Sobekneferu Artistic Representations: Egyptian Queen, Pharaoh, King

Summary: Sobekneferu artistic representations reveal a queen, pharaoh and king who ruled as female Lord of the Two Lands in ancient Lower and Upper Egypt.

bust of Sobekneferu, placed in Berlin Museum in 1899 (inventory number 14475) but disappeared during World War II; image in Hedwig Fechheimer's Die Plastike der Ägypter (1914), plate 57: Not in copyright, via Internet Archive

Sobekneferu artistic representations are associated with the 12th Dynasty alone in ancient Egypt even though assorted inscriptions and papyruses augment the argument of the queen as the first evidentially attested female pharaoh.

Photographs and plaster casts of a statue's severed upper half, a sculpted torso and a statue's severed lower half belong among surviving suspected Sobekneferu artistic representations. Not one of the surviving suspected Sobekneferu artistic representations carries her inscription even though characterizations of other than eternally young-faced ruling elites stylistically convoke her dynasty. The inscribed royal title zemat-tawy, Lord of the Two Lands (of Lower and Upper Egypt), dates the severed statue to the 12th Dynasty's only female pharaoh.

Egyptologists enumerate Neithhotep and Merneith, Hetepheres I and Nitocris, 31st- and 30th-century, 27th- and 22nd-century Queens exercising pharaonic-empowered entitlements in the 1st, 4th and 6th Dynasties.

The torso from the late Middle Kingdom (2050-1710 B.C.), in the Louvre Museum collections in Paris, France, furnishes the fewest facts from the three major finds.

Egyptologists glimpse the grandeur of Sobekneferu artistic representations in photographs and plaster casts of an upper statue half's 5.51-inch- (14-centimeter-) high head, shoulders and upper torso. The bewigged head has no nose or upper lip because of unspecified harm to the greywacke sculpted from earthy feldspar, quartz and rock fragment-sorted gray sandstone. Egyptian Museum of Berlin inventories indicate among items missing from Germany since World War II (Sep. 1, 1939-Sep. 2, 1945) the statue, acquisition 14472 in 1899.

Biri Fay, Egyptologist from New York City, New York, joined the severed upper half's plaster-cast measurements and the severed lower half's actual measurements into one statue.

The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts, knows of the lower statue half as acquisition 24.742 from the Nubian fortress temple of Taharqa in Semna.

Museum of Fine Arts inventories online list the slate, steatite sculpture from expeditions with Harvard University led by George Andrew Reisner (Nov. 5, 1867-June 6, 1942). They mention for the 8.25- by 6.875-inch (20.96- by 17.46-centimeter) segment, "The sides of the throne are incised with the arms of Upper and Lower Egypt." Severed halves net the head-to-toe Sobekneferu of the cylinder seal drawn by Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie (June 3, 1853-July 29, 1942) for the British Museum.

Gezer in the Judaean Mountain foothills between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, Israel, offers, as inscribed King's Royal Daughter, another one of the obscure Sobekneferu artistic representations.

Kim Steven Bardrum Ryholt, Egyptologist at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, posits that Sobekneferu pursued her pharaohship, 1806-1802 B.C., as King's Daughter, not King's Sister.

The Turin Royal Canon papyrus from the 19th-Dynasty pharaohship of Ramesses II (1303?-July 8, 1213 B.C.) quantifies Sobekneferu's pharaohship at 3 years, 10 months, 24 days. Sobekneferu, beauty of Nile River crocodile god Sobek, realized additions to Amenemhat III's (1860-1814 B.C) funerary complex at Harawa and nothing to Amenemhat IV (1815-1806 B.C.). Unsolved mysteries swirl around Amenemhat III, Amenemhat IV, Neferuptah and northern Mazghuna as respectively suspected father, stepbrother, predeceased older sister and burial pyramid site of Sobekneferu.

Sobekneferu artistic representations never tell what terminated Neferuptah's young life or whether Khutawyre Wegaf or Sekhemre-Khutawy Sobekhotep took over after Sobekneferu, monikered Neferusobek and throne-named Sobekkare.

red sandstone torso of Sobekneferu, with her name recorded in central part of waist decoration; Salle 636, Louvre Museum, Paris, France: Neithsabes (Sebi), Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

bust of Sobekneferu, placed in Berlin Museum in 1899 (inventory number 14475) but disappeared during World War II; image in Hedwig Fechheimer's Die Plastike der Ägypter (1914), plate 57: Not in copyright, via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/stream/plastikagypter00fech#page/n126/mode/1up

red sandstone torso of Sobekneferu, with her name recorded in central part of waist decoration; Salle 636, Louvre Museum, Paris, France: Neithsabes (Sebi), Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Louvre_0320O7_01.jpg

For further information:

Fechheimer, Hedwig. 1914. Die Plastik der Ägypter. Zweite Auflage. Berlin, Germany: Bruno Cassirer Verlag.
Available via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/details/plastikagypter00fech

Johnson, Kevin L.; and Bill Petty. 2012. The Names of the Kings of Egypt: The Serekhs and Cartouches of Egypt's Pharaohs, Along with Selected Queens. Littleton CO: Museum Tours Press.

"Lower Body Fragment of a Female Statue Seated on a Throne." Museum of Fine Arts > Collections > Artwork.
Available @ https://www.mfa.org/collections/object/lower-body-fragment-of-a-female-statue-seated-on-a-throne-145757

Naville, Édouard. 1887. The Shrine of Saft el Henneh and the Land of Goshen (1885). London, England: Messrs. Trübner & Co.
Available via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/details/shrineofsaftelhe00navi

Petrie, W.M. (William Matthew) Flinders. 1917. Scarabs and Cylinders with Names. Illustrated by the Egyptian Collection in University College London. London,England: School of Archaeology in Egypt, Constable & Co. Ltd and Bernard Quaritch.
Available via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/details/scarabscylinders00petr

Petrie, W.M. (William Matthew) Flinders. 1894. "Sebek'neferu."A History of Egypt From the Earliest Times to the XVIth Dynasty. Vol. I: 197-198. London, England: Methuen & Co.
Available via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/stream/historyofegypt01petr#page/197/mode/1up

Tetley, M. Christine. 2014. The Reconstructed Chronology of the Egyptian Kings. Onerahi, Whangarei, New Zealand: Barry W. Tetley.
Available @ http://www.egyptchronology.com/uploads/2/6/9/4/26943741/ch_23_establishing_the_12th_dynasty.pdf

"Torse de la Reine Néferousébek, Dernière Reine de la 12e Dynastie 1789-1786 Avant J.-C." Louvre Museum > Atlas Database of Exhibits.
Available @ http://cartelen.louvre.fr/cartelen/visite?srv=car_not_frame&idNotice=23673&langue=fr

Tyldesley, Joyce. 2006. Chronicle of the Queens of Egypt: From Early Dynastic Times to the Death of Cleopatra. London UK: Thames & Hudson, The Chronicles Series.