Image Details

O. Louis Mazzatenta, Courtesy of the National Geographic Society

A decade before he became king, Ramesses married his first wife, Nefertari, shown here in a painted relief from her tomb in the Valley of the Queens. Nefertari is frequently depicted wearing the headdress of the goddess Hathor, which consists of horns enclosing a sun disk, as well as the uraeus, a cobra-shaped symbol of royalty projecting from the forehead.