#bce

Clay loom weight decorated with an owl, Greek, 5th Century BCE

canbedone / Adobe Stock

A gold ring owned by a priest named Sienamun, ca. 664-525 BCE

The symbols spell out the name "sA-m-Imn": Sienamun.

Literal translation of the symbols comes out to "Son of (the god) Amun"

Nitocris

Nitocris (2184-2181 BCE) is the Greek name for Nitiqret, the last monarch of the 6th Dynasty of Egypt which concluded the period of the Old Kingdom (c. 2613-2181 BCE). Nitocris is best known from the story told of her by Herodotus (484-425/413 BCE) in his Histories (Book II.100) in which she murders the assassins of her brother at a banquet.

More than Just a Name?

For the past century the historicity of Nitocris has been questioned by scholars, even though her name appears on the Turin King's List of Egyptian monarchs, is also mentioned by Manetho (3rd century BCE) in his list of 6th century Egyptian monarchs and by Eratosthenes of Cyrene (276-194 BCE) in his Theban List of Egyptian Monarchy. Flavius Josephus (37-100 CE) references Herodotus' story in his Antiquities of the Jews (Book VIII.6.2) calling her Nicaule and does not question the authenticity of the tale. Eratosthenes' mention of Nitocris is known through the work of Apollodorus of Athens (c. 180 BCE) which is cited by Syncellus (c. 810 CE) in his Selection of Chronography. Still, because there is no physical evidence of this queen - no inscriptions, no monuments, no tomb - nor any later reference to her, some scholars have claimed her name is simply a scribal error for that of the last king of the 6th Dynasty, Neitiqerty Siptah.

Recently, however, an increasing number of Egyptologists and scholars have come to accept that Herodotus' account may have some basis in fact and Nitocris is increasingly being recognized as the first Queen Regnant of Egypt and the last monarch of the Old Kingdom. The underlying reason for this new evaluation of Nitocris is unclear but may have to do with the kind of evidence first presented by the Egyptologist Percy E. Newberry (1869-1949 CE) who argued that Nitocris was an actual Egyptian ruler, not just a character in a fable repeated by Herodotus, and that her historicity should be accepted.