Hetepheres I

Queen Hetepheres I
Queen of Egypt
Actual chair of Queen Hetepheres from the Cairo Museum.
Burial	tomb G 7000X near the Great Pyramid of Giza
Spouse	Sneferu
Issue	Princess Hetepheres Khufu
Father	Huni
Religion	Ancient Egyptian religion

Queen Hetepheres I was a Queen of Egypt during the Fourth Dynasty of Egypt (c. 2600 BC).

Hetepheres I may have been a wife of pharaoh Sneferu, and the mother of King Khufu. It is possible that Hetepheres was only a minor wife of Sneferu and only rose in prominence after her son ascended the throne. She was the grandmother of Kings Djedefre and Khafra and Queen Hetepheres II. Her titles include: King's Mother (mwt-niswt), Mother of the King of the Two Lands (mwt-niswt-biti), Attendant of Horus (kht-hrw), God's Daughter of his body (s3t-ntr-nt-kht.f). Hetepheres I's marriage to Snefru solidified his rise to the throne. Two great lines were joined when they married, as she had carried the blood royal from one dynasty to the next. Her title as "Daughter to the God" began when her father, Huni, ruled, and continued when she married Snefru and gave birth to the next ruler, Khufu, who is the one who commissioned her tomb and pyramid.

Hetepheres died during the reign of her son Khufu.

Starting in 1902, a joint expedition of Harvard University and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts took over the excavation of Giza. For 23 years they methodically cleared and documented the area. On the 9th of March, 1925, while the leader of the expedition, George Reisner, was back in the US, the staff photographer noticed a patch of plaster where he was expecting limestone. Under the direction of Ahmed Said, Reisner's head rais, they cleared the area and removed the plaster, revealing a deep shaft. They dug down 85 feet before reaching a masonry wall which, when penetrated revealed a jumble of grave goods including a white alabaster sarcophagus, gold encased rods used to frame a canopy or tent, gold, wood furniture, and more. Using binoculars and mirrors, Battiscombe Gunn identified an inscription identifying Sneferu. But this, contrary to newspaper reports at the time, only meant that the owner of the tomb had lived during the reign of Sneferu.