Akhmim – Ancient Egypt’s Oldest City?

‘The Aten Sequence Books’ are science fantasy fiction novels, but I have used some real historical characters and locations in Ancient Egypt to create my stories.  One place that gets mentioned is an ancient city called Akhmim, as it was where Princess Merytamen’s wicked stepmother Queen Tiye came from. So where is the town of Akhmim and what was its importance in antiquity?

In the 16^th century the author and diplomat Leo Africanus claimed that Akhmim was the oldest city in Egypt.  So is it true?  How old is Akhmim and what was its importance to the mighty ancient Egyptian civilisation?  It is situated on the east bank of the River Nile in Upper Egypt, a few miles from the more bustling town of Sohag.  Its earliest beginnings are more than probably lost in the shifting sands of the desert, but clues of human habitation start to appear with artefacts from the Badarian culture in the 5^th century BC.  It is from the remains of these very early settlements and cemeteries that we see the first evidence of the development of agriculture in the Nile valley. They also made very distinctive pottery, which included polished red vessels with black rims.  Early artwork has also been discovered in the form of carved ivory figurines.

Statue of Merytamun at Akhmim

In pharaonic times the city was known as Ipu or Khent-Menu and was a centre of worship for the fertility god Min. In the late period the Greeks knew the city as Panopolis.  The cult of Min stretched back into predynastic times and he was usually shown as a man with black skin, holding his erect phallus in his left hand and holding a flail in his outstretched right hand.  Min was depicted with  black skin to show that he is a fertility deity and great festivals would be held every year to celebrate his ‘coming forth’, where worshippers would carry his statue in procession and present him with votive offerings. He was the god Egyptians would pray to for a successful annual inundation of the Nile followed by a bountiful harvest.  Oddly enough, lettuce was one of the key features of his festivals, possibly because when the leaves are ripped apart they secrete a milky substance that resembles semen, which is also an opiate and aphrodisiac.  The Greeks associated him with their god Pan, another fertility god who was often shown with the head and torso of a man and the lower limbs of a goat.

Tiye was the wife of the Pharaoh Amenophis III and Queen of Egypt towards the end of the 18^th dynasty in the period known as the New Kingdom.  Unusually, we know who her parents were as Amenophis III produced a series of commemorative ‘marriage scarabs’ stating that ‘the name of her father is Yuya, the name of her mother is Thuya; she is married to the great king whose southern border is at Karoy and whose northern is Naharin’.   These scarabs make it very clear that Queen Tiye was not of royal birth and it is believed that her parents came from the town of Akhmim.  The intact tomb of Yuya and Thuya was discovered in the Valley of the Kings in 1905 by James Quibell. The mummy of her father Yuya shows that he was unusually tall for an Egyptian of that period, had a beard and facial features that differed from those of a typical Egyptian. A theory has been put forward that he was a foreigner or at least of foreign descent, with some scholars pointing to the unusual spelling of his name as further evidence.

Mummy Mask of Yuya, Cairo Museum

Yuya was a courtier of Pharaoh Thutmosis IV and was a commander of the chariotry and then went on to serve his successor and son-in-law Amenophis III.  His titles included ‘Master of the Horse’, ‘King’s Lieutenant’ and ‘Father of the God.’  In his home town he held the titles ‘Priest of Min’, ‘Overseer of the Cattle of Min’ and ‘Lord of Akhmim.’  His wife Thuya also held a string of impressive, high status titles that included ‘Priestess of Amen’, ‘Chief of the Harem of Min’, ‘Chief of the Harem of Amen’ and ‘Chantress of Hathor’.  Their burial was robbed during antiquity, but much of the impressive, elegant furniture remained and both the mummies were discovered intact in their coffins.  They were known to have a son called Anen, who became known as the ‘Divine Father’ and also held the titles of ‘Chancellor of Lower Egypt’, ‘Second Prophet of Amun’, and ‘Priest of Heliopolis.’  Many scholars also believe that Ay, a prominent courtier in the reigns of Amenophis III, Akhenaten and Tutankhamun who then took the throne and ruled as Pharaoh for around four years, was also a son of Yuya and Thuya.  So although we have no evidence that Queen Tiye had royal blood, her family were obviously powerful and influential at the Egyptian court.

There is very little left of the pharaonic town of Ipu to be seen as many of the carved and dressed blocks of stone from the temples were taken away and used in later building projects.  In 1981 a temple dedicated to Min and his local consort Triphis, also known as Repyt, thought to have been built during the Graeco-Roman period was excavated to reveal remains of a monumental gate.  Fragments of statues of Ramesses II were discovered as well as a colossal statue of his daughter, and later great royal wife, Queen Merytamun.  This beautiful statue has been restored and now stands as the centrepiece of a small open-air museum.  Interestingly there are also some carved blocks from Akhetaten (Amarna) that had probably been scavenged to build the later structure.  More recently another temple dating to the time of Ramesses the Great has been found and the fragments of a broken colossal statue of this pharaoh lies partially buried by what used to be the gate.

