Pictures: Rahotep and Nefret

Rahotep, son of Snefru, and his wife Nefret, discovered in their Meidum
mastaba in 1871. Their eyes, inlaid with rock crystal and quartz, give the
statues a particularly life-like appearance and terrified the local workmen
charged with excavating their tomb. Cairo Museum.

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The Treasures of Queen Hetepheres I of Ancient Egypt

These inlaid silver bracelets were found in the collapsed remains of a wooden
jewelry box covered inside and out with gold leaf. Silver was a more precious metal
than gold. The queen is depicted on her carrying-chair wearing 14 similar bracelets
on one arm.

Hetepheres' restored bedroom furniture.
Her curtains and bedding vanished in antiquity.

In 1925 a team led by the American archaeologist George Reisner found an incredible cache of grave goods belonging to Queen Hetepheres. Included was a collection of elegant wooden furniture incorporating gold foil and metal fittings and inscribed with Snefru's name - our only definite link between Hetepheres and her husband. When discovered, the wooden elements of the furniture were shrunken and badly decayed and many of the inlays had fallen out, but they have since been restored (and, in the case of the wood, replaced) by a team of experts and craftsmen so that we may once again admire the bed and head-rest, canopy, curtain box (the curtains were presumably stolen in antiquity) and pair of armchairs which once graced the queen's bedroom. A carrying chair, highly reminiscent of the chair featured on the Narmer Macehead, was specifically labelled in miniature gold hieroglyphs set in a strip of ebony as the property of the 'Mother of the King of Upper and

Lower Egypt, the Follower of Horus, She who is in Charge of the Affairs of the [Harem?], the Gracious One whose every Utterance is done for her, Daughter of the God's Body, Hetepheres'.

Her gold-covered jewelry box, helpfully labelled 'box containing rings... Mother of the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Hetepheres', held not rings but 20 silver bracelets of varying diameter decorated with inlaid butterflies formed from turquoise, lapis lazuli and carnelian. Contemporary scenes show that this style of bracelet, popular with both men and women, royalty and commoners, was worn several to each arm.

Detail of Hetepheres' empty curtain box, decorated with the cartouche of her husband, Snefru.

4th Dynasty: Part I. Snefru. 2613-2589 BC