Tausret

Tausret
Twosret, Tawosret
Drawing of a Portrait of Tausret from her tomb in Thebes by Émile Prisse d'Avennes (1878).
Pharaoh
Reign	1191–1189 BC
Predecessor	Siptah
Successor	Setnakhte
Royal titulary Horus name Kanakht Merymaat Kꜣ-nḫt-mrj-Mꜣꜥ.t Strong bull, beloved of Maat Kanakht Merymaat Nebanemnisutmiitum Kꜣ-nḫt-mrj-Mꜣꜥ.t-nb-ꜥn-m-nsw-mj-Jtm Strong bull, beloved of Maat, Lord beautiful of kingship, like Atum Nebty name Geregkemet Wafkhasut Grg-Kmt-wꜥf-ḫꜣswt Founder of Egypt, who vainquishes foreign countries Prenomen  (Praenomen) Sitre Meryamun Sꜣt-Rꜥ-mrj(t)-Jmn Daughter of Ra, beloved of Amun Hieroglyphic variants: Nomen Tausret [Setepenmut] Tꜣ-wsr.t-[stp-n-Mwt] Mighty Lady, [chosen of Mut][1] Tausret-Setepen[mut] Tꜣ-wsr.t-[stp-n-Mwt] Mighty Lady, chosen [of Mut]
Consort	Seti II (?)
Children	KV56 mummy (?)
Father	Merneptah (uncertain)
Mother	Takhat (uncertain)
Died	1189 BC
Burial	KV14 in the Valley of the Kings
Monuments	Mortuary temple in Western Thebes
Dynasty	19th Dynasty

Tausret, also spelled Tawosret or Twosret (d. 1189 BCE) was the last known ruler and the final pharaoh of the Nineteenth Dynasty of Egypt.

She is recorded in Manetho's Epitome as "Thuoris, who in Homer is called Polybus, husband of Alcandra, and in whose time Troy was taken."^[2] She was said to have ruled Egypt for seven years, but this figure included the nearly six-year reign of Siptah, her predecessor.^[3] Tausret simply assumed Siptah's regnal years as her own.

While her sole independent reign would have lasted for perhaps one to one and a half years, from 1191-89 BC, this number now appears more likely to be two full years instead, possibly longer. Excavation work by the University of Arizona Egyptian Expedition on her memorial temple ("temple of millions of years") at Gournah strongly suggests that it was completed and functional during her reign and that Tausret started a regnal year 9, which means that she had two and possibly three independent years of rule, once one deducts the nearly six-year reign of Siptah.^[4] Her royal name, Sitre Meryamun, means "Daughter of Re, beloved of Amun."^[5]

Twosret or Tausret's birth date is unknown. She is thought to have been a daughter of Merneptah, possibly a daughter of Takhat, thereby making her sister to Amenmesse.

She was thought to be the second royal wife of Seti II. There are no children for Tausret and Seti II, unless tomb KV56 represents the burial of their daughter.^[6]

Theodore Davis identified Tausret and her husband in a cache of jewelry found in tomb KV56 in the Valley of the Kings. This tomb also contained objects bearing the name of Rameses II. There is no consensus about the nature of this tomb. Some (Aldred) thought this was the tomb of a daughter of Seti II and Tawosret, but others (Maspero) thought this was a cache of objects originally belonging with the tomb of Tawosret herself.^[7]

After her husband's death, she became first regent to Seti's heir Siptah jointly with Chancellor Bay, a West Asian. Siptah was likely a stepson of Tausret since his mother is now known to be a certain Sutailja or Shoteraja from Louvre Relief E 26901.^[8]

When Siptah died, Tausret officially assumed the throne for herself as the "Daughter of Re, Lady of Ta-merit, Twosret of Mut",^[9] and assumed the role of a Pharaoh.