There is a necropolis at Akhmim dating from pharaonic times, which has never been systematically excavated although some more recent discoveries include five tombs dating to the Old Kingdom.  There is also a necropolis at nearby el-Hawawish that is notable for its rock-cut tombs of the governors of the Nome who were buried there from the 4^th to the 11^th dynasties.  Also at nearby el-Salamuni there are more rock-cut tombs dating from the Graeco-Roman period and a chapel that was dedicated to Min. This rock chapel was thought to have been carved during the reign of Thutmosis III and decorated during the reign of Ay by Nakhtmin, who was the ‘First Prophet of Min’, with reliefs of Ay and his wife Tey worshipping local deities.  The chapel was known to the Greeks as the ‘Grotto of Pan’ and more reliefs were added depicting Ptolemy II Philadelphus during this period.

Bust of Queen Tiye

Magic is a very important part of the story in ‘The Aten Sequence Books’ and Akhmim is also known as a place where alchemy and Egyptian magic were very important.  Indeed the town was known by the name Khemmis or Chemmis, which may have been the basis for our modern word chemistry.  In ancient times the land of Egypt was called ‘Khem’ meaning ‘black earth’.  Some of the oldest known books on alchemy were written at the end of the 3^rd century AD by a famous alchemist called Zosimos of Panopolis, whose writings were among those of around forty alchemists that were placed in a compendium put together in Byzantium in the 7^th or 8^th centuries AD.  Alchemists concerned themselves with the transformation of base metals such as copper or lead into precious metals such as gold or silver.  They also acknowledged that a process of transformation and purification within themselves was as important as the outward changes in the metal and they worked more for the gaining of spiritual knowledge and development than they did for the material gains.  The greatest magician and alchemist of legend, Hermes Trismegistus, who was a composite of the Egyptian god of writing Thoth and the Greek Hermes, was also supposed to have lived for some time in the town.  So Aten’s attempts to turn gold into the fuel he needs for ship were perhaps an echo of the experiments these alchemists undertook.

These links between Akhmim and alchemy were to last for many centuries as in the 9^th century AD the celebrated Sufi Dhu’l al-Misri was born in Akhmim.  He thought to have been an alchemist and been able to perform miracles. He was a great scholar and travelled large distances across the Arabian Peninsula and through Syria in order to learn from the great teachers of the day and also to teach himself.  He died in 859 AD and is buried in Cairo’s City of the Dead.

So although Akhmim might now be a relatively unknown regional town in Middle Egypt, in antiquity it was a prosperous, bustling regional centre.  Queen Tiye is said to have owned vast estates in the area, which would have produced a vast array of agricultural produce. It still has a thriving weaving industry that produces fine silk and Egyptian cotton that is said to date back to the time of the pharaohs.  It became a centre for magic and alchemy during the Greek period, melding the ancient Egyptian traditions and knowledge with the philosophies the Greeks had brought with them.

Statue of Merytamun image Kurohito Wikimedia Creative Commons Attribution - Share Alike 3.0 Unported

Mummy Mask of Yuya Wikimedia Commons Any Purpose

Bust of Queen Tiye image Wikimedia Commons Public Domain

KV55 - Mystery Tomb of the Valley of the Kings

In the Aten Sequence books, Aten needs gold and he is not particularly scrupulous as to where he gets it from, so he sets up a little tomb robbing with Piy on the side.  During this period of Egypt’s history Pharaohs were buried in rock cut tombs in a remote, arid valley on the west bank of the Nile called the Valley of the Kings and then, during the reign of Akhenaten, tombs were dug at Akhetaten.  But so much of the history of the Amarna period is still not clear and there is a tomb in the Valley of the Kings that has raised at least as many questions as it has answered – the mysterious KV55.

So when did the first pharaoh get buried in the royal valley and why was this remote valley chosen?  Early in the 18^th dynasty of ancient Egypt’s New Kingdom one of pharaoh’s architects, a government official called Ineni, broke away from hundreds of years of royal tradition and dug the first royal rock cut tomb in a remote, lonely valley  ‘alone, no one seeing and no one hearing’.  Before this time the pharaohs had been buried in above-ground structures, initially in mastabas and then in pyramids and the larger and more visible they were the better.

Sarcophagus from KV55

We will never know for sure what led to this breaking away from tradition, but it may have been due to the fact that it did not matter how big or solid the structure was, these above-ground tombs were almost inevitably penetrated by tomb robbers and the rich contents of the burial chamber stolen and the mummy of the king ripped apart and destroyed to find the precious amulets and jewellery that were hidden in the wrappings.

