Royal Women
The royal women of Amarna have more surviving text about them than any other women from ancient Egypt. It is clear that they played a large role in royal and religious functions. These women were frequently portrayed as being very powerful. Many of the king's daughters (Amenhotep) had influences as great if not greater than his wives'. Tiye and Nefertiti were the most influential of his wives, and Nefertiti was said to be the force behind the new monotheist religion. Nefertiti, whose name means "the beautiful one is here", bore six of Amenhotep's daughters. There is a debate whether the relationship between Amenhotep and his daughters was sexual. Although there is much controversy over this topic, there is no evidence that any of them bore his children. Amenhotep gave many of his daughters titles of queen. Tiye, the king's chief wife, came to be known as the "commoner queen" for the lack of "royal blood". Tiye came from a military family, and had influence even after Amenhotep's death.
Read more about this topic: Amarna Period
Famous quotes containing the words royal and/or women:
“Not to these shores she came! this other Thrace,
Environ barbarous to the royal Attic;
How could her delicate dirge run democratic,
Delivered in a cloudless boundless public place
To an inordinate race?”
—John Crowe Ransom (18881974)
“The nature of womens oppression is unique: women are oppressed as women, regardless of class or race; some women have access to significant wealth, but that wealth does not signify power; women are to be found everywhere, but own or control no appreciable territory; women live with those who oppress them, sleep with them, have their childrenwe are tangled, hopelessly it seems, in the gut of the machinery and way of life which is ruinous to us.”
—Andrea Dworkin (b. 1946)