While it was commonly believed that she ruled Egypt with the aid of Chancellor Bay, a recently published document by Pierre Grandet in a BIFAO 100 (2000) paper shows that Bay was executed on Siptah's orders during Year 5 of this king's reign. The document is a hieratic ostracon or inscribed potshard and contains an announcement to the workmen of Deir al Madinah of the king's actions. No immediate reason was given to show what caused Siptah to turn against "the great enemy Bay," as the ostracon states. The recto of the document reads thus:

Year 5 III Shemu the 27th. On this day, the scribe of the tomb Paser came announcing 'Pharaoh, life, prosperity, and health!, has killed the great enemy Bay'.^[10]

This date accords well with Bay's last public appearance in Year 4 of Siptah. The ostracon's information was essentially a royal order for the workmen to stop all further work on Bay's tomb since the latter had now been deemed a traitor to the state.^[11] Aidan Dodson believes that Tausret engineered Bay's downfall so that she would have total control at the palace court and need no longer share power with her political rival. As Dodson writes:

Although [this act was nominally] carried out in the name of the still young Siptah, one can probably safely assume that the initiative was taken by Tawosret, signaling her intention to share power no longer with her erstwhile colleague in regency [Bay]. While Bay’s name remained intact on many of his monuments, it was probably at this point that his extraordinary representations in the bark-shrine at Karnak were erased.^[12]

Meanwhile, Egyptian territories in Canaan seem to have become effectively independent under the overlordship of a man called Irsu. Papyrus Harris I, the main source on these events, claims that Irsu and Tausret had allied themselves, leaving Irsu free to plunder and neglect the land.^[13]

Tausret's highest known date is a Year 8 II Shemu day 29 hieratic inscription found on one of the foundation blocks (FB 2) of her mortuary temple at Gournah in 2011 by the University of Arizona Egyptian Expedition.^[14] Since this was only a foundation inscription and Tausret's temple, although never finished as planned, was at least partially completed, it is logical to assume that some time must have passed before her downfall and the termination of work on her temple project. Richard Wilkinson stressed that Tausret's mortuary temple was "largely structurally completed," although bearing minimal decoration;^[15] Therefore, she would have ruled for one or two more years beyond II Shemu 29 of her 8th Year for her temple to reach completion. As Richard Wilkinson wrote in 2011:

[The discovery of the Year 8, 2nd month of shemu day 29 hieratic inscription] ... has particular significance, for it confirms the text we discovered in 2006 on an adjacent foundation block (FB1) which was dated also to the eighth year of the queen’s reign. Although Tausert’s reign (including her regency for Siptah) has been understood commonly as being seven years (as stated by Manetho in his [Aegyptiaca] History), or eight at the most, the inscriptions on the foundation blocks show otherwise. Because they were made when the temple was begun, and we now have archaeological evidence that the temple was completed or nearly so (it must have taken a couple of years), these texts indicate clearly that Tausert must have reigned nine, or perhaps, even ten years.^[16]

Further study by Pearce Paul Creasman has concluded that the temple was "functionally operational before its destruction."^[17] Tausret could, hence, have possibly ruled for 6 to 20 more months after the inscription date to achieve these levels of completion, thus starting her 9th regnal year around the interval of IV Akhet/I Peret—when her husband died (since she assumed Siptah's reign as her own) or perhaps longer—before Setnakhte's rule began. Or she could have had a nearly full 9th-year reign, including the 6-year reign of Siptah. Pearce Creasman writes in 2013, "if the foundations of [Tausret's temple] were laid in her eighth year and construction of the temple was completed, or nearly so, Tausret must have ruled long enough past her eighth regnal year to see this accomplished. At least an additional year, maybe two."^[18]

Tausret's reign ended in a civil war, documented in the Elephantine stela of her successor Setnakhte, who became the founder of the Twentieth dynasty. While it is not known if she was overthrown by Setnakhte or whether she died peacefully in her own reign and a conflict broke out at court over her succession; the former scenario is the most likely. Her immediate 20th dynasty successor Setnakhte and his son Ramesses III described the late 19th dynasty as a time of chaos. Setnakhte usurped the joint KV14 tomb of Seti II and Tausret but reburied Seti II in tomb KV15, while deliberately replastering and redrawing all images of Tausret in tomb KV14 with those of himself. Setnakhte's decisions here may demonstrate his dislike and presumably hatred for Tausret since he chose to reinter Seti II but not Tausret.^[19]

Setnakhte himself does not seem to have harboured any animosity towards Siptah. Tausret likely erased Siptah's own royal cartouches in his KV47 royal tomb and replaced the cartouches of Siptah with those of Seti II in KV14, Tausret's own tomb, once she had presumably begun her own reign as pharaoh. As Dodson writes:

"Taken together, it seems that although Tawosret appears to have granted Siptah a burial, it was one that denied his status as a king, and was combined with Tawosret’s desire to refocus her royal affiliations on her husband, rather than the young man for whom she had ruled for half a decade."^[20]

