Crown Suggests Queen Arsinoë II Ruled Ancient Egypt as Female Pharaoh

ScienceDaily  — A unique queen's crown with ancient symbols combined with a new method of studying status in Egyptian reliefs forms the basis for a re-interpretation of Egyptian historical developments in Egypt following the death of Alexander the Great. A University of Gothenburg (Sweden) thesis argues that Queen Arsinoë II ruled ancient Egypt as a female pharaoh, predating Cleopatra by 200 years.

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Researchers largely agreed on Queen Arsinoë II's importance from the deification day. She was put on a level with the ancient goddesses Isis and Hathor and was still respected and honoured 200 years after her death when her better-known descendant Cleopatra wore the same crown. But the reasons behind Arsinoë's huge influence have been interpreted differently.

Maria Nilsson studied her historical importance by interpreting her crown and its ancient symbols. The crown, which has never been found but is depicted on statues and Egyptian reliefs, was created with the help of the mighty Egyptian priesthood to symbolise the queen's qualities. The thesis questions the traditional royal line,  which excludes female regents, and defies some researchers' attempts to minimise Arsinoë's importance while she was still alive.

"My conclusion instead is that Arsinoë was a female pharaoh and high priestess who was equal to and ruled jointly with her brother and husband and that she was deified during her actual lifetime," says Nilsson. "This combination of religion and politics was behind her long-lived influence."

But it was not only Cleopatra who wanted to re-use Arsinoë's essential and symbolic crown. Male descendants -- all named Ptolemy -- used her crown as a template when creating a new crown, which they gave to the goddess Hathor to honour the domestic priesthood and win its support when Egypt was gripped by civil war.

The thesis is clearly structured around the crown and includes its broader context in the reliefs. Nilsson paints an all-round picture of the queen, how she dressed, the gods she was depicted with, the titles she was given, and so on.

The source material comes from Egypt and can be used to understand the country's political and religious development. At the same time, Nilsson paves the way for future studies of Egyptian crowns as symbols of power and status and of the development of art in a more general sense.

"The creation of Queen Arsinoë's crown was just the beginning," she says.