Statuette of the Deified Queen Ahmose-Nefertari

At Karnak a stela records how King Ahmose, the first king of the 18th Dynasty, bought a priestly office in the temple of Amun for his wife Ahmose-Nefertari and endowed it with land, goods and staff for her and her heirs. She took the title God's Wife of Amun, the highest a woman could hold in the god's service. She outlived her husband, saw their son Amenhotep I crowned, and died in the reign of Thutmose I.

Across the river, the people of Deir el-Medina, the village of the royal tomb builders, came to honour mother and son as the founders and patrons of their community. She was worshipped there as a goddess, Lady of the West and Mistress of the Sky, with her own feast day in the village year, and the museum sees in cult statuettes like this one the great devotion the villagers felt for her. This one, in wood, was made in the 19th or 20th Dynasty, centuries after her death. In this figure and in another in Turin she appears young, in a close-fitting dress that reaches to her ankles.