The "Blonde" Queen of Egypt | Inside the Tomb of Khafre's Wife | GIZA

The mastaba of Queen Meres Ang the Third, the granddaughter of the great Khufu and the wife of his son, Khafre. We are in the main chamber, measuring 7 by 3 meters. Intense colors and reliefs in good condition are rare in Giza, which was, unlike, for example, Saqqara, very intensively explored and exploited for millennia. This colorful inscription states the king's daughter, of his body, the king's wife. It also contains texts referring to Meres Ang as a worshipper of Horus, Seth and Anubis, who at that time still played the role of the main god of the dead. The new religion of Osiris rapidly grew in popularity only at the end of the old kingdom. Behind the pillars with images of the queen there's the north chamber, containing images of ten standing figures of women, unidentified representatives of the royal family. They wear rather short wigs and long, tight dresses, the typical appearance of noble women of the old kingdom. The most peculiar image of the queen is on the western wall. The unusual yellow-painted wig is controversial. According to the famous American archaeologist George Reisner, who discovered the tomb in 1927, this color means that the queen was simply blonde. Behind Meres Ang we see her son, Nebem Akhet. The white sash on his torso symbolizes his status as chief lector-priest, and he also served, like other Khafre sons before him, as vizier of Egypt. We're in the small western offering chamber, with false doors decorated with two statue niches. Here we read an offering which the king gives, and Anubis, lord of the sacred land foremost of the divine booth, that she may be buried well in the western necropolis. May she proceed in peace to the cemetery as a possessor of reverence before the great god, lord of the burial. May offerings be presented to her of bread, beer, and cakes in this her tomb, and in Osiris, and in Abydos, and in every place. Here the reliefs show motifs typical of later mastabas, such as processions bringing gifts of bread and poultry to the queen, musicians, and dancers. In the main chamber the colors have been remarkably preserved. Before us, prince Kawab, father of the queen and eldest son of Khufu, his vizier and successor. Unfortunately, he died while Khufu was still alive, so the next pharaoh was his brother Jedefre, who left Giza and built his pyramid in Abu Ravash, today called the unfinished or ruined pyramid. Only the next king, another of Khufu's sons, Khafre, would return to Giza to build his gigantic tomb complex. And again, processions with offerings, scenes of hunting birds, boats. All these scenes typical of mastabas are significantly inferior to the artistry of craftsmen from the 5th and 6th dynasties, whose sophisticated works we can admire today in Saqqara. However, it's one of the first mastabas decorated in this way. It seems that only when the pharaohs abandoned their ambitious, lavish projects, such as the great pyramids, did decorative art flourish. In the offering chamber we find the five meter deep shaft leading to the burial chamber. The chamber is empty, as if unfinished, five and a half by three meters in size. Traces of tools and salt shining in the light of the flashlight are the only decorations on its walls. There was once a granite sarcophagus here, now in the Cairo Museum. It originally belonged to Merez-Ankh III's mother, Hathaperes II. The inscription on the sarcophagus reads, I have given it to the king's daughter and wife, Merez-Ankh. Interestingly, the woman's skull found in the sarcophagus was unnaturally elongated, similarly to that of Akhenaten's daughters, who lived over a thousand years later.