2. A queen of Egypt. Herodotus relates that she was a native Egyptian, and the only female of the 330 Egyptian monarchs whose names were read to the historian by the priests from a papyrus manuscript. He further tells us that she was elected to the sovereignty in place of her brother, whom the Egyptians had killed, and that she devised the following scheme in order to take revenge upon the murderers of her brother. She built a very long chamber under ground, and when it was finished invited to a banquet in it those of the Egyptians who had had a principal share in the murder. While they were engaged in the banquet she let in upon them the waters of the Nile by means of a large concealed pipe and drowned them all, and then, in order to escape punishment, threw herself into a chamber full of ashes. (Hdt. 2.100.)
This Nitocris appears to have been one of the most celebrated personages in Egyptian legends. Even in the times of the Roman emperors we find her name mentioned as one of the old heroines of the East, as we see from the way in which she is spoken of by Dio Cassius, and the emperor Julian, both of whom class her with Semiramis (D. C. 62.6; Julian. Orat. pp. 126. 127). Julius Africanus, and Eusebius (apud Syncell. pp. 58, 59), who borrow their account from Manetho, describe her as the most high-minded and most beautiful woman of her age, with a fair complexion, adding that she built the third pyramid. By this we are to understand, as Bunsen has shown, that she finished the third pyramid, which had been commenced by Mycerinus; and the same fact is intimated by the curious tale of Herodotus (2.134), which states that the erection of the pyramid was attributed by many to the Greek courtezan, Rhodopis, who must, in all probability, be regarded as the same person as Nitocris. [RHODOPIS.]
Bunsen makes Nitocris the last sovereign of the sixth dynasty, and states that she reigned for six years in place of her murdered husband (not her brother, as Herodotus states), whose name was Menthuoôphis. The latter is supposed to be the son or grandson of the Moeris of the Greeks and Romans. The tale related by Herodotus of Nitocris constructing a subterraneous chamber for the punishment of the murderers of her brother is supposed by Bunsen, with Much probability, to have reference to her erection of the third pyramid, though the waters of the Nile could not have been let into it, as the water of the river does not rise high enough for the purpose. (Bunsen, Aegyptens Stelle in der Weltgeschichte, vol. ii. pp. 236-242.)