Weret-yamtes was the Ist Queen of the 6th Dynasty Pharaoh Pepy Ist. There isn't very much known about her to be honest and if Lord Weni of Egypt hadn't recorded his actions against her. It is likely that she would remain one of the lost one's of Ancient Egypt.
See-
http://www1.hollins.edu/Docs/academics/ ... /weni.html
This website offers Lord Weni's full report on his most amazing life in the service of the first 3 Pharaoh's of the 6th Dynasty.
Other sources of the secret trial:
Women in Ancient Egypt, by Robin Gay, Harvard Unisersity Press, 1996. pg 39.
A History of Ancient Egypt, by Nicolas Grimal, Blackwell Publishers, 1992. pgs 82-83.
The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, edited by Ian Shaw, Oxford University Press, 2000. pg 115.
At some point in the reign of Pepy the Ist, Weni is called upon to sit in Judgment of the Queen. A secret trial! Lord Weni is amazed that he and he alone is called to hear Pharaoh's case against his Queen. Visit the website and see.
Nicolas Grimal's work is the most honest of the 3 published accounts of her trail. All the published sources go further than Lord Weni in claiming her to be a meddling, plotting, or adulterous Queen. Lord Weni gives no reason for her secret trial. Grimal ends his account of her as her being bandished with her son. This is not supported by any other scholar, nor is it accounted in the Tale of Lord Weni himself. But for those who prefer to consider the collapse of the 6th Dynasty as being the result of the Exodus. This information is exciting in that it indicates her as being Moses' stepmother.
This would well explain the need for a private trial. Her having violated the law of Pharaoh by adopting a condemned Hebrew child and raising him to be a son of Pharaoh. Would not be something Pepy would want to be known to many.
Who was Queen Weret-yamtes? Most likely she was the daughter of Pharaoh Teti by one of his Queens. There were at least 2 Queens of Teti, Queen Khuit and Queen Iput, a daughter of Pharaoh Wenis, and the mother of Pepy I.
Pepy I came to the throne at a very early age, as did his two sons that succeeded him. It is known that in the last 1/3 of his long reign he married the daughters of a noble and made them his Queens, these are the mother's of his successors.
There was just one other trial in Egyptian history of a Queen. It was in the 19th Dynasty during the reign of Ramesses III. The trial was public and was the result of the Queen plotting to overthrow her husband in favor of her son by him. There is no other known trials of any other Queen in Egypt's long history.
What ever Queen Weret-yamtes crime may never be known. What happened to her may never be known. But that she a divinely annointed Queen of Egypt was denied the basic right of all Egyptians male or female of a legal trial is known thanks to Lord Weni.
