Néferhétepès

Néferhétepès is one of the girls of Djédefrê, Pharaon of. A bust representing it, whose head is lacking today, is preserved and exposed in the Egyptological section of the Musée of Louvre and was found not far from the pyramid of his/her father with Abou Rawash, site on which its burial was undoubtedly projected initially, although one did not find tangible traces yet of them on the ground apart from this fragmentary statue.

Genealogy

As for other important female characters of the end of its precise identity remains prone to various interpretations according to the discoveries which have followed one another for more than ten years in the necropoles royal. Two principal assumptions relating to it are thus always being studied and will perhaps find a day an definitive answer:

Néferhétepès is the mother of Ouserkaf, first king of. In this case it would have been probably the wife of Néferhétep, father of Ouserkaf. This assumption is based on the title of mw.t nsw-bi.tj that it carries and who was found mentioned on several monuments with Saqqarah including one, published in 1997 by Audran Labrousse, presents a list of royal fields of. One of these fields, which were allotted by the king for the benefit of a funerary foundation, belonged to Néferhétepès which is mentioned with its titles. However another princess of royal blood, girl of Khéops, bore this same name and the funerary field represented according to immediately that of the builder of the Grande Pyramid, this element is disputed by holding of the second assumption.

Néferhétepès is the wife of Ouserkaf and the mother of Sahourê and Néferirkarê. This assumption is founded on the discovery in 2002 by the Supreme council of Egyptian Antiquities of fragments of decoration of the chaussee of the Pyramide of Sahourê on the site of Abousir. These blocks decorated with reliefs, present in an unhoped-for way of invaluable information on the genealogy of the illuminant a little more this period remained too often to the shade of the preceding dynasty in the Egyptological studies. On these reliefs, Néferhétepès is described as mother of the king, which is interprêté in the direction of a filiation with Sahourê and Néferirkarê. However the figure of the queen does not carry the title of " mother of two kings de Haute and Low Égypte" as one would be in right to await it. It is in particular the case for other queens having played this part and who will then be regarded as true dynastic mothers . One would be badly thus explained the absence of this title for the founder of the dynasty…

The assumptions relating to it thus remain open but certainty are essential like the fact that it is well the girl of Djédefrê.

In the same way, so during a time it was question of two homonymous different characters, the elements found in the name of this queen, marries or mother of a king, leave only little doubt about the single identity of a princess of royal blood at the end of having been in sufficiently close link with the royalty to have her own funerary complex and of which only that of Saqqarah is currently allotted to him in a convincing way.

Burial

Currently, one identifies the small pyramid located at the south of the funerary complex of Ouserkaf as being that of Néferhétepès.

This pyramid had an initial height of seventeen meters for a base of a little more twenty-six meters, the slope of its slope being of 52°. Today very degraded, it still preserves part of the cover of its vault letting appreciate the device of vault out of rafter that the architects of the pyramids will use systematically for the construction of the royal tombs from the reign of Ouserkaf.

This pyramid had a small coupled funerary temple with its face is but of which well few things remain visible, materials of choice, such as the fine limestone of Tourah which also composed the coating of the pyramid, or the granite which composed formerly certain parts of the building having been taken for a long time by the carriers and this since antiquity, leaving the anonymous monument.

It is the discovery of the tomb of Persen, priest of the worship of Néferhétepès and Ouserkaf, arranged near the pyramid which allowed the identification of the monument. A block of this tomb preserved since at the Egyptian museum of Berlin explicitly mentions the name of the queen like her title of Mère of the king . Bernard Grdseloff, author of the discovery, in thus proposed the identification and it remains allowed so far in the absence of other more concrete evidence going in this direction or another.

The proximity of both complex funerary of Ouserkaf and Néferhétepès militates in favor of the assumption of very close family ties between these two characters who would form thus the hyphen between and.

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