Neferusobek doesn't have the name recognition of Cleopatra and Hapshetsut, but she may have been the first woman to rule the ancient kingdom
Ancient Egypt was essentially a man’s world, lorded over by the pharaoh. But at times during its roughly 3,000-year history, women ruled, and six women—Merneith, Neferusobek, Hatshepsut, Nefertiti, Tawosret, and—climbed the highest and wielded the most significant power in ancient Egypt, not as manipulators of their menfolk, but as heads of state.
All the courtiers looked to the royal family to solve the situation: to maintain the balance of power among the elites, to keep the wealth pouring in. The 12th dynasty found itself in a succession crisis of the highest order. As the highest-ranked family member left, Neferusobek stepped forward as nothing less than king, using her descent from the great King Amenemhat III to justify her rule.
To uphold her father’s dynasty and further legitimize her kingship, Neferusobek ordered the completion of her father’s pyramid complex at Hawara. She also took an unprecedented step and ordered her father deified within his temple spaces. Although all kings were considered divine, and all dead kings had a greater divinity among the company of ancestor kings, Neferusobek went a step further and created special cult spaces for the worship of her father as a god at his temple at Hawara.
As soon as she became king, Neferusobek immediately got to work protecting the family dynasty. She had her images placed in temples all around Egypt; three statues were found at the eastern delta’s Tell el Dab’a in association with 12th dynasty temple installations. Frustratingly, none of her named statues preserve her face.
One of these statues sits in the Louvre today. Headless, unfortunately, it depicts her wearing the Nemes headdress falling over her shoulders, the very same striped headcloth that Tutankhamun would wear much later in his golden funerary mask. She is wearing a queen’s dress, but she has tied on the kilt of kingship over her feminine garb, knotted much higher than a masculine king’s kilt would have been: above her navel and just below her breasts.
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