Abstract
The Saite royal women are seldom mentioned by the scholars if compared to the women of the ruling families from other periods of the ancient Egyptian history, mainly the Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms. Since the mid-1970s, there has been no attempt to critically reevaluate surviving evidence on the daughters, wives, and mothers of the kings of the Twenty-Sixth Dynasty (664-526 BCE), despite the great potential of the sources for comparative analysis.
Except only one securely dated case, available references about the Saite royal women, excluding the God's wives of Amun, are only known from funerary contexts, inscribed on objects buried with them. Nevertheless, they were certainly attested by name during their lifetimes, especially on the statuary, either dedicated by private high ranking individuals or themselves.
This paper aims to investigate following topics: the approximate sequence, personal identities, and social backgrounds of Saite royal consorts, a set of specific titles they bore and apparent changes in the official queenly titulary towards the end of the Twenty-Sixth Dynasty, number of royal princesses and their role in various cults across Egypt (namely Sais, Herakleopolis and Thebes), as well as their position and role within and outside the Saite royal court.