202: A Valley of the Queens

Despite its name, the Valley of the Queens wasn’t always a valley for queens. In fact, the first tombs here were primarily royal children (princes and princesses) and a couple of prominent courtiers. Those burials started around 1500 BCE, in the early 18th Dynasty. The first queenly tombs don’t appear for two hundred years after that. So, initially, this was more a “Valley of Important People,” especially younglings connected to the royal house. That might explain the official name of this valley.

Hieroglyphs in the tombs, and in royal documents, reference this wadi as the tA-st-nfr.w. That translates as “The Place of Beauties,” or “The Most Beautiful Place,” depending how you read nfr.w. It could also be “The Perfect Place.” But maybe “The Place of Beauties” is the original idea. After all, the burial of royal children – dead before their time – might give this wadi an emotional significance for the rulers of the day. I’m speculating there, but you get the idea. The Place of Beauties, a perfect valley, started operations as a home for lost children.

Many of these early tombs are simple. A shaft, or staircase, leading to a single chamber, maybe a small suite of rooms. We don’t know who, exactly, was the first burial here. But the earliest named tomb belonged to a princess. Her name was Iah-Mes (Ahmose), which translates as “Born of the Moon” (or “Moonchild,” if you like). Iahmes lived around 1530 BCE, give or take, and she was the daughter of Seqenenra Ta’a (that King who died horribly in battle, leaving a broken, beat, and scarred mummy). Iah-Mes’ tomb was discovered around 1904, with her body intact, and her possessions are now in Turin, Italy. If you’d like to see the Moonchild face-to-face, I’ll put a link in the episode description.

After Iah-Mes, the Valley began to fill up with small tombs for members of the royal house. They are mostly royal children, although a few courtiers appear as well. I won’t describe them here, but long story short: the southern wadi (the Place of Beauties) slowly developed as a secondary necropolis. While the pharaohs and queens went into the Valley of the Kings, their offspring and officials went elsewhere.

Until 1300 BCE.

As the 18th Dynasty faded into nothing, and the new Ramessid family gained power, the southern Valley took on new importance. It began with a lady named Sitra, wife of King Ramesses I and mother of Sety I. In her husband’s short reign, Sitra commissioned a burial hall in this sacred site. She is the first (known) Queen to actually use the Valley of the Queens.

Sitra probably died around the same time as Ramesses. Her tomb is small, just two chambers, and they are both rough, unfinished. Sety tried to complete the monument; his artists decorated the walls with the classic images. We see the queen seated on her throne, receiving offerings. Deities like Sakhmet, Nebet-Hut (Nephthys), Serket (Selqet the Scorpion), and the Four Sons of Horus. A figure of Nut, painted golden-yellow, adorns the ceiling. And in each wall, the builders cut small alcoves or niches, to house magical bricks. 

The decoration is unfinished, just sketches in red and black ink. But it does include texts, such as Book of the Dead (or the prt m hrw, “Going Forth by Day”). In Sitra’s tomb, we find Chapter 17, the “Formula for Lifting Up and Changing Form, for Going Out and Descending in the God’s Land…” The text helps the deceased gain unrestricted entry and exit from the underworld / Duat; and it’s important to the religion of Osiris. It’s so important that Sety had a copy of this chapter carved in his great temple at Abydos. Passages like this help guide the deceased into the next world. They include references to the greatest and oldest of gods, like Nun the infinite waters, from which the Creator Ra emerged, and from which all reality descends. They also reference Abdju (or Abydos), the sacred land of Usir (Osiris) and his burial place. And they mention Atum (another form of the Creator), and his journey in iArw, the blessed realm known as the Field of Reeds.

So, the Queen Sitra probably died early in Sety’s reign. The lady Tia, who had changed her name in royalty, travelled to the west.

