Nofretari
Sister and Wife of Ahmosis Pharoah
1562 – 1495 B.C.

The Nile valley, like the Euphrates, was one of the earliest homes of civilization. In great enterprises and buildings, and the millions of human beings who made them, lie moldered to dust in those great graveyards of the ancient world. Their names and memorials have alike perished, save as the spade of the explorer fortunately turns up some broken pieces of pottery on which their scribes were wont to record their doings, or the learned decipher their long dead languages, written on the walls of their rock tombs or on the boundary stones of their great empires.

Their historians diligently recorded the deeds of the the times but, unfortunately, all of these have vanished, save here and there a fragment of the latest.

These explorations show that, in the narrow Nile valley extending 600 miles upward from the Mediterranean, a great empire existed whose beginnings date back, it is supposed, to B.C. 3893, to Menes, whose tomb is said to have been recently found in upper Egypt.

Some six hundred years before the birth of queen Nofretari, the regions of the Delta, with its great cities, had been occupied by Scythians from Asia, who by B.C. 2061, captured the country of Egypt and ruled it for 340 years, being known as Hyksos, Shephard Kings.

Salatis, their chief, began ruling at Memphis, and constructed a military encampment, Avaris, near Tanis, sweltering 24,000 soldiers. The native Theban Ahmosis besieged the Hykosos camp with 480,000 men, driving them out beyond Beersheba and Ahmosis was worshiped as a god for 800 years later.

Nofretari had six children, one of whom, Amenothis I, minor at his father’s death, became king. She regained with him, the real ruler, some forty years. As the great queen she was afterwards worshiped as a goddess for nine centuries. Her mummy was recently found at Deitel-Bahari.

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Reference: Woman: Her Position, Influence and Achievement Throughout the Civilized World. Designed and Arranged by William C. King. Published in 1900 by The King-Richardson Co. Copyright 1903 The King-Richardson Co.