Menthuophi and Nitocris

A man came to Antiques Road Show with this pair of 19th century statues by Emile Louis Picault, and I'm all, ew, ew, ew, is that woman Egyptian? She is! The camera scanned upward, I could see ankhs all over her garment, it seemed like other hieroglyphs went by but I wasn't sure and cameramen never care about those.

Slouching toward Thebes

Egyptian royalty is never depicted standing like this

Wigs are always full and bob-cut, never scraggly.

Then onto the statue of the male starting at the bottom rising up past the naturalized unEgyptian non-pleated flowing folds in the garment, the belt tie ends in a flap, a sort of decorative narrow apron with -- writing on it! -- but the cameraman is unimpressed with writing and continues the survey of the statue where we notice elements of theater and elements Art Deco and of natural posture and naturalized touches throughout in the jewelry and headdresses, wigs, and decorative elements that are decidedly not Egyptian so one can hold little hope for the hieroglyphs being authentic.

Photographers are alike in this, none of them care what the hieroglyphs say.

The Antiques Roadshow evaluator identified the statue as King Menthuophi and Queen Nitocris.

And I'm sitting there thinking these names are not familiar to me.

What a bummer. I hate when things don't match what I know.

The evaluator, curator, Roadshow cohost, went on to say the couple depicted were also brother and sister, that the brother was murdered by some kind of coupe, a treason among the nobles, and the sister, once she was made queen, brought revenge for her brother and husband by constructing a new dining hall fed by a channel from the Nile and hosting an inauguration feast for it and inviting all the conspirators she knew about and then flooding the room killing all of them.

But not all the conspirators attended and the Queen killed herself shortly after to avoid their retribution by throwing herself into a burning house.

I'm all, what? What?  This is the first I've heard of that incident. But, curator, who do you think you are talking to?

There is no such King Menthuophi nor Queen Nitocris or I would have known about them by now.

Don't you think?

Chuh!

They would have shown up in native Egyptian art by now, some inscription, some tomb.

Gawl!  Okay, let's look at these hieroglyphs written on the Apron.

The duck with a sun, that's good. "son of." We're off to a good start. Surprising, right off the bat. They've got the "son of" convention properly positioned outside the cartouche. The duck is pointing to the right so that is the way we will read the whole thing, into the duck's face. This artist had some linguistic help. Or else a very good example to draw from and was a very good copier.

Inside the cartouche, far right top, a sedge frond, "eh" or "I" or "Ah" sound.

Next to the frond a stack of 3 glyphs

sennet board = mn
water zigzag = n
water canal = mr

The frond +sennet board + water zigzag is a common ligature in names, for "Amon," but the mr water canal is not so common in the group. There are other ways to write "mr," a wooden hoe shaped like a tilted "A," for example is a lot  more common in names. There is the channel mr in names but not so often as the wooden hoe and not with an Amon ligature. So far we have "Amonmer"

The next sign looks like a dot, but it is kind of small I think it is Ra sometimes Re.

Three fox skins for "ms" or "mes" stylized here very nicely as stacks of grain. I'm going to remember this and draw them like this hereafter. I'm tired of drawing those fox skins.

Two horizontal lines are two door bolts, two "s" marks. A bit of "s" redundancy with the "s" already in "ms" as commonly seen in cartouches for the name "rameses"  So far we have "Amonmer Rameses." Usually Ramses is written with a different kind of S.

Finally, the baseball bat, actually a column with a peg that would fit a crossbeam's dent usually drawn vertically but this time horizontally to form an artistic ligature with the horizontal bent forearm, to produce the sound "eh ah," the forearm is redundant "eh" sound, they are most likely not saying "eh ah eh." So now we have, "Sa, Amonmer Ramses Ehah" and that is nothing at all like "Menthuophi."

Conclusion: real hieroglyphs well drawn but unfamiliar name.

Incidentally, these statues here auctioned between $60,000 - $80,000.

Where does this story come from?



[king menthuophi] All results refer back to this statue. This is not looking good.

[Queen Nitocris] Mentioned by Manetho and by Herodotus but not by any native inscriptions and not any other kings list.

Not on the Turin Royal Canon
Not on the Abydos kings list
Not on the Karnak Tablet
Not on the South Saqqara Stone
Not on the Saqqara Tablet
Not on the Palermo Stone

The name Nitocris is associated with Neterkare and Nitikrty.

Manetho is incredibly important to Egyptologist, so much of Egyptology is based on his work, Aegyptiaca. Manethos was an Egyptian historian writing in Koinê Greek (common Alexandrian, Hellenistic, Attic) at the time of the first Ptolemy rulers. Working largely from oral history myths and legends much of what we think that we know of ancient Egypt comes form Manetho. Nothing of his original works survive. Everything known of him and his work is by epitomes and by mere mentions in other works.

Herodotus was an Greek historian, an avid traveler who lived contemporaneously with Manetho and is considered the father of history. The way he collected and organized had not been done. Some historians believe that Manetho's history was made in reaction to Herodotus' history. Manetho wanted an Egyptian point of view told, and I suppose, its wealth of tradition included.

It was conventional in Herodotus's day for authors to 'publish' their works by reciting them at popular festivals. According to Lucian, Herodotus took his finished work straight from Asia Minor to the Olympic Games and read the entire Histories to the assembled spectators in one sitting, receiving rapturous applause at the end of it. 

According to a very different account by an ancient grammarian, Herodotus refused to begin reading his work at the festival of Olympia until some clouds offered him a bit of shade, by which time however the assembly had dispersed—thus the proverbial expression "Herodotus and his shade" to describe someone who misses an opportunity through delay.

Conclusion: Nitocris was possibly an interregnum female ruler, sister to a queen during a period of disruption, disorder and upheaval leading to  the first intermediary period of foreign rule, most likely she did not exist. Also the story by Manethos contains other element of the type that was common in the time of his writing and after, referring to an inscription on Nitocris' tomb that fooled Darius to open it then to be faced with another door with another inscription on it that chided the violator for being so greedy, is just a little too twee to ring true, and all too common.

See? We must be ever vigilant in our eagerness to absorb new things no matter how appealing lest we let artists and poets lead us astray to the point we believe names like Ozymandias and Menthuophi refer to real people.