Nitocris II

Nitocris II (or Nitokris II,¹ Nitocris B,² Egyptian: Nt-jqrt, Nitiqret) was an ancient Egyptian princess and priestess during the reign of pharaoh Amasis II of the 26th Dynasty.

Biography

Daughter of Amasis II,² Nitocris II is mainly attested by an inscription on a bronze sitting statuette of Amun-Ra now in the University of Chicago Oriental Institute (registration no. E10584A-B³) on which she is called High Priest of Amun; the same object also claims that the God's Wife of Amun Ankhnesneferibre was her "mother". Nitocris' title is notable because she is the last attested holder of the once influential office of High Priest of Amun at Thebes, as well as one of only two known female holders;⁴ she may have reached this office around 560 BCE.²

The fact that Ankhnesneferibre is called her "mother" suggests that Nitocris also held the office of Divine Adoratrice of Amun¹ which usually led to the charge of God's Wife of Amun after the adoptive mother's death. However, it seems that Nitocris never managed to reach the latter position because these offices were abolished soon after the Persian invasion of Egypt in 525 BCE.⁵

Notes

Footnotes

1. Dodson, Aidan (2002). "The problem of Amenirdis II and the heirs of the office of God's Wife of Amun during the Twenty-sixth Dynasty". Journal of Egyptian Archaeology. 88: 179–186. doi:10.1177/030751330208800112. S2CID 190737173. pp. 179; 186 ↩ ↩²

2. Kitchen, Kenneth A. (1996). The Third Intermediate Period in Egypt (1100–650 BC). Warminster: Aris & Phillips Limited. p. 608. ISBN 0-85668-298-5. § 365 n. 951; table 13A ↩ ↩² ↩³

3. Picture of the statuette on the Chicago Oriental Institute website ↩

4. Dodson, Aidan, Hilton, Dyan. The Complete Royal Families of Ancient Egypt. Thames & Hudson (2004). ISBN 0-500-05128-3, p.246 ↩

5. "God's Wife of Amun". Ancient Egypt by Anneke Bart. Retrieved May 31, 2015. ↩