau-nebut has been a more general geographical term meaning the countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea.
Ahmose married both of his sisters (Ahmose-Nefertari and Ahmose-Nebta) and Ahmose-Nefertari became his consort. Even more influential than her fearsome mother Ahhotep, Ahmose-Nefertari held a series of titles including the now-standard ‘King’s Daughter, King’s Sister and King’s Great Wife’, and the more unusual ‘God’s Wife of Amun’. . The Donation Stela, recovered from the Karnak temple, tells us how Ahmose bought the ‘Second Priesthood of Amun’ to endow his wife with a fund of land, property and male administrators, an endowment that would fall to the queen and her descendants. her. forever. A third, completely separate religious position, the office of Divine Worshiper, brought Ahmose-Nefertari even more independent wealth. This personal income enabled Ahmose-Nefertari to make an unprecedented series of ritual offerings throughout Egypt, and his name has been recorded in temples at Abydos, at Thebes, and at Serabit el-Khadim in Sinai, the latter being a focus of the Hathoric cult. which would become particularly associated with the royal woman of the Eighteenth Dynasty.
Ahmose-Nefertari did not limit his influence to the religious sphere. Texts recovered from the Memphite limestone quarries and the Asyut alabaster quarries record his name alongside that of Ahmose. When the king decided to build the Abydos cenotaph for his grandmother Tetisheri, he first discussed his plans with his ‘companion’; his use of the word companion perhaps suggests that Ahmose-Nefertari should be equated with the Egyptian goddess Maat, the constant companion of Ra and all the kings of Egypt.
Ahmose-Nefertari gave birth to at least four sons and five daughters, five of whom died in infancy or childhood. After Ahmose’s death, she acted as regent for his young son, Amenhotep I. Later, after the death of his childless sister-wife Meritamun, she resumed the role of consort to support her son, playing an active role in the selection of Amenhotep. she was her adoptive successor, Thutmose I. When she died during the reign of Thutmose, she was buried in the Dra Abu el-Naga cemetery on the western shore of Thebes. Her mortuary temple was close to her, but it’s not nearly completely destroyed.
The mummy of Ahmose-Nefertari, stored in a huge coffin that also housed the body of King Ramesses III of the 20th Dynasty, was recovered from the Deir el-Bahari mummy repository. Unwrapped by Emile Brugschin in September 1885, her decomposing body smelled so foul that it was promptly reburied on the museum grounds until the foul odor was gone. Re-examination of her remains, now free of odors, has shown that Ahmose-Nefertari died at the age of 70, an impressive age even by today’s standards. Her thinning hair had been augmented with a series of fake braids that would magically become real hair in the Afterlife, and she shared the familiar trait of buck teeth already seen on the mummy attributed to her grandmother. , Tetisheri. The right hand of Ahmose-Nefertari was missing, presumably stolen by former thieves looking for jewels.
Mother and son were so closely linked that, after their deaths, both were deified as patrons of the state town of Deir el-Medina, on the west bank, the town built to house the workers involved in digging and decorating the tombs. reales in the Valley of the Kings (and later Valley of the Queens). Here Ahmose-Nefertari, now honored as a goddess of resurrection, ‘Lady of Heaven’ and ‘Lady of the West’, would be worshiped until the end of the New Kingdom. Often in this context, she was shown with black skin denoting fertility and rebirth rather than decay.
