Nofrusobek

Name of Nofrusobek
Upper part of a statue of Nofrusobek, formerly Berlin, Inv. No. 14475 (loss of war)
Horus name	Merit-Re Mrjt-Rˁ lover of Re
Sideline	Sat-Sechem-nebet-taui S3.t-sḫm-nb.t-t3wj daughter of the mighty, mistress of the two countries
Gold name	Djedet-chau Ḏdt-ḫ3w With constant appearances
Throne name	Sobek-ka-Re Sbk-k3-Rˁ Ka des Sobek, a Re
Proper name	Nofrusobek / Neferusobek (Neferu Sobek) Nfr.w Sbk The beauty of Sobek
Royal Papyrus Turin (No. IV./21.)	Neferu-Sobek Nfr.w Sbk The beauty of Sobek
Greek Manetho variants:	Africanus : Skemiophris Eusebius : no mention Eusebius, AV : no mention

Nofrusobek or Sobekneferu , also Nefrusobek , was an ancient Egyptian queen ( pharaoh ) at the end of the 12th Dynasty ( Middle Kingdom ). Her reign was just under four years (around 1810/1793 to 1806/1789 BC). She was the first queen with a royal title, did not deny her gender and was a role model for Hatshepsut and Tausret .

origin

After Amenemhet IV's death , there was apparently no male heir to the throne, so a female member of the royal family took the throne. Nofrusobek had no male successor.

Domination

According to Manetho (Africanus), Nofrusobek ruled as the sister of Amenemhet IV for four years. According to the Turin royal papyrus , their reign lasted three years, 10 months and 24 days. She is also mentioned in the lists of kings of Karnak and Sakkara . So her memory was not followed in later times. With her choice of name she began a long series of kings who carried the name Sobek as part of their name .

Domestic and foreign policy

The domestic and foreign political conditions were stable, the Fayyum increasingly became a religious and possibly also an economic center. Nubia was firmly in Egyptian hands, as evidenced by a Nile state stamp from the Semna region , which dates to her third year of reign.

The time after her death

After her death, her cartouches , reliefs and statues with her name and shape were not destroyed as with Hatshepsut. There is a stele from the 13th dynasty on which an administrative unit is named by its name, and on a fragment of papyrus from Harageh , its pyramid or a statue called Sechem-Nofrusobek is believed to be mentioned.

With her the 12th dynasty ended in Egypt.

Monuments

Torso of a Nofrusobek statue (Louvre, Paris)

There are only a few buildings from her short reign. So she completed the mortuary temple of her (presumed) father in Hawara . In the labyrinth of this temple she appears several times with Amenemhet III. called, she seems to have legitimized her rule through the association with this ruler . Various architraves of a temple were found in Kom el-'Aqarib (south of Herakleopolis), one of which bears her name.

The northern of the two pyramids of Masghuna is often ascribed to it as a funerary pyramid, but for no compelling reason. After comparing the subterranean structures of the last pyramids of the twelfth dynasty with those ascribed to the thirteenth dynasty, a burial in the southern pyramid of Masghuna seems more obvious.

Several statues are also documented by Nofrusobek. The lower part of a king statue was found in Semna , but is unlabeled and only identified as royal by the union of the two countries symbol (zemat-tawy). The head belonging to it was recently identified by Biri Fay in the Egyptian Museum in Berlin (Inv. No. 14475) belonging to this statue. The head is only preserved in a plaster cast, as the original was lost during World War II . The lost head is a portrait of a woman, stylistically dated to the late Middle Kingdom. So the statue and head represent Nofrusobek, as she was the only reigning queen of the Middle Kingdom. Three almost life-size basalt statues from Tell el-Dab'a in the Nile Delta show them in women's robes. The torso of a standing statue of the queen made of quartzite (E 27135) is on display in the Louvre in Paris , the origin of which is unknown. The height of the fragment is 48 cm, the total size would be about 1.6 m. There are signs of a Nemes headscarf and the torso is wearing both male and female clothing. Another fragment of a statue of a bust of Nofrusobek in an anniversary cloak ( Hebsed robe) made of dark green greywacke is in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art (MMA 65.59.1). A statue of a princess named Nofrusobek was also found in Tell Gezer ( Canaan ). However, this does not necessarily have to be this queen, as a daughter of Sesostris I also bears this name.

Edouard Naville found a destroyed sphinx of this queen in Tell el-Dab'a .

The small finds that are attributed to her include seal cylinders in the Cairo Museum (JE 72663) and in the British Museum (BM 16581), both from the Fayyum.

A Nilstands stamp from the 3rd year of the government in Semna was the last document from her reign for a long time. A newly found inscription in the eastern desert names the fourth year.

See also

• Position of women in ancient Egypt
• List of rulers and regents

literature

General

• Darrell D. Baker: The Encyclopedia of the Egyptian Pharaohs, Volume I: Predynastic to the Twentieth Dynasty (3300-1069 BC). Bannerstone Press, Oakville 2008 ISBN 978-0-9774094-4-0 , pp. 455-457.
• Jürgen von Beckerath In: Wolfgang Helck , Eberhard Otto (Hrsg.): Lexicon of Egyptology. Volume 5: Building a pyramid - stone vessels. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1984, ISBN 3-447-02489-5 , Sp. 1050 f.
• Thomas Schneider : Lexicon of the Pharaohs. 2nd edition, Artemis & Winkler, Düsseldorf a. a. 1997, ISBN 3-7608-1102-7 , p. 270.

