NEFERTARI
The sad destiny of the favorite bride
NEFERTARI
The sad destiny of the favorite bride
| A little more North of the Great
Temple in Abu Simbel, there is a smaller rocky temple that the pharaoh dedicated
to Nefertari. Of Teban origin (but there are no proofs of this) she certainly
was the most loved among the pharaoh’s wives, both by the pharaoh as by the
people. “The most beautiful one”, this is the meaning of the queen’s name, and
actually the numerous portraits prove her charm and the delicacy of her features.
Ramses married her before succeeding his father and he wanted her with him
everywhere. Even in the paintings and in the inscriptions of the monuments she
is often beside her husband in very affectionate poses. As in the detail of the
temple in Luxor where the queen seems to be caressing a leg of Ramses’s
colossal. Even in the political life Nefertari had an important role. Her
contacts by letter and the exchanging of gifts with the queen of the ittiti ,
Piduhepa, surely had a positive influence on the peace process between the
people. She gave the pharaoh six children, two girls, Meritamon and Nebettan who
later will both be Ramses’s II brides and queens, and four boys. Of these,
nobody became king because they died quite young. In fact it was Merenptah, one of Istnofret’s sons, the others royal bride, who ascended to the throne after his father’s death. Nefertari should have been beside her husband for the Abu Simbel inauguration. But probably she didn’t attend to it. A hypothesis halfway between romance and history tells that the queen actually died in Abu Simbel night on the threshold of the temple she would have shared with her husband for eternity. She died around forty years old the 30th year of her husband’s reign. She would have given her oldest daughter the task to inaugurate the sanctuary with Ramses. Nefertari was buried with all honors in the Valley of the Queens. In her tomb, discovered in 1904 by Schiapparelli not much was found: the mummy and her funeral outhit had been stolen. In spite of this the beautiful paintings on the walls, recently restored, make of this place one of the jewels of ancient Egypt.
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