# Nefertari Source: https://luxor101.com/ancient-luxor/pharaohs/nefertari Language: en # Nefertari A royal woman remembered through an exceptionally rich painted tomb. **Reign**: Not a ruler **Dynasty**: None **Period**: New Kingdom **Also written**: Nefertari Merytmut · Nefertari Meritmut · نفرتاري مريت موت · نفرتاري ميريت موت ## Who they were The Great Royal Wife of Ramesses II and the most prominent of his queens for the first half of his reign. Her family is unknown; she carries no title connecting her to the royal house, which usually means she was not born into it. She appears beside the king on monuments from the first years of the reign onward, and she corresponded directly with Puduhepa, the Hittite queen, around the making of the peace treaty. ## Why they matter Nefertari’s tomb is celebrated for its surviving painted decoration. It also suffered serious losses and salt damage, making conservation central to its modern history. The vivid surfaces that remain are not evidence that every wall survived intact. ## What happened She appears in the record from the beginning of the reign: on the Luxor Temple pylon (a monumental gateway formed by two massive towers), at Karnak, at Abu Simbel, and in the temples of Nubia, and she bore the king several children, none of whom outlived him to take the throne. Her letter to the Hittite queen — a formal exchange of greetings and gifts between two royal women — survives in the Hittite archive at Hattusa. She disappears from the record after about the twenty-fourth year of the reign, and QV66 was cut and painted for her in the Valley of the Queens. Her burial had been robbed in antiquity; what the excavators found in 1904 was fragments — a pair of sandals, a piece of a granite sarcophagus lid, shabtis, and the knob of a wooden box bearing the name of the earlier king Ay. ## What they built in Luxor Nothing in Luxor was built at her command, as far as any surviving source shows. What carries her name here was made for her: QV66, cut and painted in the Valley of the Queens, and the small standing figures of the royal women beside the colossi of Ramesses II at Luxor Temple, among them hers. ## Where to meet them QV66 in the Valley of the Queens is the encounter, and there is not really a second one. Failing that, look at the base of the seated colossi in front of the First Pylon at Luxor Temple: the small standing figures beside the king’s legs are the royal women, and hers is among them. She is at knee height because that is the convention, not because that is her standing. How we label claims ## What is disputed Each claim below carries its evidence class. A claim marked interpretation or uncertain is not a weaker version of a fact — it is a different kind of statement, and the note says why. - Uncertain Who her family were. She holds no title linking her to the royal house. A knob from a wooden box bearing the name of King Ay was found in her tomb, and has been used to argue a family connection to him — but an heirloom in a burial is not a genealogy, and the connection is not established. - Uncertain When and why she disappears from the record. She is not attested after roughly the twenty-fourth year of a sixty-six-year reign, and her place as the principal queen is taken by Isetnofret. Whether she died then, and at what age, is not documented; the date is inferred from the monuments and from the tomb, not stated anywhere. Who added what ## Before and after [19th Dynasty **Ramesses II** c.1279–1213 BCE Sixty-six years on the throne, and his name cut into everything within reach. ](https://luxor101.com/ancient-luxor/pharaohs/ramesses-ii) [**Nefertari** A royal woman remembered through an exceptionally rich painted tomb. ](https://luxor101.com/ancient-luxor/pharaohs/nefertari) Tomb ## Their tomb - [QV66 — QV66 — Tomb of Nefertari](https://luxor101.com/ancient-luxor/tombs#tomb-qv66) [Tomb directory](https://luxor101.com/ancient-luxor/tombs) Continue reading ## Explore the connections 1–1 / 7 [Necropolis · West bank ### Valley of the Queens A royal cemetery whose tombs vary greatly in decoration and access. Check which are open before deciding how it fits your day. ](https://luxor101.com/ancient-luxor/valley-of-the-queens)[Temple · East bank ### Luxor Temple A temple of Amun in the heart of today’s city, shaped by royal ritual and the annual Opet festival. ](https://luxor101.com/ancient-luxor/luxor-temple)[God ### Hathor Goddess of love, music and the western mountain — the one who receives the dead. ](https://luxor101.com/ancient-luxor/gods/hathor)[God ### Isis The wife who put Osiris back together and the mother who hid Horus — protector of the dead. ](https://luxor101.com/ancient-luxor/gods/isis)[God ### Osiris Ruler of the dead, associated with restoration and renewal. ](https://luxor101.com/ancient-luxor/gods/osiris)[God ### Mut Amun’s consort and the mother of the Theban triad — a queen among goddesses. ](https://luxor101.com/ancient-luxor/gods/mut)[Explainer ### Reading the Colour That Survives Paint survives where materials and conditions have allowed it to remain, sometimes with conservation support. Weathering, salts, moisture and past interventions help explain losses; bright colour alone does not mean a wall is intact. ](https://luxor101.com/journal/why-some-tombs-still-have-colour) Sources & further reading 4 Tier 1 [The conservation of the wall paintings in the tomb of Nefertari](https://www.getty.edu/news/processing-the-material-record-of-the-tomb-of-nefertari-project/) Getty Conservation Institute Online source checked 2026-09-19 Tier 2 Pharaoh Triumphant: The Life and Times of Ramesses II, K. A. Kitchen Aris & Phillips Tier 2 The Complete Royal Families of Ancient Egypt, Aidan Dodson and Dyan Hilton Thames & Hudson Tier 2 Topographical Bibliography of Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic Texts, Reliefs and Paintings, Bertha Porter and Rosalind L. B. Moss Griffith Institute, University of Oxford Source review is incomplete. Consultation dates are shown only for checked references. Published works and institutional references for further reading. [Sources and review status](mailto:corrections@egyptmore.com?subject=Luxor101%20correction) [Pharaohs](https://luxor101.com/ancient-luxor/pharaohs)