Herodotus says Queen Nitocris drowned the men who killed her brother the king at a banquet, and a modern scholar argues she never existed

Herodotus, writing in the fifth century BC, reports what Egyptian priests told him about their kings. He says one of them was a woman, Nitocris. The Egyptians killed her brother while he was king and gave the kingdom to her. To avenge him, she had a large chamber built underground and invited the Egyptians most responsible for the murder to a banquet there. During the meal she "let in the river upon them by a secret conduit of large size." She then threw herself into a room full of embers to escape their revenge. Manetho, an Egyptian priest writing in Greek in the third century BC, lists Nitocris as a queen who reigned 12 years and credits her with the third pyramid at Giza. That pyramid belongs to Menkaure of the Fourth Dynasty. For a time scholars read her name, Neitiqerty, on the Turin King List, a papyrus of the reign of Ramesses II bought from Bernardino Drovetti and now in the Museo Egizio, Turin. In 2000 Kim Ryholt argued that the entry is a faulty copy of the throne name of a male king, Netjerkare Siptah. No inscription from her own time names Nitocris. Her story survives only in Greek writers.