A number of princesses, some of whom were also royal wives, are known from the royal cache of mummies at Deir el-Bahri. They were offspring of rulers from the end of the 17th or the beginning of the i8th Dynasty, and their names are often known also from late New Kingdom private tomb chapels that venerated the royal family of the early i8th Dynasty. The titles held by these women, and the absence of husbands other than kings, show the limitations that were placed on females bom of the king. The success of the dynastic line in the early i8th Dynasty was certainly attributable, in part, to a decision to limit access to the royal family. In economic terms, this would have meant that holdings gained in the wars were not divided with families whose sons married a princess. The kings were therefore free to enrich military followers as they wished, and thereby build new constituencies. Followers such as Ahmose, son of Ibana, and Ahmose Pennekhbet are two examples of these new members of the elite, but legal documents later in the New Kingdom inform us of other men whose fortunes derived from grants by Ahmose.
In political and religious terms, the closed royal family apparently reached back into the Middle Kingdom (and the Old Kingdom before it), when princesses were frequently married to kings or associated throughout life with their reigning fathers. In order to assure the exclusivity of the line, however, the family of Seqenenra and Ahhotep apparently established the additional prohibition that royal daughters were to marry no one other than a king. This was not the case in the
Old and Middle kingdoms, at least not always, since we know examples of high officials marrying kings’ daughters, but, once the custom was established at the end of the 17th Dynasty, it persisted through the i8th Dynasty. Only with the reign of Rameses II do we again have definite evidence of princesses marrying anyone other than kings.
Map of Egypt and Nubia between the reigns of Ahmose and Amenhotep III (c. i550-i352 BC)
There were no enfeebling effects on the kinship line as a result of this practice, because it did not mean that the kings themselves were only able to marry princesses. Indeed, throughout the i8th Dynasty, kings were most commonly born to their fathers by non-royal secondary queens, such as Tetisheri. If our understanding of the documentation is correct, then Tetisheri bore both the mother and father of King Ahmose. His mother, Ahhotep, bore him by her brother (full or half), most probably Seqenenra, possibly Kamose. Ahhotep had several daughters as well, but Seqenenra also had daughters by at least two and possibly three other women. Ahmose married his sister, Ahmose-Nefertari, by whom he fathered at least two sons, Ahmose-ankh and Amenhotep. He may, however, have fathered children by other women as well. At least two princesses, Satkamose and (Ahmose-) Merytamun, had the titles of king’s daughter, king’s sister, great royal wife, and god’s wife. The first was described on later stelae as a sister of Amenhotep I, while the second is often identified as Ahmose-Nefertari’s daughter, who also married her brother, Amenhotep I, although no document actually states this explicitly.
Despite the restrictions on marriage for kings’ daughters, several princesses who emerged as major queens (Ahhotep, Ahmose-Nefertari, Hatshepsut) were extremely active in the reigns of their husbands and heirs. Ahmose’s mother. Queen Ahhotep, whose large outer coffin was found in the Deir el-Bahri royal cache, was, according to her titles on that coffin, a king’s daughter, king’s sister, great royal wife, and king’s mother. On Ahmose’s year i8 stele from Karnak, he honoured Ahhotep with titles that implied her de facto governance of the land. Although we are ignorant of Ahmose’s age at accession, he may have been only a boy for some period of his reign. It is highly significant that the queen mother was honoured later by her son for pacifying Upper Egypt and expelling rebels. Ahhotep apparently carried on the fight without successful challenge from within the region—although the implication is that the family’s hold on the kingship was tested during this period. Claude Vandersleyen has suggested that the battles that Ahmose fought against Aata and Teti-an were against Upper Egyptian enemies, the latter perhaps representing a family line with whom the 17th Dynasty Theban rulers Nubkheperra Intef VI and Kamose had also fought (and this would accord well with Ahhotep’s honouring Sobekemsaf the widow of Nubkheperra Intef VI, at Edfu). In any case, Ahhotep apparently commanded the respect of local troops and grandees to preserve a fledgling dynastic line, and she continued to function as king’s mother well into the reign of Amenhotep I.
