Egypt and the Hittite empire had been increasingly at odds since the demise of the kingdom of the Mittani , culminating at the Battle of Kadesh on 1 May BC. The marriage was preceded by long negotiations between the Egyptian and Hittite courts. Ramesses II expressed concern over continuing delays, while the Hittite queen Puduhepa explained that she had to send off her daughter in style with a suitable dowry, which was difficult to assemble quickly. Within Egypt, however, as described on the "Marriage Stela" from the temple of Abu Simbel , for example, the event was presented as the submission of the Hittite king to Ramesses II, with Hattusili supposedly coming himself to offer Ramesses all his goods as tribute and his eldest daughter as wife.
The Hittite princess left Hattusa , the Hittite capital, in the autumn of BC, [ 25 ] accompanied by her mother, Queen Puduhepa, to the frontier.
For Ramesses II, the marriage was perhaps valuable especially for the large dowry he acquired. Nevertheless, Maathornefrure resided at court for at least a while, receiving emissaries from her father, [ 33 ] before apparently settling in the harem palace at Mer-wer today's Gurob. Maathorneferure is mentioned on a papyrus found at Gurob.
The partly preserved text on the papyrus states: [ During the Persian or early Ptolemaic period, a convoluted memory of Maathorneferure's marriage to Ramesses II resulted in the tale inscribed on the " Bentresh stela " found in a Ptolemaic shrine at the Temple of Khonsu at Karnak.
The stela reports that Ramesses II married the daughter of the chief of Bekhten otherwise unknown and made her the King's Great Wife Nefrure, and that in Year 23 he received an envoy from his father-in-law, asking for help in treating the illness of Nefrure's younger sister Bentresh. The royal scribe Dhutemhab was duly dispatched to Bekhten, and discovered that Bentresh was possessed by a spirit.
