1-5 of 5 Results  for:

  • Before 1400: The Ancient and Medieval Worlds x
  • Government (Foreign) x
  • Results with images only x
Clear all

Article

Cleopatra VII  

Prudence Jones

queen of Egypt, was the last ruler in the Ptolemaic dynasty, which held power in Egypt from the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE until the death of Cleopatra in 30 BCE. The Egyptian ruler referred to as Cleopatra was Cleopatra VII, daughter of Ptolemy XII, one of Alexander the Great’s Macedonian generals.

The identity of Cleopatra s mother is not known for certain She may have been the daughter of Ptolemy XII and his first wife Cleopatra V Cleopatra V disappears from the historical record sometime before 68 BCE however and it is unclear whether this disappearance occurred before or after Cleopatra s birth in 69 BCE It is possible that Cleopatra s mother may have been a concubine of Ptolemy XII who himself was the son of Ptolemy IX and a concubine The third option is that Cleopatra was the daughter of Ptolemy XII s second ...

Article

Nefertiti  

Joyce Tyldesley

consort of Akhenaten (formerly known as Amenhotep IV; r. c. 1352–1336 BCE), the tenth pharaoh of Egypt’s Eighteenth Dynasty. She lived with her husband and six daughters at Amarna, where she played an important role in the worship of the solar deity known as the Aten.

Nefertiti s origins are obscure We know that she had a younger sister Mutnodjmet who appears in contemporary scenes depicting the Amarna court but she had no other known relatives Her name which translates as the Beautiful Woman Has Come hints that she may have been a foreigner maybe a foreign princess who literally arrived in Egypt to marry the king But Nefertiti s name was not extraordinary and as the lady Tiy wife of the courtier Ay claims to have been Nefertiti s nurse it is now generally accepted that Nefertiti was born a member of Egypt s wealthy elite Circumstantial evidence suggests ...

Article

Queen of Sheba  

According to the First Book of Kings in the Bible, the Queen of Sheba learned of the wisdom of King Solomon and came to Jerusalem to test him “with hard questions.” She arrived in a vast caravan, “with camels that bare spices, and very much gold, and precious stones.”

Yemenis and Ethiopians both claim that the Queen of Sheba once ruled in their country. While an ancient kingdom of Saba did flourish in South Arabia (present-day Yemen) some centuries after the reign of Solomon, growing rich from the spice trade, ancient inscriptions reveal that there was also a kingdom in Ethiopia known by the dual name Da’amat and Saba. The incense, or spice, that grew in South Arabia also grew on the other side of the Red Sea.

The Ethiopian claim to the Queen of Sheba is detailed in the famous epic Kebra Nagast The Glory of Kings It ...

Article

Ramesses, II  

Joyce Tyldesley

third king of Egypt’s Nineteenth Dynasty. His name is also spelled as “Ramses” and “Rameses.” His grandfather, Ramesses I, had been adopted as heir by Horemheb, last king of the Eighteenth Dynasty. Ramesses II, born before his family became royal, was the son of Ramesses’s son Seti I and his consort, Mut-Tuya. At approximately ten years of age he was given the rank of “first king’s son.” Later he was installed as coregent to assist Seti in his rule. After no more than four years of coregency, Seti I died and Ramesses inherited his throne. He was to rule Egypt for sixty-six years.

As crown prince Ramesses had successfully defended northern Egypt against the Sherden seaborne invaders and pirates who hailed from Ionia modern southwest Turkey Following his victory with many of the Sherden now recruited as mercenaries in the Egyptian army he established a defensive line of forts along ...

Article

Tutankhamen  

Joyce Tyldesley

Egyptian pharaoh (r. c. 1336–1327 BCE), ruled New Kingdom Egypt during the late 18th Dynasty. He is also known as Nebkheperure Tutankhamen. Born during the Amarna Period, a time when the traditional pantheon was abandoned as the royal family dedicated itself to the divine solar disk known as the Aten, Tutankhamen’s brief reign saw the restoration of conventional royal values, including the reinstatement of the old gods and the abandonment of the city of Amarna (ancient Akhetaten) which had been built specifically to celebrate the cult of the Aten. Although he ruled Egypt for nine years, little is known of Tutankhamen’s rule, and he is today best known for his almost intact tomb, discovered in the Valley of the Kings, Thebes, in 1922 CE.

Tutankhamen’s FamilyTutankhamen s route to the throne is undocumented and the names of his parents and the identity of his immediate predecessor are unrecorded However ...