Hetepheres

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Bed with headrest from the funerary furniture of Queen Hetepheres. Bed length is 177 cm (5ft 9in). Reconstruction of original on display in Cairo, this copy residing in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Queen Hetepheres I was the sister and wife of the Egyptian Pharaoh Sneferu, and mother of Khufu, and is thought to have been the daughter of Huni. She may have died during the reign of Khufu.

Her tomb was discovered in 1925 in one of the satellite pyramids of the Great Pyramid of Giza. The tomb was in good condition and most of the contents seemed intact, but there were signs of robbery. Although the sarcophagus was sealed, the body was missing, while the canopic jars were intact. Those are the oldest examples of canopic jars known, so it has been suggested that Queen Hetepheres was the first royal Egyptian to have her organs dried out and preserved.

Reasons for the missing body have been hotly debated. Dr. Lehner has suggested that she was originally buried at another site, but that because the original site was robbed and the mummy destroyed, the remaining contents were moved later to the pyramid, and the sarcophagus sealed to hide the evidence of the missing body from the surviving members of her family.

Dr. Hawass has suggested Hetepheres was originally buried at G 1a, the northernmost of the small pyramids, and that after the robbery a new shaft was excavated for a new tomb. This would explain the evidence of tampering on the tomb objects.

The contents of the tomb provide us with many details of the luxury and ways of life of the Fourth dynasty of Egypt. The items found in the tomb are on display the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, with replicas of the main funerary furnishings in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts.^[1]