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Nitocris of Babylon (c. 550 BC) is an otherwise unknown queen regnant of Babylon described by Herodotus in his Histories. According to Histories of Herodotus, among sovereigns of Babylon two were women, Semiramis and Nitocris. Nitocris is credited by Herodotus with various building projects in Babylon.
- More Than Just A Name?
- Herodotus & Other Accounts
- Newberry's Argument
- Support For Herodotus' Account
- Conclusion
For the past century the historicity of Nitocris has been questioned by scholars, even though her name appears on the Turin King's List of Egyptian monarchs, is also mentioned by Manetho (3rd century BCE) in his list of 6th century Egyptian monarchs and by Eratosthenes of Cyrene (276-194 BCE) in his Theban List of Egyptian Monarchy. Flavius Josephu...
Herodotus' account of Nitocris is often cited as the only evidence of the queen in history. While it is the only source for the story of her revenge, there are, as noted, other sources. Herodotus writes: Scholars became suspect of this account when no Egyptian sources were found to corroborate it and even more so when it was considered that Herodot...
Percy E. Newberry is nowhere near as well known as he should be. It was Newberry who first brought Howard Carter to Egypt in 1891 CE and set Carter on the path toward discovering the tomb of Tutankhamunin 1922 CE. Newberry, in fact, would work with Carter on the excavation and evaluation of the contents, being especially knowledgable in botany and ...
Newberry's evidence regarding the tomb, and the interpretation of Eratosthenes' line, however, do not support Herodotus' account of a queen avenging herself for her king-brother's murder, however, since Pepi II was not her brother and, besides, lived and reigned upwards of sixty years. Arguments that she was the wife of Merenre I (2287-2278 BCE) al...
An interesting detail from the ancient sources is how Manetho lists Nitocris' reign as twelve years total while Eratosthenes gives her reign as six from Thebes (Pritchard, 103). It is possible, following Herodotus' account, that the sister of the king was placed on the throne following a coup at Memphis. She then reigned from the traditional capita...
- Joshua J. Mark
Apr 3, 2020 · Nitocris then became the sole ruler of Ancient Egypt and determined to avenge the death of her beloved husband-brother. She gave orders for the secret construction of a huge underground hall connected to the river Nile by a hidden channel.
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Nov 1, 2012 · Nitocris also created what Herodotus called “a remarkable deception” to prevent anyone from seizing her burial treasure after her death. She built her tomb above one of the main gates of Babylon, rendering the entrance unusable, because of a widespread cultural prohibition against passing beneath a dead body:
- Robert Lebling
Feb 19, 2020 · Upon Nitocris’s death, at her orders her body was placed in a tomb directly over the main gate of the city, with the consequence that many kings chose to go around the back way rather than risk the ill luck of passing in all their panoply beneath a corpse.
May 26, 2019 · Print. Nitocris is claimed by some sources to have been a female pharaoh of ancient Egypt. However, prior to the Ptolemaic Dynasty, there were few female rulers in the history of ancient Egypt. Many of these women ruled only as regents for their underage sons.
Herodotus claimed that Queen Nitocris (Ntikrty) sought vengeance for the murder of her brother, the king. She constructed a banqueting hall with an inbuilt water inlet, and arranged for those she held responsible to be lured there by a great feast and then drowned.
