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| 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 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Consort | Seti II | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Children | child fromKV56 (?) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Died | 1189 BC | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Burial | KV14 in the Valley of the Kings | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Monuments | Mortuary temple in WesternThebes | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Dynasty | 19th Dynasty | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Tausret, also spelledTawosret orTwosret (d. 1189 BCE) was the last known ruler and the finalpharaoh of theNineteenth Dynasty of Egypt.
She is recorded inManetho'sEpitome 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 ofSiptah, 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 theUniversity 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 ofRe, beloved of Amun."[5]
Twosret or Tausret's birth date is unknown. She did not hold title of "King's Daughter", meaning she was not daughter of any Pharaoh and her later claim to kingship would come solely through her marriage to Seti II.[6]
_at_Thebes%2c_Egypt._19th_Dynasty._The_Petrie_Museum_of_Egyptian_Archaeology%2c_London.jpg)
She was thought to be the second royal wife ofSeti II. There are no children for Tausret andSeti II, unless tombKV56 represents the burial of their daughter.[7]
Theodore Davis identified Tausret and her husband's names in a cache of jewelry found in tomb KV56 in theValley of the Kings. This tomb also contained objects bearing the name ofRameses 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.[8]
After her husband's death, she became first regent to Seti's heirSiptah jointly withChancellor Bay, aWest 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.[9]
When Siptah died, Tausret officially assumed the throne for herself as the"Daughter of Re, Lady of Ta-merit, Twosret of Mut",[10] 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 ahieraticostracon or inscribedpotshard and contains an announcement to the workmen ofDeir 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:
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.[12] 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.[13]
Meanwhile, Egyptian territories in Canaan seem to have become effectively independent under the overlordship of a man calledIrsu.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.[14]
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.[15] 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;[16] 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 byManetho 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.[17]
Further study by Pearce Paul Creasman has concluded that the temple was "functionally operational before its destruction."[18] 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."[19]
A vase bearing the cartouche of Tausret was found at Tell Deir Alla inJordan[20] and a silicified sandstone statue found at Heliopolis represents Tausret whose names are inscribed with a mixture of masculine and feminine epithets. Tausret herself is represented as a woman, with the inscription she who is "beloved of Hathor, Lady of the Red Mountain."[21]
Tausret's reign ended in a civil war, documented in the Elephantine stela of her successorSetnakhte, 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 jointKV14 tomb ofSeti II and Tausret but reburied Seti II in tombKV15, 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.[22]
Setnakhte himself does not seem to have harboured any animosity towards Siptah. Tausret likely erased Siptah's own royal cartouches in hisKV47 royal tomb and replaced the cartouches of Siptah with those of Seti II inKV14, Tausret's own tomb, once she had presumably begun her own reign as pharaoh. As Dodson writes:
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.[24] 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.[25][26]
Pearce Creasman writes in 2013 that Tausret's 20th dynasty successors felt the overwhelming need to usurp herKV14 tomb and comprehensively destroy her mortuary temple. Tausret was one of the last ruling descendants ofRamesses 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 the20th 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 unrelated19th 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 ofW. M. Flinders Petrie, “only a few stones of the foundation remained.”[27]
Tausret'sKV14 tomb in theValley of the Kings has a complicated history; it was started in the reign of Seti II. Tomb scenes show Tausret accompanyingSiptah, butSiptah's name had later been replaced by that ofSeti II presumably by Tausret who wished to associate herself with her late husband. The tomb was then usurped bySetnakhte, and extended to become one of the deepest royal tombs in the valley while Tausret'ssarcophagus was reused by princeAmenherkhepeshef inKV13. Hartwig Altenmuller believes thatSeti II was buried in one of the rooms inKV14 and later reburied inKV15. Others question this scenario.[28]
Amummy found inKV35 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:
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