Ancient Egyptian Queens: A Hieroglyphic Dictionary

by Wolfram Grajetzki

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120 pages, Paperback

First published December 28, 2005

Reviews

[Lynne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Grajetzki fills in a gap in Egyptology with this book that focuses solely on the wives of kings. He covers every woman identified as of 2005 by inscriptions on something, be it potsherd, papyrus, stela, or monument, as being the wife of a king of Ancient Egypt. He stops with the 26th dynasty, so none of the Ptolemaic women are included, but he starts in the Early Dynastic period and forward. He is very specific and very clear about what he covers - princesses who did not marry kings are not included, whether daughters or sisters. He includes the hieroglyphs, the English version of the names, and a list of the titles each woman held with their standard transliteration. This often includes a capsule biography of what is known about that particular woman, with occasional genealogy diagrams.
If you're interested in women in Ancient Egypt, this is a good book to read. Because of the topic (queens), it only deals with elite women, but you have to start somewhere.