Wednesday 15 June 2011

Queen Tyti identified

Today I was describing the open tombs in the Valley of Queens and saying Queen Tyti was a queen but we don't know of whom. Ken Griffin, who is visiting, corrected me and said just recently they did identify her. So I wrote to Aidan Dobson and he very kindly sent me the article. It is published in JEA 96. Journal of Egyptian Archaeology Volume 96 2010 pages 242 -247

The article is authored by Mark Collier, Aidan Dodson, and Gottfried Hamernik and is like a detective story on a detective story. The Harris papyrus which talks about the harem conspiracy used to be in a lot better condition than it is now and Anthony Harris made notes on it which are in the Alexandra Museum and have been studied by Hamernik. Harris made copies of certain parts of the papyrus which are now in fragments and these identify Tyti as Ramses III's wife! Isn't that so cool. Obviously there is a lot more to the article than that simplification and I do encourage you to read this article it is totally fascinating and as the authors say it shows you how we need to preserve and study the notebooks of past Egyptologists.

3 comments:

Stuart Tyler said...

Thanks Jane,
Here is a link to the article:

http://www.ees.ac.uk/userfiles/file/02JEA96-iii-vi.pdf

Available on the EES site,
Stuart

Stuart Tyler said...

Excuse me- this link is to the site, where the article can be obtained and shows the contents of the edition Jane mentioned..

I should have made that clearer.

Stuart

Jane Akshar said...

thanks Stuart I am sure others will want to read this