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Tetisheri was the matriarch of the Egyptian royal family of the late 17th Dynasty and early 18th Dynasty. She was the
wife of Tao I Senakhtenre, the mother of Tao II Seqenenre, and the grandmother of Kamose and Ahmose I.
It is believed, based on mummy-bandages from a mummy that has
not been positively identified as belonging to Tetisheri, that she
was born to parents (Tjenna and Neferu) who did not hold hereditary
or elite offices but may well have been tribal royalty from one of
the western oases. She was selected by Tao I, despite her non-royal
birth, to be not only his wife but his "Great Wife". Tao I granted Tetisheri
many privileges not previously given to a queen. She became the
first queen to wear the "Vulture Crown," which signalled that the
position of "Great Wife" had become integral to pharaonic power.
When her son Tao II rebelled against the Hyksos, Tetisheri may have played a role in
maintaining order at the Theban court. Tao II was killed in battle
and his successor Kamose possibly suffered a similar fate. Most
likely, Tetisheri set a strong precedent for subsequent royal
wives, including Ahhotep, the mother of Ahmose, who may have had a
role in military activities against the Hyksos, and
Ahmose-Nefertari, the first queen to receive the important priestly
title of "God's Wife of Amun." It is likely that Tetisheri
established the precedent for powerful female royalty in Dynasty 18
including Hatshepsut,
a Royal Wife who became pharaoh, and Nefertiti, who seems to have
held a position of particular importance in the royal court of
Amarna. Little is known of the details of Tetisheri's life,
however, and apart from a fragment of papyrus naming an endowment
in her name in Lower Egypt, most conclusions drawn by scholars
derive from speculation or from the little that can be gleaned from
the monumental stela from Abydos
dedicated in her name.
Her grandson Ahmose completed the expulsion of the Hyksos from
Egypt. Ahmose had a memorial structure or cenotaph at Abydos erected in her honour, in the
midst of his own extensive mortuary complex at that site. This mud
brick structure was discovered in 1902 by the Egypt Exploration
Fund, and was found to contain a monumental stela detailing the
dedication by Ahmose and his
sister-wife Ahmose-Nefertari of a pyramid and
enclosure (or shrine) to Tetisheri. Its discoverer, C. T. Currelly,
believed the textual reference to a "pyramid" of Tetisheri to refer
not to the building in which the stela was found, but rather to the
more imposing pyramid associated with a large mortuary temple at
its base discovered in 1900 by A. C. Mace. Based on recent
discoveries, however, this view can no longer be maintained. The
foundations of the structure, originally described by C. T.
Currelly in 1903 as a "shrine" or "mastaba," was demonstrated in
2004 through the renewed excavations of the Oriental Institute,
University of Chicago under the direction of S. Harvey to have
actually formed the lowest courses of a brick pyramid, the last
queen's pyramid to have been built in Egypt. Portions of the
limestone pyramidion or capstone were discovered as well,
demonstrating conclusively that this structure was pyramidal in
form. Magnetic survey also revealed a brick enclosure some 70 by 90
meters in scale, a feature not detected by earlier archaeologists.
These accordingly may now be identified as the features described
in Ahmose's stela found within: a pyramid and an enclosure, built
in the midst of Ahmose's own mortuary complex. The text also
indicates that Tetisheri possessed an additional cenotaph or
memorial feature at Abydos (location unknown), as well as her
actual tomb at Thebes. No tomb at Thebes has yet been conclusively
identified with Queen Tetisheri, though a mummy that may be hers
was included among other members of the royal family reburied in
the Royal Cache (DB 320). A statuette long in the collections of
the British Museum bearing an inscription naming Tetisheri was
identified as a forgery by W. V. Davies, based on the slavish
imitation of its inscription from a fragmentary lower portion of a
similar statue of the queen (now lost). However, some scholars
question this attribution, and have been raising questions as to
the potential authenticity of the statuette itself, if not the
inscription.
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