MONACO.- Although endless exhibitions have been devoted to the subject, the Grimaldi Forum Monaco is going one unprecedented step further by being the first to turn the spotlight on those women who were Queens of Egypt through a 4000m² exhibition. The exhibition curator, Christiane Ziegler has collected together nearly 250 incomparable exhibits to illustrate the subject exhibits loaned by the world's most important museums in Cairo, New York, Berlin, Munich, London, Turin, Moscow etc and of course by the Louvre, where until May 2007 Ms Ziegler ran the prestigious Egyptian antiquities department.

The spectacular display is designed by François Payet, who recreated Imperial Saint Petersburg for the Grimaldi Forum's 2004 exhibition chronicling the city's history from the reign of Peter the Great to that of Catherine the Great.

The story unfolds theme by theme as visitors advance through the exhibition. Although the function of Egypt’s queens changed over the centuries, some features were unvarying: the status of women, the status of the royal family, women's living environment, their religious role, the symbols used in portrayals of them. These are the themes around which the main sections of the exhibition are built.

But exhibition curator Christiane Ziegler also wanted to spotlight major figures such as Hatshepsut, Tiy, Nefertari and Cleopatra. They have found their place in the exhibition, along with the mythical aspect of Egypt's queens that still sets us dreaming.

The exhibition starts with Cleopatra, the most popular Egyptian queen although she was actually of Greek origin. From the mythical image of Cleopatra now so familiar from films and advertising we move on to the historical figure revealed by archaeology and documents. The exhibition ends with another queen, less familiar to the general public: Queen Tausert whose tomb can now be visited in the Valley of Kings. She was the inspiration for Théophile Gautier’s well-known novel The Romance of a Mummy.

Between these two, the exhibition takes visitors on a fabulous journey of discovery through Ancient Egypt and the many facets of its royal women. First, their social status. Their titles were based on their relationship to the reigning king: they were called “mother of the king” or “wife of the king”; in some cases a pharaoh gave the title of “wife of the king” to a daughter, otherwise princesses were “daughters of the king”. Visitors are shown how the pharaoh’s close links with several generations of women probably derive from Egyptian mythology, the mother/wife/daughter association being a symbol of perpetual creation. Thus the Egyptian queens played a fundamental role in the renewal of royal power and in the pharaoh’s survival in the afterlife.

We then enter one of the most famous harems, at Gurob. Christiane Ziegler has entrusted this section to her assistant Marine Yoyotte, who is writing a doctorate thesis on the subject. The king had many secondary wives, some of whom were foreign princesses taken in marriage to strengthen alliances with neighbouring powers. Most of the royal household’s women and children lived together in institutions usually referred to as harems. A harem was both a centre of social activity and an economic hub, by no means shielded from the turbulence of political life. Echoes of palace plots hatched there from the age of the pyramids on have come down to us through the centuries.

The myth: Cleopatra
In the Western imagination, the Queen of Egypt is incarnated in Cleopatra. Why has she remained the most famous of all? The Romans have handed her story down to us in which all the ingredients of success are combined: love, power, wealth, dramatic death….Numerous artists have elaborated on this theme, taking inspiration from Pharaonic models popularised by scientific publications, but often situating the scenes in a dreamed Orient. Even today, the cinema, advertising and comics successfully exploit this mythical figure.

Paradoxically, however, the best-known Queen of Egypt is a Greek descendant of Alexander’s generals. She is heir to a long line of attested sovereigns from the end of the fourth millennium before Christ - at the time when the Pharaonic institution was born. Very few of the Queens of Egypt are familiar to the public: Hatchepsout, Nefertiti, Nefertari, etc. Cleopatra was the last Queen of Egypt and also the last Pharaoh, since she exercised personal power, which was very rare for women.

The Grand Royal Wife
“She who sees Horus and Seth.” She is the mother of the heir prince. In principle, there is only one at a time. She can be seen beside the sovereign for the purpose of performing rites: sister or daughter of the king (problem of incest and of consanguine marriages). It is now known that royalty was not handed down by women, even though consanguine marriages strengthened the throne. According to the epoch and to personalities, the grand wife was more or less influential, and many of them remain unknown to us. Example: Nefertari, grand wife of Ramses II, to whom a small temple in Abou Simbel was consecrated.

It was also in the harem that, from the time of the pyramids, plots were woven, echoes of which have been handed down to us. The gamble was to conquer power.

Epilogue: The Novel of the Mummy
Few tombs of queens have been found, and most of them have been pillaged. The only funerary trousseaux that remain intact are those of Hetepheres, mother of Cheops, which, it seems, were buried once again in the vicinity of the grand pyramid, and of Iahhetep I, whose sarcophagus was discovered by Mariette on the left bank of Thebes. However, archaeologists have unearthed burial places of concubines and of secondary wives: the princesses of Illahun and of Dachour in the Middle Empire; Thoutmosis III in the New Empire. Nefertari’s tomb with magnificent painted décor has revealed only insignificant vestiges. Thus, it’s vain to try to reconstitute the furniture of a queen’s tomb. We prefer to conclude with a reference to Queen Taousert, whose tomb was found in the Valley of the Kings and which inspired Théophile Gautier for his famous “Novel of the Mummy.”

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