Did Queen Plot or Not? Dig May Solve Ancient Egyptian Riddle

More than 4,200 years ago, Pharaoh Pepy I heard that one of his queens was plotting against him. He sent Weni the Scribe to find out.

Weni did. History didn’t.

Guilty or innocent? Cunning or faithful?

Pepy’s hapless queens have been suspect ever since.

Now a French-Egyptian archeological team, digging and recording a queenly pyramid field 20 miles south of Cairo, is on its way to unraveling one of ancient Egypt’s most tantalizing intrigues.

“We have mention of three Pepy queens” in ancient texts, “and now we have three burials,” said Vassil Dobrev, a Bulgarian-born Egyptologist on the team led by French historian Jean Leclant. “As we search on, we’ll find the answers.”

Which was the queen in question, and did she do it?

Weni went to his grave with the secret, leaving a record of his investigation that ended: “I know the truth.”

The scribe’s silence did not enhance the pharaoh’s reputation. Pepy I, who died in 2255 BC after a 34-year reign, is remembered for two things: an ability to keep Egypt’s far-flung, troublesome colonies in line and an inability to do the same with his queens.

Early grave robbers, peasants revolting against the pharaohs and generations of stone thieves left few clues to the alleged conspiracy intact. The pyramids of Pepy’s queens were so completely ransacked that restorers work alongside archeologists to minimize the danger of falling walls.

Generations of sycophantic tomb artists depicted ancient Egyptian queens as perfect mates: beautiful, submissive, adoring.

Egyptologist Zahi Hawass said the story of Pepy and his queen shows that some ancient royal marriages were less than ideal, especially since pharaohs had to deal with multiple wives and had both major and minor queens.

A pharaoh’s chief queen, as consort of a god, received special privileges, including the title “great royal wife.” Because of the numerous other royal offspring, a young pharaoh-to-be often married his sister to enhance his right to the throne.

A few queens even managed to rule Egypt.

“We can understand the queens’ importance by their tombs,” said Hawass, who directs the pharaonic cemeteries of Giza and Sakkara to the south. “The largest was the pharaoh’s tomb. After all, he ruled Egypt. His tomb had to show that power.

“But directly after his tomb in size came the queens, then the princes, then the nobles and officials; a cemetery easily shows their ranks in life.”

Allegations of a palace plot by a main queen was taken so seriously that Weni was allowed inside the off-limits harem to investigate the rumors. Hawass said Weni left no record of the queen’s name, referring to her only as a “main consort” of the pharaoh.

Until this dig, the only Pepy wives whose names were known were Ankh-nes-meryre I and Ankh-nes-meryre II. Both were recorded by an official named Khui, who said the king married two of his family members. It is unlikely either sister would have been the main queen because their blood wasn’t royal enough.

So who was the alleged plotter? Dobrev and his colleagues, who are at the end of the dig for the season, hope the answer lies in the third pyramid.

The French-Egyptian expedition first came to South Sakkara, site of the pyramids of Pepy I and his pharaoh sons Merenre and Pepy II, in 1965.

Its task was to record the last of the old kingdom’s great pyramid complexes on the edge of a 3-square-mile stretch of desert graves spanning 3,000 years.

Pepy I’s pyramid proved particularly important because of intricately carved texts of spells, rituals and myths designed to help propel the soul of the dead pharaoh into the afterlife.

For two decades, archeologists were too busy to look for his queens, but by 1988 high technology was available to help. Experts combed 50 acres of rubble-strewn dunes adjacent to Pepy’s pyramid with ultrasound equipment developed in France.

Soundings monitored by French technicians pinpointed two good possibilities. The team started digging and found two queens’ pyramids.

A portion of a third pyramid was discovered last year, wedged between the first two and roughly the same size, about 66 feet tall.

Three pyramids. Three queens.

Diggers began excavating the new pyramid early this year, uncovering pottery shards, a chapel, a passageway and a burial chamber.

By the time digging ended on March 28, there were two important clues that could help solve the mystery of the accused queen.

One was the name Nub-Unet on wall reliefs. The queen was unknown to Egyptologists and may have been the royal wife that Weni described. She was buried in the eastern pyramid.

The second clue was an empty basalt sarcophagus, its lid buried beneath two massive boulders that once closed the burial chamber of the middle pyramid.

Dobrev hopes that the lid, when uncovered, will bear the name of the queen and something about her, but that is next season’s work.

Hawass thinks he knows what Weni the Scribe left unsaid about Pepy’s queen.

“Weni bragged that he alone investigated and he alone knew the truth,” the cemetery director said. “He had solved the problem. That’s where the tale ends.

“I think Weni told Pepy his queen was not guilty, because Pepy would never have allowed her to be buried next to him if she had done something so evil.”