Setnakhte, however, reinstated Siptah's cartouches in the young king's tomb which suggests that this person's opponent was not Siptah but rather Siptah's successor, Tausret.^[21] It appears most likely that Setnakhte overthrew Tausret from power in a civil war. Setnakhte's son and successor, Ramesses III, later decided to exclude both Tausret and even Siptah of the 19th dynasty from his Medinet Habu list of Egyptian kings thereby delegitimizing them in the eyes of the Egyptian citizenry.^[22][23]

Pearce Creasman writes in 2013 that Tausret's 20th dynasty successors felt the overwhelming need to usurp her KV14 tomb and comprehensively destroy her mortuary temple. Tausret was one of the last ruling descendants of Ramesses II (the Great) of the 19th dynasty and the founders of the 20th dynasty of Egypt, presumably feared the shadow cast by this female pharaoh. Therefore,

"the founder of the 20th Dynasty, Sethnakht, or his long-ruling son, Ramesses III, set out against Tausret's memory and its physical manifestations. This dramatic refutation of the legitimacy of their unrelated 19th Dynasty predecessor likely made it easier for their own lineage to take root and overpower what must have been a substantial number of other potential claimants to the throne. Ramesses II, from whom Tausret is generally believed to be descended, had fathered as many as 100 children. Tausret’s royal cousins, and potential heirs, must have been legion....The attacks on Tausret’s monuments proved effective, so much so that when the site of Tausret's Theban temple was very briefly surveyed and selectively dug in 1896 by a team under the supervision of W. M. Flinders Petrie, “only a few stones of the foundation remained.”^[24]

Tausret's KV14 tomb in the Valley of the Kings has a complicated history; it was started in the reign of Seti II. Tomb scenes show Tausret accompanying Siptah, but Siptah's name had later been replaced by that of Seti II presumably by Tausret who wished to associate herself with her late husband. The tomb was then usurped by Setnakhte, and extended to become one of the deepest royal tombs in the valley while Tausret's sarcophagus was reused by prince Amenherkhepeshef in KV13. Hartwig Altenmuller believes that Seti II was buried in one of the rooms in KV14 and later reburied in KV15. Others question this scenario.^[25]

A mummy found in KV35 and known as Unknown Woman D has been identified by some scholars as possibly belonging to Tausret, but there is no other evidence for this other than the correct Nineteenth Dynasty period of mummification.^[2]

It is believed that expeditions were conducted during her reign to the turquoise mines in Sinai and in Palestine and statues have been found of her at Heliopolis and Thebes. Her name is also found at Abydos, Hermopolis, Memphis, and in Nubia.

Inscriptions with Tausret's name appear in several locations:

• The Bilgai Stela belonged to Tausret. It records the erection of a monument in the area of Sebennytos.^[26]
• A pair statue of Tawosret and Siptah is now in the Staatliche Sammlung für Ägyptische Kunst Munich (no 122). Siptah is shown seated on Tausret's lap.^[27]
• In the temple at Amada, Tausret is depicted as a Great Royal Wife and God's Wife.^[26]
• A statue from Heliopolis depicts Tausret and her names are inscribed with a mixture of male and female epithets. Tausret herself is depicted as a woman.^[26]
• A cartouche of hers believed to come from Qantir in the Delta has been found
• Tausret and Siptah's names have been found associated with the turquoise mines at Serabit el Khadim and Timna (in the Sinai & Palestine).^[28]
• A faience vase bearing a cartouche of Tausret was found at Tell Deir Alla in Jordan.^[28]
• Tausret constructed a Mortuary temple next to the Ramesseum, but it was never finished and was only partially excavated (by Flinders Petrie in 1897), although recent re-excavation by Richard H. Wilkinson and Pearce Paul Creasman shows it is more complex than first thought. The temple was excavated by the Tausert Temple Project (2004 to present).

• Gae Callender, "The Cripple, the Queen & the Man from the North", KMT, Vol: 17 No. 1, Spring 2006, pp. 49–63
• Leonard H. Lesko, "A Little More Evidence for the End of the Nineteenth Dynasty", Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt, Vol. 5, (1966), pp. 29–32 (accessible through JSTOR)
• Richard H. Wilkinson, (eds), THE TEMPLE OF TAUSRET: Tausret Temple Project, 2004-2011 The University of Arizona Archaeology Expedition, 2011. (Dated texts found in the Temple are placed on pages 121-130)
• Richard H. Wilkinson (ed.), Tausret: Forgotten Queen & Pharaoh of Egypt, Oxford University Press, 2012.