Amanipilade is the name conventionally attributed to a Kushite

queen regnant A queen regnant (: queens regnant) is a female monarch, equivalent in rank, title and position to a king. She reigns ''suo jure'' (in her own right) over a realm known as a kingdom; as opposed to a queen consort, who is married to a reigning ...

buried in pyramid Beg N. 25 in

Meroë Meroë (; also spelled ''Meroe''; Meroitic: ; and ; ) was an ancient city on the east bank of the Nile about 6 km north-east of the Kabushiya station near Shendi, Sudan, approximately 200 km north-east of Khartoum. Near the site is ...

. Amanipilade ruled the

Kingdom of Kush The Kingdom of Kush (; Egyptian language, Egyptian: 𓎡𓄿𓈙𓈉 ''kꜣš'', Akkadian language, Assyrian: ''Kûsi'', in LXX Χους or Αἰθιοπία; ''Ecōš''; ''Kūš''), also known as the Kushite Empire, or simply Kush, was an an ...

from Meroë in the middle of the fourth century AD. Circumstantial and indirect evidence suggests that she might have been the last ruler of the kingdom.

Sources and chronology

The name Amanipilade, rendered in Meroitic as ''Mnipilde'', is known only from a text found at an offering table in the pyramid Beg. W 104, likely removed from its original location and placed there later. The name was attributed to the monarch buried in Beg N. 25 in 1978, based on the late type of the text's

palaeography Palaeography (American and British English spelling differences#ae and oe, UK) or paleography (American and British English spelling differences#ae and oe, US) (ultimately from , , 'old', and , , 'to write') is the study and academic disciplin ...

matching the very late date of the pyramid. The attribution of Amanipilade to Beg N. 25 is conventionally accepted by scholars, for instance in the ''Fontes Historiae Nubiorum'' and by Török (2015). Some researchers have doubted the attribution, such as Kuckertz (2021), who speculated that it could be the name of a non-royal official who adopted a royal formula on their offering table. Like many other Kushite rulers, the name Amanipilade incorporates the name of the god

Amun Amun was a major ancient Egyptian deity who appears as a member of the Hermopolitan Ogdoad. Amun was attested from the Old Kingdom together with his wife Amunet. His oracle in Siwa Oasis, located in Western Egypt near the Libyan Desert, r ...

. The names of Amanipilade's parents are also recorded in the offering table text: Tehye (father) and Mkeḫñye (mother). These names are not attested as belonging to any ruling Kushite monarchs but the Kushite throne could be inherited through indirect lines. Amanipilade was identified as a female ruler through the name's connection to Beg N. 25. The pyramid's mortuary chapel includes a relief depicting the monarch buried, which is conventionally interpreted as depicting a ruling queen, relatively common in the late Kingdom of Kush. Because the reliefs are damaged, it has been suggested that this is an "unsafe interpretation of relief traces". Recent works however generally maintain that Beg N. 25 is the tomb of a queen regnant, though some stress that this is a cautious identification. Beg N. 25 is the last known royal burial in Meroë and may thus mark the end of the royal dynasty that ruled from that city. Circumstantial and indirect evidence also dates the end of Meroitic political authority to the middle decades of the fourth century AD.

References

{{Kushite Monarchs footer, state=collapsed Queens of Kush Queens regnant in Africa 4th-century queens regnant