Amanipilade

Amanipilade is the name conventionally attributed to a Kushite queen regnant buried in pyramid Beg N. 25 in Meroë. Amanipilade ruled the Kingdom of Kush from Meroë in the middle of the fourth century AD. Circumstantial and indirect evidence suggests that she might have been the last ruler of the kingdom.

==Sources and chronology== The name Amanipilade, rendered in Meroitic as Mnipilde, is known only from a text found at an offering table in the pyramid Beg. W 104, likely removed from its original location and placed there later. The name was attributed to the monarch buried in Beg N. 25 in 1978, based on the late type of the text's palaeography matching the very late date of the pyramid. The attribution of Amanipilade to Beg N. 25 is conventionally accepted by scholars, for instance in the Fontes Historiae Nubiorum and by Török (2015). Some researchers have doubted the attribution, such as Kuckertz (2021), who speculated that it could be the name of a non-royal official who adopted a royal formula on their offering table. Like many other Kushite rulers, the name Amanipilade incorporates the name of the god Amun. The names of Amanipilade's parents are also recorded in the offering table text: Tehye (father) and Mkeḫñye (mother). These names are not attested as belonging to any ruling Kushite monarchs but the Kushite throne could be inherited through indirect lines.