Nitokris

Nitokris or Nitocris was a possibly historical queen of Ancient Egypt, who may have ruled at the end of the 6th Dynasty, from 2184–2181 BC. H. P. Lovecraft incorporated her legend into the Cthulhu Mythos, referring to her as the "ghoul-queen". (: Imprisoned with the Pharaohs)
== In History ==
Nitocris' historicity is today debated, but she was considered to be real by ancient historians like Manetho, who (wrongly) attributed the building of the Third Pyramid at Giza to her, and Herodotus, who presents her as the avenger of her brother, whom she succeeded on the throne:He had been the king of Egypt, and he had been put to death by his subjects, who then placed her upon the throne. Determined to avenge his death, she devised a cunning scheme by which she destroyed a vast number of Egyptians. She constructed a spacious underground chamber and, on pretense of inaugurating it, threw a banquet, inviting all those whom she knew to have been responsible for the murder of her brother. Suddenly as they were feasting, she let the river in upon them by means of a large, secret duct.Wikipedia, "Nitocris."This legend was the basis for a play by one of Lovecraft's favorite writers, Lord Dunsany; The Queen's Enemies premiered in New York City in 1916. Asked by The New York Times where he got the idea for the play, Dunsany replied that the theme of "The Queen's Enemies" I owe to a lady, and not one of those dreamy women who, having got an idea, write a sonnet about it or a play: she did it; she got the motive of drowning her enemies, so she invited them to dinner and drowned them. That is all I know about her.
It was not only easier but more amusing to imagine her character and all the names of her enemies than to be bothered with reading about her.The New York Times, "Where Dunsany Got 'The Queen's Enemies,'" February 4, 1917.
== In Lovecraft's Fiction ==
Lovecraft first mentioned Nitokris in his story "The Outsider," written in 1921 and first published in 1926. The piece refers to "the unnamed feasts of Nitokris beneath the Great Pyramid," in a passage that also evokes the "catacombs of Nephren-Ka" and "the mocking and friendly ghouls on the night-wind."
Nitokris comes up repeatedly in "Under the Pyramids," which was ghostwritten for Harry Houdini in 1924 and published that same year. It invokes both the legend of her drowning her enemies and her connection to the Third Pyramid:Even the smallest of them held a hint of the ghastly—for was it not in this that they had buried Queen Nitokris alive in the Sixth Dynasty; subtle Queen Nitokris, who once invited all her enemies to a feast in a temple below the Nile, and drowned them by opening the water-gates? I recalled that the Arabs whisper things about Nitokris, and shun the Third Pyramid at certain phases of the moon. The story also links Nitokris to the Pharaoh Khephren, telling of rumors that he "lives far underground wedded to the ghoul-queen Nitokris and ruling over the mummies that are neither of man nor of beast."
Toward the end of the story, the narrator Houdini actually sees the "beautiful Queen Nitokris," and notices that "the right half of her face was eaten away by rats or other ghouls."
== In Expanded Mythos Works ==
*In "The Mirror of Nitocris", Brian Lumley depicts Nitocris as reviving the worship of Nyarlathotep, uncovering the Shining Trapezohedron, and possessing a magical mirror that functioned similarly to the Trapezohedron.
*In Demonbane, the Mirror of Nitocris was one of the missing fragments of the Necronomicon. It has the power to break the boundaries between reality and fiction. Nya gave it to Allison, who used it to summon the creatures from Wonderland.
*Haiyore! Nyaruko-san features the Mirror of Nitocris as one of the many weapons in Nyaruko's arsenal. 
== Gallery ==
The Mirror of Nitokris (Haiyore! Nyaruko-san).png|The Mirror of Nitocris (Haiyore! Nyaruko-san)
== References ==
Category:Humans
Category:Deceased (In Mythos)
Category:Characters Originating From Lovecraft Circle Works