Ahmose Nefertari

The Queen Ahmose-Nefertari was arguably the most venerated women in Kemetic (Egyptian) history. As the grandmother of the 18^th Dynasty (The Golden Age) and co-regent with her young son Amenhotep I, she was by leaps and bounds at a higher status than some of the more minor queens like Cleopatra (most likely a Greek and non-Egyptian) and Nefertiti. Nefertiti means something akin to the beautiful whereas Nefertari means the most beautiful or something like more beautiful than beautiful. The name Nefertari seems to come down to us as a name almost exclusively associated with very dark skin or Nubian (Ethiopian) woman. The Egyptologist George Rawlinson, in his book Ancient Egypt, clearly speaking with the voice of racism, simply could not reconcile the repeated black representation and veneration of this woman during The Golden Age and tried to explain it away with the following. Speaking on the Queens husband, King Ahmose (he refers to him as Aahmes):

He married a princess, who took on the name of Nefet-ari-Aahmes , or “the beautiful companion of Aahmes,” and who is represented on the monuments with pleasing features, but a complexion of ebon blackness. It is certainly wrong to call her a “negress;” she was an Ethiopian of the best physical type; and her marriage with Aahmes may have been based upon a political motive. The Egyptian Pharaohs from time to time allied themselves with the monarchs of the south, partly to obtain the aid of Ethiopian troops in their wars, partly with a view of claming, in the right of their wives, dominion over the Upper Nile region. Aahmes may have been the first to do this; or he may simply have “followed the example of his predecessors, who, forced by the Hyksos to the south, had contracted marriages with the families of Ethiopian rulers”.

To use the term, “but a complexion of ebon blackness”, in this context suggest some disappointment on his part or possibly that everything about Nefet-ari-Aahmes , or “the beautiful companion of Aahmes,” was okay except her blackness. More importantly, here Rawlinson is clearly making a distinction between Egyptians and Ethiopians, who are now in the same class, and Negro’s, Nigress’s and other Black’s in another. Rawlinson wasn’t the only one running from this beautiful woman’s blackness as Bernal (Black Athena 1987, p. 241) has pointed out in his Black Athena, most of western scholar ship for the last couple of centuries has been denying the blackness of Egypt and Ethiopia. Alan Gardner (1961), the grandfather of the now controversial Martin Bernal, and perhaps, the most decorated authority ever on Egyptian language, wrote in his legendary Egypt of the Pharaohs: “Special prominence was here given to Queen Ahmose-Nofreteroi, depicted for some unaccountable reason with a black countenance, but also sometimes with a blue one; if she was the daughter of Kamose she will have had no black blood in her veins”. Fortunately today we know that blood has no race or gender but rather comes in types and that there was nothing to account for in reference to her blackness. She was black (perhaps darker) just as all the other people she knew around her. As for the blue part, I can recall while growing up my mother, who was from the southern United States, referring to the blackest persons she knew as blue-black. I experience this first hand when I received my family name (Ater) from Awan Ater, from the Sudan. With brilliant and beautiful white teeth, his wonderful blackness was such that it literally appeared to flash shades blue. I for one, though I cannot deny with certainty that they do not exist, have never seen one of the blue images of Queen Ahmose Nefertari, only the black ones including one at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, which stated at the time that Her face has become black over time. The interesting thing is her face was the only one of many on that particular art piece to have done such. In fact, she appears in this peace alongside her beloved son Amenhotep I, with Amenhotep appearing a shade or two lighter than his own mother. From an artistic standpoint, this is to place an emphasis on the queen as an extremely dark woman. In addition, we know that the tendency of paint is to lighten rather than darken overtime. This can be seen in many Egyptian wall scenes by contrasting the paint closer to the outline of a figure with that at the center of what is being outlined..

Overlooking these racist comments about this great African queen not being a “negress” and the attempt to separate her from other African’s by such comments, we see again that early on, even before Ahmose, his predecessors probably had “contracted marriages with the families of Ethiopian rulers.” One “early on” piece of evidence would be the prophecies of Neferti who was said to be a sage in the court of King Sneferu of the 4^th Dynasty. Though Neferti was called to the court of the King to give a vision of Egypt’s future, instead of words of promise, he prophesized the destruction of the nation through civil war and the eventual redemption by a great King named Ameny. Many, however, consider the prophecy to be an elaborate disguise of the court of a later (Middle Kingdom) King named Amenemhet I. What’s important here is this King, Amenemhet I, founder of the 12^th Dynasty shared the same fate as the later 18^th Dynasty king, Ahmose as at the being of the Dynasty we find the presence of an important Black Woman. It can further be said, if the story comes down to us by way of a 12^th Dynasty Pharaoh; but was intended to be a prophecy of the Old Kingdom (4^th Dynasty), then those ruling during that period, the Middle and Empire periods, believed things would have been no different during the Old Kingdom, the beginning of Egyptian civilization. From The Prophecies of Neferti we have (Lichtheim, 1975):

Then a king will come from the south,

Ameny, the justified, by name,

Son of a woman of Ta-Seti, child of Upper Egypt.

He will take the white crown,

He will wear the red crown;

He will join the Two Mighty Ones,

He will please the Two Lords with what they wish,

With field-circler in his fist, oar in his grasp.

Rejoice, O people of his time,

The son of man will make his name for all eternity!

Ta-Seti is to the immediate south of Egypt and is clearly a part of ancient Nubia. Recently there has been much discussion about an incense burner found, complete with the symbol white crown of the Pharaoh, as well as, other pre-dynastic symbols; this area of Ta-Seti predates the earliest Egyptian Pharaoh’s by several generations. This helps to under-pin the many strong arguments that Ethiopians or Nubians, with their most beautiful women, in fact, founded the Egyptian civilization.

From the forthcoming book by Mathu Ater

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