Hetepheres

Queen Hetepheres I was the sister and wife of the Egyptian Pharaoh Snefru, and mother of Khufu, and is thought to have been the daughter of Huni. She may have died during the reign of Khufu. She was also the grandmother of Hetepheres II.

Her sarcophagus and funerary furniture was discovered in 1925 near the satellite pyramids of the Great Pyramid of Giza in shaft G700X of a pit tomb. [Aidan Dodson & Dyan Hilton, The Complete Royal Families of Ancient Egypt, Thames & Hudson (2004), p.57] It was in good condition and most of the contents were intact. Although the sarcophagus was sealed, and the canopic jars were intact, Hetepheres' mummy was missing. Those are the oldest examples of canopic jars known, so it has been suggested that Queen Hetepheres was the first royal Egyptian to have her organs dried out and preserved.

The reasons for her missing body have been hotly debated. Dr. Mark Lehner has suggested that she was originally buried at another site, but because the original site was robbed and the mummy destroyed, the remaining contents were moved later to the pyramid, and the sarcophagus sealed to hide the evidence of the missing body from the surviving members of her family.

Dr. Zahi Hawass has suggested that Hetepheres was originally buried at G 1a, the northernmost of the small pyramids, and that after the robbery a new shaft was excavated for a new tomb. This would explain the evidence of tampering on the tomb objects.

The contents of the tomb provide us with many details of the luxury and ways of life of the Fourth dynasty of Egypt. The items found in the tomb are on display the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, with replicas of the main funerary furnishings in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts. [Lawrence Berman, Rita E. Freed, and Denise Doxey. Arts of Ancient Egypt. Museum of Fine Arts Boston. 2003. pp.70-71. ISBN 0878466614]

References

Literature

*Wolfram Grajetzki: "Ancient Egyptian Queens – a hieroglyphic dictionary", London 2005

ee also

* Egyptian Fourth Dynasty Family Tree