Henuttaneb, daughter of Amenhotep III & Queen Tiye

Limestone statuette of Princess Henuttaneb (daughter of Amenhotep III & Queen Tiye)

New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, c. 1388-1350 B.C.

Formerly in the collection of Dominique Mallet, acquired before 1930.

Antiquities, Christie’s, London, 30 April 2008, lot 236.

Henuttaneb wears the vulture headdress over a bi-partite wig with two pigtails down her back, with traces of a crown of uraei. In her left hand she carries a flail. The composite back pillar is in the form of a double lotus bouquet.

For Princess Henuttaneb, cf. D. Arnold, The Royal Women of Amarna, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1996, p. 9, fig. 4, “This second daughter of Amenhotep III and Tiye bore a name that was actually a title of Egyptian queens; Henuttaneb means ‘Mistress of All Lands’.

The name was particularly appropriate because she seems to have been elevated to a position equivalent to that of her mother and older sister.

Although she is not identified with the title Royal Wife, the colossal statue group of Amenhotep III and Tiye from Medinet Habu, in the central hall of the Cairo Museum, portrays her at the side of her parents, in a smaller scale, wearing the vulture cap of a queen, and she is described as ‘the companion of Horus, who is in his heart’.

This is the only time a King’s daughter was given this queenly title. Since on other monuments her name is often enclosed within a cartouche – a prerogative of royal wives – we may have to include her among the many wives of her father.”

Also, cf. detail of Princess Henuttaneb in Cairo Museum (JE33906) in A. Kozloff and B. M. Bryan, Egypt’s Dazzling Sun, Cleveland, 1992, p. 207, fig. 24a,b.
Dominique Mallet was an epigraphist, Hellenist and Egyptologist, working particularly on the Ptolemaic period; she was the author of various works including: Le Culte de Neit à Sais, 1888, and Les premiers établissements des Grecs en Egypte, 1893.