Nefertari

Nefertari an Egyptian queen of the Nineteenth Dynasty (flourished c. 1290-1250 BC), the beloved principal wife of Pharaoh Ramesses II and one of the best documented royal women of ancient Egypt. She is remembered above all for her lavishly decorated tomb in the Valley of the Queens and for the temple Ramesses dedicated to her at Abu Simbel.

Identity and Titles

Nefertari, whose name means the beautiful companion, was the chief queen of Ramesses II, who ruled Egypt for more than sixty years in the thirteenth century BC. Her titles included Great Royal Wife, Lady of the Two Lands and God's Wife of Amun, and she appears beside the king in reliefs at Thebes, Memphis, Abu Simbel and elsewhere, a visibility that marks her exceptional standing at court.

Nothing certain is known of her parentage. Some scholars have suggested a connection with the royal family of the preceding dynasty, and others have proposed a noble or military background, but the evidence does not permit a firm conclusion. She was already married to Ramesses when he ascended the throne around 1279 BC and became his most prominent consort.

The king's other wives and his many children are well attested, but Nefertari consistently occupies the first place in the monuments and in the king's expressions of affection. Ramesses fathered dozens of sons and daughters by several women, and Nefertari bore him at least four sons and two daughters, though none of them succeeded him as pharaoh.

Role as Queen and Diplomat

The Great Royal Wife in the New Kingdom was not merely a consort but a figure of religious and political significance. She participated in temple ritual, sometimes in the role of a priestess or as the counterpart of the king in ceremonies, and she could own property and administer her own household and estates. Nefertari's prominence in the monuments reflects the genuine importance of the office.

She is particularly associated with diplomacy. Correspondence and gifts between the Egyptian and Hittite courts after the great peace treaty of around 1259 BC mention queens as intermediaries, and Nefertari is thought to have exchanged letters and presents with the Hittite queen Puduhepa. Such exchanges were part of the mechanism by which the two great powers maintained peace and managed their relations.

Her religious role is also documented. She was linked with the goddesses Hathor and Neith and with the divine maternity of Isis, and her identification with such goddesses in royal iconography served to frame the queen as a source of order and fertility for the realm. These associations are especially vivid in the decoration of her tomb and of her temple at Abu Simbel.

The Temple at Abu Simbel

At Abu Simbel in Nubia, Ramesses II carved two temples into the sandstone cliffs. The larger celebrates the king and the gods, and a smaller one, dedicated to the goddess Hathor and to Nefertari herself, has a facade of six colossal figures, four of the king and two of the queen. It is rare and significant that a queen was represented on this scale and named in the dedication.

Inside the smaller temple, Nefertari is shown in the company of Hathor and Isis, offering to the gods and being presented by the king. The decoration places her within the divine order as an agent of blessing and protection, and the structure as a whole dignifies her memory as a partner in the king's divine kingship rather than as a mere accessory.

The temples were later buried by sand and saved from loss by the international rescue campaign of the 1960s, when the construction of the Aswan High Dam threatened them with flooding. The monuments were cut into blocks and re-erected on higher ground, an engineering and archaeological triumph that preserved for the world one of the most striking tributes paid by an Egyptian king to his queen.

Her Tomb in the Valley of the Queens

Nefertari's tomb, designated QV66, lies in the Valley of the Queens near Thebes and is among the most beautiful of all Egyptian tombs. Discovered in 1904, it is celebrated for the quality and freshness of its wall paintings, which cover the walls and ceilings with scenes from the Book of the Dead and the journey of the soul through the afterlife.

The decoration shows the queen before the gods and goddesses, being led and presented, and it includes passages from funerary texts addressed to her by name. The colours, the refinement of the drawing and the elegance of the figures make the tomb a masterpiece of New Kingdom art and a principal source for the study of royal funerary religion.

The tomb was closed to the public for many years because the paintings were damaged by humidity and by the breath of visitors, and a programme of conservation and monitoring has sought to stabilise them. Modern visitors often see a replica, while the original is protected, a measure reflecting the fragility of the ancient painted surface and the pressure of tourism.

Death, Memory and Legacy

Nefertari probably died around 1250 BC, some twenty-five years before her husband, and she was buried in the tomb prepared for her. The cause of her death is unknown. Her loss is thought to be reflected in the unusual tenderness of the inscriptions Ramesses composed for her, in which he calls her the one for whom the sun shines and his beloved companion.

After her death the king's later chief wives included another queen named Isetnofret and, in his old age, the Hittite princess Maathorneferure, but none appears to have matched Nefertari's place in his affections or in the monumental record. Her memory was preserved in the temples she shared with him and in the tomb that bears her name.

Her reputation today rests on the extraordinary art created in her honour and on the glimpse it gives of a queen who was at once wife, priestess and diplomatic partner. The tenderness of Ramesses's inscriptions and the scale of Abu Simbel have made her, alongside figures such as Hatshepsut and Nefertiti, one of the most recognisable women of the ancient world.

See also

• Ramesses II
• Abu Simbel
• Valley of the Queens
• Great Royal Wife