God's Wife of Amun
The God's Wife of Amun was a religious figure in Ancient Egypt who was the highest ranking priestess of the god Amun. The priestess was stationed at the temple of Karnak in Thebes, and had both political and religious importance.
History
At the beginning of the New Kingdom, the God's Wife of Amun royal title started to be held by royal women (usually the wife of the pharaoh, but sometimes by the queen mother), when its extreme power and prestige was first evident. The New Kingdom began in 1550 BCE with the Eighteenth Dynasty, when Ahmose I drove the Hyksos out of Egypt and their capital city was Thebes, which then became the leading city in Egypt. They believed that Amun had guided them in their victory and the cult rose to national importance. Adjustments to the rituals and myths followed.
The title, "God's Wife of Amun", referred to the myth of the divine birth of the pharaoh, according to which his mother was impregnated by Amun. While the office theoretically, was sacred, it was essentially wielded as a political tool by Egyptian pharaohs to maintain their authority over Upper Egypt and the powerful priesthood of Amun in Thebes. The royal lineage was traced through its women and, the rulers and the religious institutions were inexorably woven together in traditions that remained quite stable over a period of three thousand years. This title was used in preference to the title, Great Royal Wife, which was the title of the queen who was the consort to the pharaoh and who officiated at the temple. The new title conveyed that the pharaoh would be a demigod upon birth. Previously the pharaoh was considered to become divine only at death.
During the reign of Akhenaten, from 1353 BCE - 1334 BCE, all traditional gods of Egypt were worshiped in secret, and official cults were abolished, the God's Wife of Amun being among them.
By the Twentieth Dynasty, the position was reinstated when Ramesses VI conferred this office as well as the additional title of Divine Adoratrice of Amun on his daughter, Iset; the pharaoh's actions inaugurated the tradition where every subsequent priestess had to be one of the pharaoh's daughters, unmarried and a virgin. In order to aid the succession, she would select a daughter of the next pharaoh to succeed her when she died
The office continued in existence until 525 BCE when the Persian Empire conquered Egypt, thus abolishing the office until Alexander the Great was crowned pharaoh in 332 BCE.
Ptolemaic Dynasty
At some point, between Alexander's coronation as pharaoh and the rise of the Ptolemaic Dynasty in the 4th century BCE, the God's Wife of Amun was reinstated.
By the late 1st Century BCE, Isidora, succeeded her mother Nitokris as the God's Wife of Amun and began using an Apple of Eden to kill grave robbers and avenge her mother's death.