About the name

• Jürgen von Beckerath: Handbook of the Egyptian king names. von Zabern, Mainz 1999, ISBN 3-8053-2591-6 , p. 86 f.
• Michel Valloggia: Remarques sur les noms de la reine Sébek-Ka-Rê Néferou Sébek In: Revue d'Égyptologie. Volume 16, 1964, pp. 45-53.

Questions of detail

• Vivienne Gae Callender: Materials from the Reign of Sobeknofru. In: Christopher J. Eyre: Proceedings of the Seventh International Congress of Egyptologists, Cambridge, September 3-9, 1995. Peeters, Leuven 1998, pp. 227-236.
• Vivienne Gae Callender: What Sex Was King Sobekneferu? And What Is Known About Her Reign? In: A Modern Journal of Ancient Egypt. (KMT) Volume 9, 1, 1998, pp. 45-56.
• Louise Gestermann: Continuity and Change in Politics and Administration of the Early Middle Kingdom in Egypt. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1987, pp. 124, 132 (construction activity).
• Ingo Matzker: The last kings of the 12th dynasty. Lang, Frankfurt a. M. / Bern / New York 1986, pp. 18-20, 40, 50 f., 90, 174 f.
• Percy E. Newberry : Co-regencies of Ammenemes III, IV and Sebknofru. In: Journal of Egyptian Archeology. Volume 29, 1943, pp. 74 f.
• Thomas Schneider: The Relative Chronology of the Middle Kingdom and the Hyksos Period (Dyns. 12-17). 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 978-90-04-11385-5 , pp. 168-196 ( online ).
• Christoffer Theis, The chronological sequence of the pyramids of the 13th dynasty, in: Sokar 19 (2009), pp. 52–61.

Web links

Commons : Nofrusobek  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Illustration of a Nofrusobek statue

Individual evidence

1. ^ Alan H. Gardiner : The Royal Canon of Turin. Griffith Institute, Oxford 1997, ISBN 0-900416-48-3 , illustration 3.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Gerald P. Verbrugghe, John M. Wickersham: Berossos and Manetho, introduced and translated. Native traditions in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt . University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor (Michigan) 2000, ISBN 0-472-08687-1 , p. 138; William Gillian Waddell: Manetho (= The Loeb classical Library. Vol. 350 ). Reprint 1940. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.) 2004, ISBN 0-674-99385-3 , p. 69.
3. ↑ ^{a b} Thierry de Putter: Les inscriptions de Semna et Kumma (Nubie): Niveaux de crues exceptionelles ou d'un lac de retenue artificiel du Moyen Empire? In: Studies on Ancient Egyptian Culture. Volume 20, 1993, pp. 255-288.
4. ↑ Papyrus UCL 32778
5. ^ WM Flinders Petrie : Hawara, Biahmu, and Arsinoe. Field & Tuer [u. a.], London 1889, panel XXVII [12].
6. ↑ George Daressy: Deux grandes statues de Ramsès II d'Héracléopolis. In: Annales du service des antiquités de l'Égypte. No. 17, 1917, p. 34.
7. ↑ Christoffer Theis, The chronological sequence of the pyramids of the 13th Dynasty, in: Sokar 19 (2009), pp. 52–61.
8. ↑ B. Fay, R. E, Freed, T. Schelper, F. Seyfried: Neferusobek Project: Part I , in: G. Miniaci, W. Grajetzki: The World of Middle Kingdom Egypt (2000-1550 BC) , Vo. I, London 2015, ISBN 978-1-906137-43-4 , pp. 89-91
9. ↑ L. Habachi: Khata'na-Qantir: Importance. In Annales du service des antiquités de l'Égypte No. 52, 1952, pp. 458-470.
10. ^ Elisabeth Delange: Catalog des statues égyptiennes du Moyen Empire 2060–1560 av. J.-C. Édition de la Réunion des Musées Nationaux, Paris 1987, pp. 30f.
11. ↑ Joyce Tyldesley: The Queens of Ancient Egypt. From the early dynasties to the death of Cleopatra. Koehler & Amelang, Leipzig 2008, ISBN 978-3-7338-0358-2 , p. 75.
12. ↑ Vivienne Gae Callender: What Sex was King Sobekneferu? And what is known about her Reign? . In: KMT. A Modern Journal of Ancient Egypt. No. 9.1, San Francisco 1998, pp. 45, 52, 54.
13. ↑ James M. Weinstein: A Statuette of the Princess Sobeknefru at Tell Gezer. In: The Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research. Volume 213, 1974, pp. 49-57.
14. ^ Edouard Naville: The shrine of Saft el Henneh and the land of Goshen (1885). Trübner, London 1888, plate 9.c.
15. ^ WM Flinders Petrie : Scarabs and Cylinders with Names. School of Archeology in Egypt, Univ. College, London 1917, panel XIV.
16. ^ A. Almásy: Catalog of Inscriptions. In: Ulrich Luft: Bi'r Minayh, Report on the Survey 1998–2004. Archaeolingua, Budapest 2011, ISBN 978-963-9911-11-6 , pp. 174-175

predecessor	Office	successor
Amenemhet IV.	Queen of Egypt 12th Dynasty (late)	Wegaf or Sobekhotep II.