| Meritites in hieroglyphs |
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Meritites I was an ancient Egyptian queen of the 4th dynasty, a wife of Pharaoh Khufu. She was the mother of Crown Prince Kawab and Queen Hetepheres II.[1] She is mentioned in Kawab's chapel. It is possible that her children also included Prince Djedefhor, Queen Meresankh II and Princess Meritites II.[2]
Pyramid GIa (the northernmost of three small pyramids east of the Great Pyramid of Gizeh) was possibly built for her, but in the 19th century Auguste Mariette described a limestone false door found in a mastaba of a lady called Meritites, which lists queenly titles among the titles of the deceased. If this Meritites is the same person as the mother of Kawab, then it's unlikely that she was buried in GIa, because she is known to have been alive during the reigns of Sneferu, Khufu and Khafre, and if she abandoned an earlier mastaba tomb for a pyramid, Khafre's name wouldn't have been found in the former. Dr. Mark Lehner believes GIb to be the tomb of Meritites and GIa to be that of Khufu's mother Hetepheres I.[2]
Meritites bore the titles Great of Sceptre and King's Wife; the former of these she already had during Sneferu's reign.[3]
Sources
- ^ Aidan Dodson & Dyan Hilton, The Complete Royal Families of Ancient Egypt, Thames & Hudson (2004) ISBN 0-500-05128-3, p.52
- ^ a b Pete Vanderzwet: The Queens of Egypt's 4th Dynasty
- ^ Dodson & Hilton, p.60
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