Nitokris (Ancient Egypt)

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Name of Nitokris
Royal Papyrus Turin (No.IV.8)
V10A N35
X1 Z5 		M17 N29
D21 		X1
Z4 		G7 V11A G7

Neith-ikerti
Nj.t-jqr.tj
Neith is excellent (female)
(with the name ideogram
for a king who represents the
Horus falcon)
Royal Papyrus Turin (No.IV.8)
zA Z1 p
t 		H

Saptah
(Sa Ptah)
S3 Ptḥ
son of Ptah
Greek
for  Manetho 		Νίτωκρις
Nitokris

Nitokris was an ancient Egyptian king ( pharaoh ) or queen of the 6th Dynasty , who lived around 2180 BC. Ruled. With her / his death, the Old Kingdom ended and a chaotic epoch began, the so-called First Intermediate Period , in which pyramids , temples and tombs were broken into and looted.

Identity and sources

According to later sources, Nitokris was a woman who ruled the royal throne. Her name appears in the Turin royal list . According to more recent arrangements of the fragments, this also calls the proper name Sa Ptah - son of Ptah , a male name. It has therefore been assumed that the name Neterikare was in an older king list , a king name known from the Abydos list . Later copyists of king lists could not have read this name correctly and built Nitokris into the list. According to this theory, Queen Nitokris never existed and her mention is based on an ancient misreading of a name.

To date, Nitokris has not been proven archaeologically . The connection between the last ruler of the Old Kingdom and her predecessors is also unclear. The literary sources give different information about her reign: She is said to have ruled for three ( Eusebius ), six ( Eratosthenes ) or twelve years ( Africanus ). According to Manetho , she was the most distinguished and loveliest woman of her time and had fair skin.

Herodotus ( Historien , II 100) reports that her predecessor and brother were murdered by the Egyptians and that she was forced to succeed him. In revenge, she built an underground hall and held a banquet there , to which all her brother's murderers were invited. In this room she led water from a river, which drowned everyone miserably. To avoid punishment, she threw herself into a room full of ashes. However, this narrative is unhistorical; likewise the assignment of the “ third pyramid ” of Mykerinos .

Modern reception

The Polish writer Bolesław Prus published the novel Pharao ( Faraon ) in 1895 about the life of the fictional Egyptian king Ramses XIII. He gave his mother the name Nicotris based on Nitokris .

The Irish writer Lord Dunsany wrote a play in 1922 that is based on Herodotus' description. Nitokris only appears here as an unnamed queen.

The American writer HP Lovecraft uses Nitokris in two of his short stories: The Outsider (1921/26) and Trapped by the Pharaohs (1924). In the first it is only mentioned in passing, the second story spins Herodotus' description up to the present day.

The American writer Tennessee Williams made the act of revenge described in Herodotus the subject of his first published short story, The Vengeance of Nitocris , which appeared in Weird Tales magazine in 1928 .

In 1943 the Egyptian writer Nagib Mahfuz published his second novel Radubis . In this story, partly inspired by the real past and partly by legends, Nitokris (in the novel Nitocris ) is the wife of Pharaoh Nemtiemsaef II (in the novel Merenre II ), who begins an affair with the courtesan Radubis, leading to political problems and intrigues Yard leads. The figure of Radubis is based on the courtesan Rhodopis from the 6th century BC. BC, who according to Herodotus was assigned the building of the Mykerinos pyramid .

Herodotus story was musically processed by Karl Sanders and Celtic Frost, among others .

See also

literature

General
About the name
  • Jürgen von Beckerath : Handbook of the Egyptian king names . Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich 1984, ISBN 3-422-00832-2 , p. 27 with note 11, p. 185.
  • Kim Ryholt : The Late Old Kingdom in the Turin King-list and the Identity of Nitocris . In: Journal of Egyptian Language and Antiquity. No. 127, 2000, pp. 92-93.
Questions of detail
  • Michel Baud: The Relative Chronology of Dynasties 6 and 8. In: Erik Hornung, Rolf Krauss, David A. Warburton (Eds.): Ancient Egyptian Chronology (= Handbook of Oriental studies. Section One. The Near and Middle East. Volume 83 ). Brill, Leiden / Boston 2006, ISBN 90-04-11385-1 , pp. 144-158 ( online ).
  • Christiane Coche-Zivie: Nitocris, Rhodopis et la troisième pyramide de Giza . In: Bulletin de l´Institut Francais d´Archéologie Orientale. (BIFAO) No. 72, 1972, pp. 116-138.
  • Jürgen von Beckerath: Chronology of the pharaonic Egypt . von Zabern, Mainz 1994, ISBN 3-8053-2310-7 , pp. 27, 32, 39, 148-149, 151-152, 188.
  • Miroslav Verner : The pyramids (= rororo non-fiction book. Volume 60890). Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1999, ISBN 3-499-60890-1 , pp. 273, 410, 415.
  • Mark Lehner : The first wonder of the world. The secrets of the Egyptian pyramids. ECON, Munich / Düsseldorf 1997, ISBN 3-430-15963-6 , p. 164.
  • Zahi Hawass : The Treasures of the Pyramids . Weltbild, Augsburg 2004, ISBN 3-8289-0809-8 , p. 275.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Alan H. Gardiner : The Royal Canon of Turin. Griffith Institute, Oxford 1997, ISBN 0-900416-48-3 , illustration 2; The presentation of the entry in the Turin papyrus, which differs from the usual syntax for hieroboxes, is based on the fact that open cartridges were used in the hieratic . The alternating time-missing-time presence of certain name elements is due to material damage in the papyrus.
  2. ↑ Year numbers according to Schneider: Lexicon of the Pharaohs .
  3. ↑ Kim Ryholt: The Late Old Kingdom in the Turin King-list and the Identity of Nitocris . In: Zeitschrift für Ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde 127 (2000), pp. 92–93
  4. ↑ http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/hh/hh2100.htm (Engl.)
  5. ↑ HP Lovecraft: Necronomicon , Festa-Verlag, Leipzig (2007-2011)
  6. ↑ Francesca Hitchcock: Tennessee Williams's 'Vengeance of Nitocris': The Keynote to Future Works . In: Mississippi Quarterly 48: 4, 1995, pp. 595-608.
  7. ↑ Rhadopsis of Nubia by Naguib Mahfouz. In: Complete Review. Retrieved December 10, 2015.
predecessor Office successor
Nemtiemsaef II. Queen of Egypt
6th Dynasty (late) 		Netericars
personal data
SURNAME Nitokris
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Nitokris; Neit-aqerti
BRIEF DESCRIPTION ancient Egyptian queen of the 6th dynasty
DATE OF BIRTH 23rd century BC BC or 22nd century BC Chr.
DATE OF DEATH 22nd century BC Chr.