When the pharaoh took his mother to her rest, he filled her tomb with the traditional furnishings. When archaeologists opened the tomb, they found fragments of a sarcophagus, piles of pottery, and bits of linen, stone and wood (probably from shrines or caskets for the queen). Alas, most of the treasures (along with her mummy) were lost. But those shattered scraps remained, testifying the Queen Mother’s burial.

==

With the passing of Sitra, the role of “supreme lady” fell to Sety’s wife. Her name was Tuya.

Tuya was a noble woman, descended from a high-ranking military family. Chronologically, she must have married Sety about 15 years earlier during the later reign of Horemheb. In other words, the pair united before Sety (and his father Ramesses) ascended to royal power. So, it was a “private” union, made between prominent families. 

Tuya came from a military family. Her father was a bigwig in the armed forces, a commander of chariots named Ruia.  Ruia might have been an army colleague of Sety (or his father, Ramesses), in the years before they gained power. The union might have been a love-match, but it might have been a political alliance, connecting two prominent families of similar background. Alas, we can only speculate on the personal feelings.

Whether the marriage was arranged for them, or chosen by them, Sety and Tuya got busy. They had their first (surviving) child, Ramesses, late in Horemheb’s reign. A daughter, named Tia, followed soon after. And a few years later, maybe during Sety’s reign, Tuya gave birth to another daughter named Henut-mi-Ra, or “A Mistress Like Ra.” She would go on to marry her brother, Ramesses, when he became king.  We’ll catch up with her in the future.

Tuya might have been a bit younger than Sety. We don’t have her mummy, but the Queen outlived her husband by more than two decades.  That’s not unusual, for humans, but it might indicate an age-gap of a few years; but I’m just speculating, there.

As Queen, Tuya is almost invisible. Sety did not promote her on monuments or art; and she only became prominent after his death, during the reign of her son. That seems to be a pattern, with the New Kingdom pharaohs. The reigning queen is (usually) in the background, but the Queen Mother is quite prominent. There are political and religious reasons for that: the mother is the one who “successfully” ensured the family’s continuity, by birthing a son. The reigning queen, by contrast, hasn’t yet “earned” that badge (her son hasn’t inherited, and become Horus). It’s a complicated subject, that we’ll get lots of chances to explore in the long reign of Ramesses II. For now, we can say that Tuya married Sety before they both became rulers. During her husband’s reign, the Queen was basically “invisible” in terms of monuments or art. Once her son came to the throne, her status rose considerably. We’ll see her again.

==

The design of Tuya’s tomb is quite interesting. When people visit the Valley of the Queens, they go there for one monument: Nefertari, the wife of Ramesses II (that is, the daughter-in-law of Queen Tuy). Nefertari’s tomb is a masterpiece, one of the most beautiful and best conserved monuments in Egypt. Well, the tomb of Queen Tuya, just next door, is kind of a “prototype” for that later tomb. 

As you enter the monument, descending a long staircase, you find yourself in a kind of “waiting room.” It has chambers branching off to left and right. But the tomb itself lies further down. Another stairway, with a ramp running down the centre, descends deeper into the rock. At the bottom, a great hall opens out. Four pillars hold up the ceiling, and in the centre, a rectangular depression held the queen’s stone sarcophagus. It’s a distinctive design, which is closely copied by that of her daughter-in-law Nefertari. It’s unclear whether Tuya’s tomb actually dates to the reign of Ramesses II (as in, he commissioned it for his mother); or whether it was started under Sety I, and the design simply stuck. Either way, Tuya’s tomb is remarkably similar to that of Nefertari. At least in architecture.

Alas, the art is a totally different story. In the sense that Tuya’s tomb has no art. The tomb was severely damaged by floods, over centuries and millennia. The plaster crumbled into ruin, the paint was lost to moisture and decay. This was the case with most of the tombs in this Valley. The floodwaters, dropped by rain, destroyed their decoration. It’s one of the reasons why Nefertari’s monument is so remarkable; by sheer dumb luck, it avoided that fate. Alas, Nefertari’s mother-in-law Tuya was not so fortunate….