“Pepi I then threw away the royal rulebook, and for the first time, a king married a commoner. Chang

“Pepi I then threw away the royal rulebook, and for the first time, a king married a commoner. Changing her name to Ankhnespepi - ‘Pepi lives for her’ - she was the daughter of a powerful family from Abydos, and her mother Nebet, was made Prime Minister of the south.As the role of Prime Minister was the highest administrative office in the land below that of the King, Pepi I’s choice of his mother-in-law for this key role was presumably inspired by his own mother Iput’s skills in government. And as Prime Minister Nebet relocated south to Abydos, from where she ran Upper Egypt, the tomb she and her husband Khui had begun in Sakkara was abandoned in favour of a new burial place closer to Abydos.The extraordinary Nebet was also mother of eight children, two of her six sons, Djau and Idi, inheriting her premiership, while her second daugher also married the King, and again adopted the name Ankhnespepi II (the II being a convenient modern distinction).”                    —                                                        Clouds Across the Sun: c. 2375 - 2181 B.C.The Story of Egypt, Joann Fletcher, 2015. -- source link

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