The position of Queen Tyti within the Ramesside era has long perplexed scholars. Her tomb in the Valley of the Queens (QV 52) does not record the name of a single royal relative or contemporary. She has been associated inconclusively with the era of Ramesses III, and, most recently, the later Ramessides of Dynasty 20. The writer's field and textual studies indicate that Queen Tyti was a wife of Ramesses III and mother of one of his successors.
Since the only confirmed source of information regarding Queen Tyti is her tomb, the first research chapter (II) is devoted to a full description of the architecture, relief paintings and texts of QV 52. The following three chapters compare Tyti's burial, feature for feature, with the dated tombs of Dynasty 19 and 20 in the Queens' Valley (Chapters III-IV), and the dated tombs of Dynasty 20 in the Kings' Valley (Chapter V). The writer concludes from these comparisons that QV 52 shares far more affinities with tombs of the era of Ramesses III than with those of any other period.
Working from the assumption that Queen Tyti belongs within the immediate family of Ramesses III, Chapter VI analyzes the titles, crowns and other insignia of the queen in order to precisely define her roles within and beyong his reign. Title frequency and context studies, and the use of the obscure rosette headdress by this queen strongly suggest that Tyti was a daughter of Ramesses III whom he married, and by whom he sired one of his successors.
The final chapter (VII) addresses related but peripheral problems encountered in the course of the writer's research: (a) the possible wives of Ramesses III and their roles; (b) the first sons of Ramesses III as pictured in the Medinet Habu Procession of Princes, and their likely birth sequence; (c) recent doubts regarding the historicity of events of Ramesses III's reign, focusing principally on the Sea Peoples campaigns.
The dissertation is illustrated with plans of all the tombs considered in the study, and maps of the Kings' and Queens' Valley. Color slides taken in the field by the writer and used as documentation in this study are kept on file in the Slide Library of the Department of Near Eastern Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 94720. |