Tetisheri was the

matriarch Matriarchy is a social system in which positions of power and privilege are held by women. In a broader sense it can also extend to moral authority, social privilege, and control of property. While those definitions apply in general English, ...

of the

Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...

ian

royal family A royal family is the immediate family of monarchs and sometimes their extended family. The term imperial family appropriately describes the family of an emperor or empress, and the term papal family describes the family of a pope, while th ...

of the late 17th Dynasty and early 18th Dynasty.

Family

Non-royal parentage

Tetisheri was the daughter of Tjenna and Neferu. The names of Tetisheri's parents appear to be non-royal and are known from mummy bandages found in TT320. Aidan Dodson and Dyan Hilton, ''The Complete Royal Families of Ancient Egypt'', 2004.

Marriage

It is believed she married Senakhtenre, and despite her non-royal birth became a

Great Royal Wife Great Royal Wife, or alternatively, Chief King's Wife () is the title that was used to refer to the Queen consort, principal wife of the pharaoh of Ancient Egypt, who served many official functions. Description While most ancient Egyptians were ...

. Tetisheri was the mother of Seqenenre Tao, Queen Ahhotep I and possibly

Kamose Kamose was the last king of the Thebes, Egypt, Theban Seventeenth dynasty of Egypt, Seventeenth Dynasty at the end of the Second Intermediate Period. Kamose is usually ascribed a reign of three years (his highest attested regnal year), although s ...

. For sure she was the mother of Satdjehuty/Satibu, as attested on the rishi coffin of the latter. At Abydos, her grandson king Ahmose I erected a Stela of Queen Tetisheri to announce the construction of a pyramid and a "house" for Tetisheri. Ahmose refers to the Queen as ''"the mother of my mother, and the mother of my father, great king's wife and king's mother, Tetisheri"'' ( Breasted). This implies that his parents were siblings or half-siblings. Ahmose I was born to Ahhotep I.

Burial

Tetisheri was likely buried in Thebes and she may have been reinterred in the royal cache in TT320. No tomb at Thebes has yet been conclusively identified with Queen Tetisheri, though a mummy that may be hers, known as "Unknown Woman B", was included among other members of the royal family reburied in the Royal Cache. Pharaoh Ahmose had a memorial structure or

cenotaph A cenotaph is an empty grave, tomb or a monument erected in honor of a person or group of people whose remains are elsewhere or have been lost. It can also be the initial tomb for a person who has since been reinterred elsewhere. Although t ...

at Abydos erected in her honour, in the midst of his own extensive mortuary complex at that site. This

mudbrick Mudbrick or mud-brick, also known as unfired brick, is an air-dried brick, made of a mixture of mud (containing loam, clay, sand and water) mixed with a binding material such as rice husks or straw. Mudbricks are known from 9000 BCE. From ...

structure was discovered in 1902 by the Egypt Exploration Fund, and was found to contain a monumental stela detailing the dedication by

Ahmose I Ahmose I (''Amosis'', ''Aahmes''; meaning "Iah (the Moon) is born") was a pharaoh and founder of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt in the New Kingdom of Egypt, the era in which ancient Egypt achieved the peak of its power. His reign is usually d ...

and his sister-wife Ahmose-Nefertari of a pyramid and enclosure (or shrine) to Tetisheri. Tetisheri 1

Its discoverer, C. T. Currelly, believed the textual reference to a "pyramid" of Tetisheri to refer not to the building in which the stela was found, but rather to the more imposing pyramid associated with a large mortuary temple at its base discovered in 1900 by A. C. Mace. Based on recent discoveries, however, this view can no longer be maintained. The foundations of the structure, originally described by Currelly in 1903 as a "shrine" or "

mastaba A mastaba ( , or ), also mastabah or mastabat) is a type of ancient Egyptian tomb in the form of a flat-roofed, rectangular structure with inward sloping sides, constructed out of mudbricks or limestone. These edifices marked the burial sites ...

," was demonstrated in 2004 through the renewed excavations of the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago under the direction of S. Harvey to have actually formed the lowest courses of a brick pyramid, the last queen's pyramid to have been built in Egypt. Portions of the limestone

pyramidion A pyramidion (plural: pyramidia) is the capstone of an Egyptian pyramid or the upper section of an obelisk. Speakers of the Ancient Egyptian language referred to pyramidia as ''benbenet'' and associated the pyramid as a whole with the sacred b ...

or capstone were discovered as well, demonstrating conclusively that this structure was pyramidal in form. Magnetic survey also revealed a brick enclosure some 70 by 90 meters in scale, a feature not detected by earlier archaeologists. These accordingly may now be identified as the features described in Ahmose's stela found within: a pyramid and an enclosure, built in the midst of Ahmose's own mortuary complex.

Attestations

Statuette (fake?)

A statuette long in the collections of the

British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...

bearing an inscription naming Tetisheri was identified as a forgery by W. V. Davies, based on the slavish imitation of its inscription from a fragmentary lower portion of a similar statue of the queen (now lost). However, some scholars question this attribution, and have been raising questions as to the potential authenticity of the statuette itself, if not the inscription. *Petrie UC 14402 , At Armant, a stela with the royal name of Nebpethy Ahmose mentions King's Mother Teti (mwt-nsw ttj, cartouche) and some restorations of the local temple. The epithet "Sherit" (šrt) is missing. A feature with the stela is that the jꜥḥ-sign (N11/N12) in the name of Ahmose was turned upside down. *München ÄS 7163 + ÄS 7220 , A wooden rishi coffin of King’s Daughter Sat-Djehuty/Sat-Ibu (no cartouche), born to King’s Wife Teti (no cartouche).München ÄS 7163 + ÄS 7220
Retrieved 16 June 2025.

References

{{Queens of Ancient Egypt Queens consort of the Seventeenth Dynasty of Egypt 16th-century BC Egyptian women