Egyptian Diadem or Crown in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, December 2007

Funerary Equipment Belonging to Three Foreign Wives of Thutmose III

In this gallery one of the most comprehensive surviving sets of ancient Egyptian jewelry is exhibited. It was discovered, together with the vessels and other objects displayed here, in a rock-cut cave situated high up in the desert mountain cliffs of the Wady Gabbanat el-Qurud in western Thebes. The find encompassed the remains of the burials of three minor wives of King Thutmose III whose names, Maruta, Manhata, and Manuwai, written on the canopic jars, libation vessels and heart scarabs, are not Egyptian but in all probability Semitic. Maruta may, in fact, be the hieroglyphic version of the familiar Hebrew and Aramaic name Marta.

According to the custom of the time the three women must have entered the pharaoh's household in the course of political transactions with a foreign ruler somewhere in the Levant. After a life in Egypt the three women were buried together according to Egyptian burial customs.

The items displayed in this case were made for the funeral of the three ladies. Many of them fall easily into sets of three. But lacking inscriptions we do not know which queens owned which.

Text from the Metropolitan Museum of Art label.