The murder mystery behind the last great pharaoh Ramesses III
The royal harem conspiracy was a real-life Game of Thrones—pitting two sons of Egyptian Pharaoh Ramesses III against one another in a bid for power.
Conspiring wives. Screaming mummies. Centuries of speculation. Questions about the so-called royal harem conspiracy—a plot to kill ancient Egyptian Pharaoh Ramesses III around 1155 B.C.—have persisted for over 3,000 years.
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The succession-driven plot sounds like a real-life Game of Thrones, but the mystery of how archaeologists unraveled it three millennia later would be at home on any detective show.
What historians knew is that the conspiracy had pitted two of the pharaoh’s children—the sons of Tyti and Tiye—against one another. But the details of the plot—and whether it had actually succeeded in killing the pharaoh—remained one of the most intriguing cold cases in history until modern archaeology helped solve it.
What really happened to Ramesses III (also known as Ramses III), pharaoh of a doomed ancient empire? Here’s how archaeologists uncovered the truth about the harem conspiracy, putting an end to a centuries-long cliffhanger and showing just how brutal life among ancient Egyptian royalty could be.
Stumbling upon an ancient murder mystery
The memory of a conspiracy in the harem of pharaoh Ramesses III had been lost to time by the 19th century, when European antiquarians arrived in Egypt en masse in search of ancient artifacts. Thanks to the newly translated Rosetta Stone, these proto-archaeologists were eager to translate ancient inscriptions and hieroglyphics.
Particularly intriguing was the discovery in the 1820s of an 18-foot-long judicial scroll from the 12th century B.C.—a document describing a plot against Egypt’s pharaoh from within his own royal harem.
(This papyrus reads like an ancient Egyptian episode of Law & Order.)
Purchased at a local market, the papyrus detailed the treason trial that followed the failed coup, pointing the finger at one of Ramesses III’s wives, Tiye, and her son Pentawar.
Harem intrigue
Like other pharaohs, Ramesses III had a principal wife, Tyti, and a number of secondary wives who lived together in the royal harem along with their children and servants. The harem was a luxurious symbol of the pharaoh’s power and influence—and a hotbed for political activity, much of it centered on matters of dynasty and succession.
Ramesses III’s wives bore plenty of heirs, giving birth to an estimated 100 children. But designating a successor proved challenging because 12 of the sons in line for the throne died during the pharaoh’s lifetime. In 1164 B.C., yet another crown prince died, leaving a younger son of Tyti in line for the throne.
According to the scroll, Tiye, as one of the secondary wives, wanted Pentawar to take the throne instead. So she enlisted the help of a number of harem power players and members of the royal household, including other wives and the pharaoh’s own personal doctor.
(Was this woman Egypt's first female pharaoh?)
Though the document named all of the males accused of participating in the plot, it only named one woman, Tiye. It also remained silent on whether the conspirators managed to kill Ramesses III and it distorted the names of the accused, omissions that led modern researchers to refer to it as “an exercise in reticence.”
The last great pharaoh
Researchers knew the coup hadn’t changed the line of succession: The son of Ramesses III’s main wife, Tyti, had succeeded Ramesses III. So they assumed the plot had been a failed attempt by a minor wife to shift the balance of power toward her son.
But questions remained about the coup’s true outcome and how Tiye had managed to convince so many royal workers to engage in such a dangerous bid for power. And, if it hadn’t killed him, historians wondered whether the coup had helped destabilize Ramesses III’s reign.
Ramesses had been the most powerful man in Egypt during his reign from 1186 to 1155 B.C. But as history would have it, he would end up being the last great pharaoh—and the son who finally did succeed him, Tyti’s son Ramesses IV, inherited a weakened kingdom. During Ramesses III’s reign, Egypt faced invasion, economic strife, and domestic woes such as the first known general strike, which took place among disgruntled tomb builders tasked with building the pharaoh’s exorbitant resting place. Did the harem conspiracy cause his downfall?
Ramesses III’s tomb
In 1886, decades after the papyrus was discovered and translated, treasure hunters uncovered extraordinary physical evidence in the case: Ramesses III’s tomb.
Yet in a move that would frustrate future archaeologists, the excavators failed to accurately document the pharaoh’s placement within the tomb, which contained a variety of other mummies. That did away with crucial evidence that could have hinted at the way in which Ramesses III met his death. Nor did the mummy identified as Ramesses III provide answers. Surrounded by impatient spectators, the antiquarians immediately unwrapped Ramesses III, only to find that the body showed no signs of injury.
(The gory history of Europe's mummy-eating fad.)
Even more confusing was another mummy buried alongside the pharaoh: a smaller mummy with a contorted, seemingly screaming face. Unlike the other mummies in the tomb, who were buried in ceremonial garments and carefully embalmed, the small mummy had been wrapped in a simple sheepskin and seemingly placed haphazardly within the tomb without an inscription pointing to its identity. Assuming the mysterious screaming mummy could never be identified, historians thought they’d cracked the case. Ramesses III, it seemed, hadn’t been killed by the conspirators, and the conspiracy was written off as a minor wife’s attempt to exert power within the royal harem.
Advances in archaeological technology didn’t shed any more light: When researchers used an X-ray machine to image the pharaoh in the 1960s, it showed no sign of assassination. But archaeologist Susan Redford was intrigued by the story, and in 2002 revealed a new take on the conspiracy thanks to a reinvestigation of the artwork in Ramesses III’s tomb.
Redford realized that multiple reliefs on the tomb walls showed Ramesses III’s heirs. But one relief showed a different constellation of princes—a move that Redford interpreted as pointing to the prestige of Pentawar and the royal status of his mother, Tiye. If Tiye had been a queen and not a secondary wife, her son would have had a more credible claim to the throne—status that would explain the longstanding mystery of how a minor figure had gathered such a prominent group of co-conspirators.
Heating up a cold case
The reliefs may have clarified the reasons for the attempted coup. But the 3,000-year-old murder was still a cold case until forensic archaeological methods improved enough to warrant another look at the mummies. The chance finally came in 2012, thanks to a CT scan and ancient DNA analysis performed by an international team of researchers.
The new scan revealed that Ramesses III’s abdominal organs had been replaced with figurines of Horus, the Egyptian god associated with healing, and amulets of Horus placed in his neck and around his feet. There was more: Ramesses III’s neck had been slashed to the bone, suggesting he was in fact assassinated. And Ramesses III shared DNA with the seemingly screaming unidentified mummy, leading researchers to conclude it was the body of the conspiring prince Pentawar.
So what happened to Tiye, the disgraced queen whose harem coup had such dreadful consequences? Since no mummy of Tiye has ever been found, Redford believes she was punished with the ultimate disgrace for an ancient Egyptian: execution by fire.
“This is just about the worst fate imaginable for an ancient Egyptian,” Peter Gwin explained on an episode of the Overheard at National Geographic podcast. “Total obliteration. No body, no afterlife.” It would be a brutal end for a woman whose motivations will never be known, but whose act of treason helped end the life of the last great pharaoh.
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