Funerary Equipment Belonging to Three Foreign Wives of Thutmose III
 

One of the most comprehensive surviving sets of ancient Egyptian jewellery was discovered, together with the vessels and other objects, in a rock-cut cave situated high up in the desert mountain cliffs of the Wady Gabbanat el-Qurud in western Thebes. The find encompassed the remains of the burials of three minor wives of King Thutmose III whose names, Maruta, Manhata, and Manuwai, written on the canopic jars, libation vessels and heart scarabs, are not Egyptian, but in all probability Semitic. Marina may be the hieroglyphic version of the familiar Hebrew and Aramaic name Marta.

 

According to the custom of the time the three women must have entered the pharaohs household during the course of political transactions with a ruler somewhere in the Levant. The these women were buried together according to Egyptian burial customs.