Inscription of Queen Katimala at Semna

This is the first complete translation and commentary on the important tableau and inscription of Queen Katimala/Karimala at Semna. Proper understanding of the paleography, grammar and content reveals Katimala to have been a Nubian ruler at the time of the Twenty-First to Twenty-Second Dynasties of Ancient Egypt. She emerges as a political and military leader who took control of at least Lower Nubia in the wake of failed military activities on the part of a male predecessor. Katimala's inscription is not illegible, as has often been stated, but is a well-composed Lower Nubian example of a politico-religious manifesto applying many of the conventions of early Egyptian literary and historical compositions.

John Coleman Darnell is Professor & Chair of Egyptology and Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations at Yale University. Darnell's interests include Egyptian religion, cryptography, the scripts and texts of Graeco-Roman Egypt, and the archaeological and epigraphic remains of ancient activity in the Egyptian Western Desert. The latter work has led him to his current interest in state formation, the use of rock inscriptions in the creation of "ordered" space, and the economic status of the oases and the desert regions, particularly from the late Old Kingdom through the Third Intermediate Period. In addition to his teaching and research, Darnell has gained considerable experience in the field in Egypt.