This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: More than 5,000 years ago, a royal woman named Meretneith (also written as Merneith) lived in ancient Egypt. She was possibly the daughter of Djer, the third king of the First Dynasty, a period when the first kings ruled over a unified Egypt.
Details of Meretneith's exact royal status have remained murky. We know she ruled the country because her tomb complex was filled with riches fit for a male ruler of Egypt. At the very least, she was an interim ruler or co-regent.
But did she ever rule Egypt in her own right? Egyptologists have long disputed whether Meretneith was an independent ruler of Egypt. Resolving that dispute would require finding a text that identifies her as a ruler.
Our new research, published in the journal Prague Egyptological Studies, might do just that. Using a new digital technique, we examined hieroglyphs in a photograph of a long-lost artifact, and the signs clearly point to Meretneith being one of the early rulers of Egypt. Currently, the only possible text that could resolve the dispute over Meretneith's status is a hieroglyphic inscription in a black-and-white photograph of a mud stopper (a plug used for pottery jars and other vessels).
The text in question was originally found on 13 mud stoppers excavated from an unknown tomb in Saqqara in the 1940s. Only one photograph of an inscription remains. That photograph is in the records of Egyptologist Walter B.
Emery at the Egypt Exploration Society in London. The location of the original artifact or glass plate from the photograph is unknown. The text consists of a row of four royal signs, known as serekhs.
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