Perhaps not long after year i8 of Ahmose’s reign, Ahhotep ceded pride of place to Princess Ahmose-Nefertari, who may have been her daughter. Ahmose’s Donation Stele at Karnak (mentioned above) is the first known monument on which Ahmose-Nefertari figures; she is described on this stele as king’s daughter, king’s sister, king’s great wife, god’s wife of Amun, and, like Ahhotep, mistress of Upper and Lower Egypt. Ahmose and Ahmose-Nefertari are depicted with their son. Prince Ahmose-ankh. Only a few years after this inscription was made, in year 22, Ahmose-Nefertari claimed the title of king’s mother, although it is not known whether the designation referred to Ahmose-ankh or Amenhotep. In any case, the queen survived her husband Ahmose and even her son Amenhotep 1, and still held the position of god’s wife of Amun in the reign ofThutmose I (1504-1492 bc).
Ahmose-Nefertari used the god’s wife title more frequently even than that of great royal wife. She also operated independently of both her husband and her son in monument building and cult roles. When she died, a stele of a non-royal contemporary recorded simply that ‘the god’s wife... had flown to heaven’. The emphasis on her role as priestess was perhaps due to the independent economic and religious power ceded to the office of god’s wife by Ahmose. The Donation Stele records Ahmose’s creation of a trust relating to the ‘second priesthood of Amun’, whose benefices were then granted to the god’s wife in perpetuity, to be passed on, without interference, to whom she wished. The institution of the divine adoratrice, an office separate from the god’s wife but also held by Ahmose-Nefertari, was also mentioned on the Donation Stele. The economic holdings of the priestess institution apparently continued to grow, such that some 100 years after Ahmose’s death, and following reorganization of the descent of the offices, the produce of the ‘house of the adoratrice’ were a significant focus of account papyri.
Ahmose-Nefertari functioned as great royal wife and particularly god’s wife of Amun throughout her son’s reign. No certain wife is known for Amenhotep I of his own generation, although it is often presumed that the ‘king’s daughter, god’s wife, great royal wife, united to the white crown, lady of the two lands’ (Ahmose-)Merytamun, whose coffin was found in a tomb at Deir el-Bahri, was his sister and consort. It should be noted, however, that the only connection between the two is the fact that her coffin (like those of Ahhotep and Ahmose-Nefertari) dates stylistically to Amenhotep Ts reign. There are no monuments of this date that refer to (Ahmose-)Merytamun, apart from a possible reference to her on a monument in Nubia. On his year 8 Stele, the figure of Amenhotep I was followed by king’s mother Ahmose-Nefertari and a second god's wife, king’s daughter, sister, and king’s wife (not ‘great’) whose name was later restored as Ahmose-Nefertari, before Horus of Miam (Aniba). This may instead have been Merytamun, who had been elevated to queen, but then predeceased Ahmose-Nefertari. Monuments that represent the presence of female royal family members at border regions are attested several times in the i8th Dynasty, perhaps following an older tradition. There are representations of this type at Sinai, the Aswan rock outcrops, and Nubia from the first to the fourth cataracts, in the Middle and New kingdoms. Perhaps they are meant to link the queens and princesses to Hathor, goddess of foreign lands, whose role as daughter of the sun-god was to be protective of her father.
Another female family member in the early i8th Dynasty was Amenhotep I’s daughter, king’s sister, and god’s wife, Satamun, who is known both from her coffin in the royal mummy cache and from two statues at central and southern Kamak. Attested from the reign of Ahmose onwards, she never became queen, but appears to have been honoured by Amenhotep I, along with Ahmose-Nefertari, for her priestly role as Amun’s wife. Even in the Ramessid Period, Satamun and Merytamun were both venerated as members of the family of Ahmose-Nefertari and were included in scenes depicting the deified royal family. Precise chronology of the early i8th Dynasty and specific genealogy of the family appears to have been as obscure to the late New Kingdom Thebans as it is to us today, so we cannot rely on these votive references to provide secure parentage.
It is interesting to note that, notwithstanding the kings’ apparent ability to marry as many women as they wished, no offspring of Amenhotep I have been identified with certainty, despite his twenty-year reign. A king’s son Ramose kn rwn from a statue now in Liverpool may have been from the Ahmosid family, but his specific parentage is not given. None the less, perhaps owing to the stability provided by Amenhotep’s rule, the succession passed without event to Thutmose I, who is not known to have been a member of the Ahmosid family.
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