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Reports surfaced in November of the tomb of Khentkaus III, a queen in the era of the Old Kingdom (2649--2150 BC). Discovered in a necropolis in Abusir, southwest of Cairo, she lay 650 feet away from her husband, Pharaoh Neferefre (also known as Reneferef), who ruled some 4,500 years ago. The find helps color what project leader Professor Miroslav Barta calls "a black patch in the history of the Old Kingdom." Despite holding the epithet "Queen Mother" -- known thanks to graffiti scrawled on the wall of her final resting place -- Neferefre's principal wife was hitherto unknown.
As the team from the Czech Institute of Egyptology begin the long process of analyzing the contents of the tomb, Barta believes it may offer insights into a time not dissimilar from our own -- and from which disaster struck and ruin ensued.
"(It was) a crucial period when the Old Kingdom started to face major critical factors: The rise of democracy, the horrific impact of nepotism and the role played by interest groups," he says, adding that climate change also played a role in bringing an end to not only the Old Kingdom empire, but those in the Middle East and Western Europe at that time. Within 200 years of the Queen Mother's death, the Nile no longer flooded and drought consumed the kingdom. "(This) contributed to the disintegration of the era of the pyramid builders," Barta explains. "Without reasonable floods, there were no reasonable harvests and therefore very bad taxes; without appropriate taxes there were no sufficient means to finance the state apparatus and maintain the ideology and integrity of the state."
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