More than 5,000 years ago, a royal woman called Meretneith (also written as Merneith), lived in ancient Egypt. She was possibly the daughter of Djer, the third king of the First Dynasty, a period when the first kings ruled over a unified Egypt. Details over Meretneith’s exact royal status have remained murky.
We know she ruled the country because her tomb complex was filled with riches fit for a male ruler of Egypt. At the very least, she was an interim ruler or co-regent. But did she ever rule Egypt in her own right?
Egyptologists have long disputed whether Meretneith was an independent ruler of Egypt. Resolving that dispute would require finding a text that identifies her as a ruler. Our new research, published in the journal Prague Egyptological Studies, might do just that.
Using a new digital technique, we examined hieroglyphs in the photo of a long-lost artefact, and the signs clearly point to Meretneith being one of the early rulers of Egypt. Currently, the only possible text that could resolve the dispute over Meretneith’s status is a hieroglyphic inscription in a black-and-white photograph of a mud stopper (a plug used for pottery jars and other vessels). The text in question was originally found on 13 mud stoppers excavated from an unknown tomb in Saqqara in the 1940s.
Only one photo of an inscription remains. That photo is found in the records of Egyptologist Walter B. Emery from the Egypt Exploration Society in London.
The location of the original artefact or glass plate of the photo is unknown. The text consists of a row of four royal signs, known as serekhs. This hieroglyphic sign is written combining an image of a royal building, a patron deity and the ruler’s name.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
