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, a period when the first kings ruled over a unified Egypt.

Details over Meretneith’s exact royal status have remained murky. We know 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?

Egyptologists have long disputed whether Meretneith was an independent ruler of Egypt. Resolving that dispute would require finding a text that identifies her as a ruler.

Our new research, published in the journal Prague Egyptological Studies, might do just that. Using a new digital technique, we examined hieroglyphs in the photo of a long-lost artefact, and the signs clearly point to Meretneith being one of the early rulers of Egypt.

Currently, the only possible text that could resolve the dispute over Meretneith’s status is a hieroglyphic inscription in a black-and-white photograph of a mud stopper (a plug used for pottery jars and other vessels).

The text in question was originally........

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