The other day, my longtime fellow docent at Penn Museum, Anna Sophocles Hadgis, sent me a piece on Queen Meretneith.
Anna asked me if I had ever heard of Meretneith, the now reputed first female ruler of Egypt.
With Hawk Pride, I answered “yes” that I was familiar with that story because my Latin student Mackenzie had selected Regina Meretneitha, our Latinized spelling, as her Persona soon after SJU classes began in August.
How thrilled was I to share with Anna what I call the “Persona Project” and the flipping of history-telling from the professor to the students.
According to Sue Kelly, Honorary Postdoctoral Associate in Egyptology at Macquarie University, “More than 5,000 years ago, a royal woman called Meretneith (also written as Merneith) lived in ancient Egypt.
“She was possibly the daughter of Djer, the third king of the First Dynasty (ca. 3100-2900 BCE), a period when the first kings ruled over a unified Egypt.
“Details over Meretneith’s exact royal status have remained murky. We know that she ruled the country because her tomb complex was filled with riches fit for a male ruler of Egypt.
“At the very least, she was an interim ruler or co-regent. But did she ever rule Egypt in her own right?
“There are various markers which build a body of evidence for Meretneith’s royal career: her lavish funerary complex in the royal cemetery, inscriptions which document her name alongside administrative titles and departments, and impressions on royal tomb seals.
“In fact, studies estimate she ruled Egypt for at least 30 years in one capacity or another.
“For all the evidence we do have, however, the jigsaw puzzle of her career remains incomplete.
“This latest research contributes a new hypothesis that Meretneith’s political career should be divided into distinct stages matching the different forms of evidence.
“The different types of texts available allow us to categorize different political roles of her career.
“The royal serekh beside that of Djer identifies her as a co-regent, while tomb seals confirm her later role as a regent king’s mother.
“Egyptians acknowledged her political status by naming her on the tomb seal of a subsequent ruler, Semerkhet.
“Other texts indicate that she held authority over the treasury and officials, governing as a ruler without a political title.
“The ability to change her political roles across her career was only possible because of her gender and position in the ruling family.
“We suggest that Meretneith had the advantage of stepping in and out of the political domain as necessitated by the needs of the political environment, unlike male rulers who succeeded her, reigned, died, and were buried by their successors.” Ancient Near East Today journal online October 2026 | Vol. 14.10
Pharoah Narmer was selected as the Persona of Micah who, in his research discovered that the game “Assassin’s Creed Origins” features the Narmer Palette.
According to FANDOM Assassin’s Creed Wiki, “Narmer was a pharaoh and the founder of the First Dynasty of Egypt.
“He was credited as being the first ruler of a unified Egypt and establishing Memphis as the capital city throughout the Old Kingdom period.
“The Narmer Palette, named after the pharaoh himself, is known as humanity’s oldest recording of an event.”
As his Persona, James selected Saint Charalambos or Haralambos, born ca. A.D. 89, who was an early Christian priest in Magnesia on the Maeander, a city in Asia Minor, in the diocese of the same name.
His name Χαράλαμπος means “glowing with joy” in Greek.
He lived during the reign of Septimius Severus, when Lucian was Proconsul of Magnesia. According to one source, at the time of his martyrdom in A.D. 202, Charalambos was 113 years old.
According to tradition, Charalambos died in Antioch of Pisidia, (modern-day Yalvaç, Isparta Province, Turkey).
To say that we have a panoply of in-class Personae is an understatement.
Consider in our Latin 1 Class, Rex Agapenor, an Arcadian king at the battle for Troy, Hydna of Scione, Socrates, Herophilus, Quintus Delius, Pythagoras, Gorgo, Olympias of Epirus, Alexander the Great.
Also, Miltiades, Anyte of Tegea, King Menander I, Sanctus Petrus, Eirene, Sappho, Aspasia, and Cyrus the Great of Persia.
In Latin 2, we have Lucan, Narses, Cleopatra, Hypatia of Alexandria, Artemesia, Cynisca, Agnodike, the mother of gynecology and obstetrics, Plato, Publius Vergilius Maro, Octavia, sister of Augustus, Livia Drusilla, Augustus, and Romulus, the legendary founder of Rome, plus Regina Meretneitha.
The most creative component of the Persona Project is the timeline exhibit in class which the students build, beginning with an image and lifespan for each from the earliest historic character and ending with the most recent Persona from Antiquity.
Not to forget, we have a Google doc community portfolio showing the images, a short bio, and sources for all of the Personae.
And the absolute best part of the Persona Project are the presentations – including references in art, film, and media – in chronological order, with Q&A, and discussion.
Remember those “blue books” of yesteryear? We use those to log facts, salient observations, and esoterica for each one of the Personae during the presentations.
Truly, the students are “holding the reigns” in the portrayal of Ancient Mediterranean history.
Mary Brown teaches Latin at Saint Joseph’s University and is President of the Philadelphia Classical Society.