Abstract
Within the growing research interest for the Late Period in the past four decades, female members of the upper echelons of the Egyptian society both professionally and religiously attached to the city of Memphis, the main administrative center of whole Egypt at the time, remained rather anonymous. Several reasons have contributed to such state of research, mostly related to the availability and the character of source material itself, but ongoing investigation already offered some astonishing results.
This paper aims to shed more light on the social status of these women and to evaluate their mobility within the priestly elite families through four case studies: Sekhmentnefert A, the daughter of inspector of the sem-priests Wahibreseneb, who married Ahmose-men-(em-)ineb-hedj, the High Priest of Ptah under Amasis to Darius I; Sekhmetneferet B, the daughter of the god's father Irefaawenptah, who married one of the grandsons of well-known lector priest and magician Henat; Neferheres, the daughter of the prophet of Bastet, Padiptah, who married the former's brother, Hekaemsaef; and Neithikret, the daughter of the vizier Psamtikmerineith, who married the sem-priest Pasherienptah.