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Dynasty 19
1293 – 1185 BC
Amenmesses
(heqawaset)
Menmire-setepenre
1202-1199 BC
Seti II
(merenptah)
Userkheperure-setepenre
1199-1193 BC
Siptah
(merenptah)
Akhenre-setepenre
1193-1187 BC
Queen Twosret
(setepenmut)
Sitre-meryamun
1187-1185 BC
When Merneptah died in 1202 BC a hiatus occurred in the succession. Instead of the Crown Prince Seti–Merneptah – who had been associated with his father as ruler – ascending the throne, an unknown, Amenmesses, became king. The explanation for this is a mystery but it has been suggested that, in the unfortunate absence of the Crown Prince at the time Merneptah died, a lesser prince, the son of a lesser queen (Takhat), seized the initiative. Little is known of Amenmesses apart from a few minor inscriptions and the fact that during his short four-year reign he began cutting a tomb in the Valley of the Kings (KV10) . The decoration in the tomb was, as usual, unfinished. Possibly the king’s mother, Takhat, and his wife, Baktwerel, were also buried in the tomb (although it has been suggested that they were the mother and wife respectively of Ramses IX). None of the three bodies has been identified.
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| Statue of Seti II at the Turin Museum |
The successor to Amenmesses in c. 1199 BC was Seti II, who may have been the previously ousted Crown Prince. Certainly he seems to have exercised a damnatio memoriae on his predecessor’s monuments and added his own name to earlier ones. Three of his queens are known: Takhat II; Twosret, who was the mother of the eldest son and heir apparent, Seti–Merenptah; and Tiaa, who was the mother of Ramcsses–Siptah. It seems that the heir apparent died before his father Seti II, and the younger son inherited the throne as a minor, taking the name of Siptah. The older queen, Twosret, in effect ruled in her stepson’s name together with the Chancellor, the so-called ‘kingmaker’ Bay, who was granted the privilege of a small private tomb in the Valley of the Kings (KV 13).
Siptah died in his Year 6 and was buried in the upper part of the Valley of the Kings (KV 47) in a tomb that was apparently intended for himself and his mother Queen Tiaa. His large red granite sarcophagus still remains in the unfinished burial hall but his body, notable for its deformity of a club foot (possibly the result of poliomyelitis when young) was found in the cache in the tomb of Amenhotep II (KV 35) in 1898. Curiously, shortly after the burial the tomb was disturbed and his cartouches erased in the inscriptions, to be subsequently restored in paint. Possibly the restoration was done under the Chancellor Bay.
With Siptah‘s death his stepmother Twosret declared herself queen, using the full pharaonic titles as Hatshepsut had done some 300 years earlier. Her tomb in the Valley (KV 14) had a chequered history; begun under Siptah in Year 2, it was extended by [Above] Detail of the head of a life-size Twosret, possibly to receive the burials of herself and her first husband Seti II, but later usurped by Setnakhte, first king of the 20th Dynasty. A small cache of rather second-rate gold) jewellery found in 1908 in a small pit tomb (KV 56) may have belonged to an infant daughter of Twosret and Seti II.
Related Web Search :
- Ancient Egyptian Pharaoh
- Ancient Egyptian Kings
- Ancient Egyptian Dynasties
- Egyptian 19th Dynasty
- Amenmesses
- Menmire-setepenre
- Seti II
- Userkheperure-setepenre
- Siptah
- Akhenre-setepenre
- Queen Twosret
- Sitre-meryamun