From the book by W.M. Flinders Petrie, A History of Egypt - Part One, 1896, pp. 308-309 (25th Dynasty)
Petrie is famously known as "The Father of Pre-history".
"Taharqa, he had two sister queens who were high priestesses: Qelhata in Ethiopia, and Gerarheni in Egypt, as they are specified upon the dream stele."
"We may here notice the general character of the Ethiopian dominion, which lasted probably just a century. That the kings of Napata represented the old civilisation of Upper Egypt is clear; and it is probable that they were actually descended from the high priests of Amen, who were the rightful successors of the XVIIIth and XIXth dynasties. So far, then, as hereditary rights ago, they were the true kings of Egypt, rather than the mob of Libyan chiefs who had filtered into the Delta, and who tried to domineer over the Nile valley from that no-man's land. So soon as the XXIInd dynasty was weakened, Pankhy, or his predecessor, appears to have brought it to a close. Then followed the successive reassertions of governance of Egypt by Pankhy, Shabaka, Taharqa, and Tanutamen. It does not appear that there was any abandonment of the country between perhaps 763 (or certainly 735) and 664 B.C. A system of viceroys was needed in ruling so great an extent of territory, nearly a thousand miles of the Nile valley. And just as the Egyptian kings appointed a "royal son of Kush" to rule south of Aswan, so an Ethiopian king appointed a royal son to rule in Egypt. Shabaka is called king, or commander-in-chief, ten years before Pankhy died. Taharqa was sent down to Egypt at 20, and acted there as viceroy for eight years before Shabatoka came to an end."
"The succession in the Ethiopian kingdom was rigidly in the female line, the series of eight generations of queens in continuous descent being given on the stele of Aspaluta about 625 B.C.; the earliest of these, call "mistress of Kush," being probable the wife of Pankhy I. Each of these queens with cartouches was also sister of a king, so that sister marriage was an unbroken rule. These were the high priestesses of Napata; but each king had also a high priestess queen at Thebes, Shapenapt I, and Gerarheni in succession. Both queens appear their proper titles, one on each side of the scene, on the stele of Tanutamen, the "mistress of Nubia" and the "mistress of Egypt" . . . ." --Petrie, 1896
