Pentawer (also Pentawere and Pentaweret) was an

ancient Egypt Ancient Egypt () was a cradle of civilization concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in Northeast Africa. It emerged from prehistoric Egypt around 3150BC (according to conventional Egyptian chronology), when Upper and Lower E ...

ian prince of the

20th Dynasty The Twentieth Dynasty of Egypt (notated Dynasty XX, alternatively 20th Dynasty or Dynasty 20) is the third and last dynasty of the Ancient Egyptian New Kingdom period, lasting from 1189 BC to 1077 BC. The 19th and 20th Dynasties together constitute ...

, a son of Pharaoh

Ramesses III Usermaatre Meryamun Ramesses III was the second Pharaoh of the Twentieth dynasty of Egypt, Twentieth Dynasty in Ancient Egypt. Some scholars date his reign from 26 March 1186 to 15 April 1155 BC, and he is considered the last pharaoh of the New K ...

and his secondary wife,

Tiye Tiye (c. 1398 BC – 1338 BC, also spelled Tye, Taia, Tiy and Tiyi) was the Great Royal Wife of the Egyptian pharaoh Amenhotep III, mother of pharaoh Akhenaten and grandmother of pharaoh Tutankhamun; her parents were Yuya and Thuya. In 2010 ...

., p.193 He was involved in the so-called "

harem conspiracy The Harem conspiracy was a coup d'état attempt against the Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses III in 1155 BC. The principal figure behind the plot was one of the pharaoh's secondary wives, Tiye, who hoped to place her son Pentawer on the throne instead ...

", a plot to kill his father and place him on the throne. The details of his trial are recorded in the

Judicial Papyrus of Turin The Judicial Papyrus of Turin (also Turin legal papyrus) is a 12th-century BCE ancient Egyptian record of the trials held against conspirators plotting to assassinate Ramesses III in what is referred to as the " Harem conspiracy". The papyrus co ...

; he committed suicide following his trial. A candidate for his body is a mummy known as "Unknown Man E", discovered in the Deir el-Bahari cache in 1881. This mummy is unusual as it was found wrapped in a sheep or goat skin and was improperly mummified, being left with all his organs. Bob Brier has suggested that this mummy does indeed belong to the disgraced prince; DNA analysis has confirmed a father-son relationship with Pentawer's known father, Ramesses III, with both sharing the same Y chromosomal haplogroup and half of their DNA.

Conspiracy

The actual name of this prince is unknown, "Pentawer" being a

pseudonym A pseudonym (; ) or alias () is a fictitious name that a person assumes for a particular purpose, which differs from their original or true meaning ( orthonym). This also differs from a new name that entirely or legally replaces an individual's o ...

given to him on the

.James Henry Breasted, ''Ancient Records of Egypt'', Part Four, Chicago 1906, § 421 He was to be the beneficiary of the harem conspiracy, probably initiated by his mother Tiye, to assassinate the pharaoh. Tiye wanted her son to succeed the pharaoh, even though the chosen heir was a son of the queen Tyti. According to the Judicial Papyrus, Pentawer was among those who were made to stand trial for their participation in the conspiracy. He was forced to kill himself:

James Henry Breasted James Henry Breasted (; August 27, 1865 – December 2, 1935) was an American archaeologist, Egyptologist, and historian. After completing his PhD at the University of Berlin in 1894 – the first American to obtain a doctorate in Egyptology – ...

argued that Pentawer "was in all probability only an unfortunate tool" in the conspiracy. Susan Redford speculates that Pentawer, being a noble, was given the option to kill himself by taking poison and so be spared the humiliating fate of some of the other conspirators who were executed. If the means of execution was burning as Redford proposes - the related papyri themselves do not indicate the method of execution - this would have served to make a strong example since it emphasized the gravity of their treason for ancient Egyptians who believed that one could only attain an

afterlife The afterlife or life after death is a purported existence in which the essential part of an individual's Stream of consciousness (psychology), stream of consciousness or Personal identity, identity continues to exist after the death of their ...

if one's body was mummified and preserved — rather than being destroyed by fire. By killing himself, Pentawer could avoid the harsher punishment of a second death. This could have permitted him to be mummified and move on to the afterlife. A recent study of the remains of "Unknown Man E" which are a candidate for his suggest that he died by

strangulation Strangling or strangulation is compression of the neck that may lead to unconsciousness or death by causing an increasingly hypoxic state in the brain by restricting the flow of oxygen through the trachea. Fatal strangulation typically occurs ...

hanging Hanging is killing a person by suspending them from the neck with a noose or ligature strangulation, ligature. Hanging has been a standard method of capital punishment since the Middle Ages, and has been the primary execution method in numerou ...

. If the remains indeed are his, then he would have been about 18-20 years old at the time of his death.

Probable mummy

In recent times, the Egyptologist Bob Brier has revived the old hypothesis that the famed

mummy A mummy is a dead human or an animal whose soft tissues and Organ (biology), organs have been preserved by either intentional or accidental exposure to Chemical substance, chemicals, extreme cold, very low humidity, or lack of air, so that the ...

of the "Unknown Man E" found in the

Deir el-Bahari Deir el-Bahari or Dayr al-Bahri (, , ) is a complex of mortuary temples and tombs located on the west bank of the Nile, opposite the city of Luxor, Egypt. This is a part of the Theban Necropolis. History Deir el-Bahari, located on the west ...

cache (

DB320 The Royal Cache, technically known as TT320 (previously referred to as DB320), is an Ancient Egyptian Hypogeum, tomb located next to Deir el-Bahari, in the Theban Necropolis, opposite the modern city of Luxor. It contains an extraordinary collect ...

) might, indeed, be Pentawer. The mummy is very unusual because it appears to have been embalmed quickly, without removing the brain and viscera, and to have been placed in a

cedar Cedar may refer to: Trees and plants *''Cedrus'', common English name cedar, an Old-World genus of coniferous trees in the plant family Pinaceae * Cedar (plant), a list of trees and plants known as cedar Places United States * Cedar, Arizona ...

box, the interior of which had to be crudely hacked to widen it. Brier hypothesizes that Pentawer was mummified very rapidly and placed in an available coffin, likely by a relative, in order to give him a proper burial.Brier, Bob, "Unknown Man E, A Preliminary Examination", ''Bulletin of the Egyptian Museum, Volume 3'', Supreme Council of Antiquities, American University in Cairo Press, 2008, pp.23-7. Subsequent DNA analysis supports the theory that the mummy was a son of Ramesses as they both share the paternal Y-DNA haplogroup

E1b1a Haplogroup E-V38, also known as E1b1a-V38, is a major human Y-chromosome DNA haplogroup. E-V38 is primarily distributed in Africa. E-V38 has two basal branches, Haplogroup E-M329, E-M329 and Haplogroup E-M2, E-M2. E-M329 is a subclade mostly foun ...

and half their DNA.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pentaweret Ancient Egyptian mummies Ancient Egyptian princes People of the Twentieth Dynasty of Egypt Children of Ramesses III Ancient suicides Pseudonyms Forced suicides