Dr. Campbell Price

Yeah, I think there is a sense in which things do fall apart, historically speaking, pretty quickly.

The 19th dynasty only has a couple of decades left to go.

There are a series of short-lived kings.

This is the end of the 19th dynasty.

And then you get to a young king called Sipta, who has a female regent called Tawazrit.

And she is really the end.

She's a female pharaoh, end of the line.

She rules quite effectively, it seems, for a few years.

But then there's this shadowy figure, this high-ranking courtier called Bayi,

who is like a 19th dynasty equivalent of the much-loved, in my case, character of Senenmut, the right-hand man to Hatshepsut in Dynasty 18.

So Tawazrit is ruling the last of the House of Ramses.

And then you get this new guy, a guy called Seth Nacht, and he comes on the scene and usurps Tawazrit's tomb in the Valley of the Kings.

Still one of the most interesting tombs in the Valley of the Kings at Thebes.

So the dynasty shifts then and there's new blood comes in and we begin Dynasty 20 with Seth Nacht and then his successor, Ramses III.

This is tricky.

This is really tricky and it's something I've thought about a bit.

She does get mentioned in an official list of kings, a document, a canon, so it's acceptable that there is this woman in a sense.

And so she rules fairly successfully for a few years.

She builds things and, you know, there are foundation deposits attesting to her building works.

But she only rules for a handful of years and then is succeeded by someone called Sethnacht.