To date sixty four tombs have been found in the Valley of the Kings, although many Egyptologists believe that there are more waiting to be discovered.  These are the tombs of pharaohs, queens, royal children and favoured officials and are labelled numerically from KV1 to KV64.  Some of these tombs are huge constructions reaching deep into the cliffs, elaborately carved and painted, and some are little more than shallow pits scratched out of the rock.

The Valley of the Kings has been a tourist attraction since Roman times, as is attested by the graffiti found in some of the tombs, and since the 19^th century has attracted visitors from all over the world.  The spectacular discovery of the undisturbed tomb of Tutankhamun in 1921 increased the flood of visitors and it has been declared that there is nothing left to find in the royal valley.

This has been refuted in recent years by the discovery of KV63 and now KV64, but with all the wealth of knowledge that we have about the royal valley, there is still a lot that we do not know and mysteries abound.

KV55 – the mysterious ‘Amarna’ Cache

In 1907 Edward R Ayrton, working on the behest of Theodore M Davis, uncovered a set of steps and the entrance to a previously unknown tomb. There was excitement when the sloping passage was found to be filled with clean loose chippings and they encountered two blocking walls, one a wall plastered and bearing the unbroken seal of the Royal Valley – the impression of a seated jackal, the god Anubis on a shrine and the crouching figures of nine bound captives.

When the walls were demolished they found two side panels of a wooden shrine covered in fine gold leaf and richly inscribed. They were in very poor condition but the hieroglyphs could still be read; they had belonged to Queen Tiye, the Great Royal Wife of Amenophis III and the mother of the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten.  The end of the sloping passage led to a large, undecorated chamber containing further parts of the shrines, a battered mummy case and other objects apparently randomly strewn across the floor of the room.

All of these objects were also in very poor condition and the gold leaf fell to the floor as the air was disturbed.  Four alabaster canopic jars with exquisitely carved portrait heads were found in a niche in the far wall, but the name of the owner had been deliberately destroyed.

Canopic Jar From KV55 

On examination, they found that the golden coffin was collapsing onto the floor and contained a poorly preserved, albeit obviously royal, mummy with its left arm crossed over its chest and the right arm extended.  A gold vulture pectoral had been placed on the head of the mummy.  The mummy was unwrapped and examined in the tomb and sheets of gold removed, one with a cartouche on it thought to be that of Akhenaten.

There were also a couple of wooden boxes whose contents had been strewn across the floor, four magic bricks, some seals bearing the name of Tutankhamun and other fragments of furniture.  The wooden objects had all been damaged by water entering the tomb.

Some of the confusion surrounding the tomb concerns the poor documentation of the objects in situ, the lack of work done on preserving the objects and the rapid clearing of the tomb.  But who had the tomb been prepared for?  Who was the decaying mummy in the battered coffin?  Theodore Davis was convinced that he had found the burial of the great queen Tiye and the once magnificent golden shrine had indeed been made for her by her son Akhenaten.  With one exception, the name of Akhenaten had been deliberately erased and the images decorating the panels show Akhenaten and Tiye worshipping the sun disc.  The way that the parts of the shrine have been stacked in the tomb, indicate that it might have once been erected in the chamber and then later dismantled, probably in antiquity.

There is also evidence that the coffin had been made for a female occupant and then later adapted for a male; there was a false beard, a crook and a flail added and the inscriptions were altered.  The titles of Akhenaten have been found on the coffin and it is now thought that the coffin was originally made, along with the four canopic jars, for a lesser wife of his, Kiya, and then later adapted for him.

However, is the mummy really that of Akhenaten?  Davis had the bones pronounced as those of a woman, but later examinations showed the bones belonging to a young male aged between twenty and thirty.  The skull was found to be platycephalic and very similar to the skull of Tutankhamun.  In addition, specialised blood tests showed that the mummy discovered in KV55 was either the father or brother of Tutankhamun.  The age of the mummy is much too young to have been that of the heretic Pharaoh and so the body has been identified by many as that of Smenkhkare.

Smenkhkare was a shadowy figure who ruled Egypt for a scant three years after the death of Akhenaten.  There are arguments that he was co-ruler with Akhenaten for a while and even that Smenkhkare was a name assumed by Akhenaten’s wife Nefertiti, so that she could rule as pharaoh in her own right.  He is generally believed to be the elder brother of Tutankhamun and was married to Akhenaten’s eldest daughter Meritaten.

In 2010 Dr Hawass released a paper on the recent DNA testing of the royal mummies which suggests that the KV55 mummy is that of Akhenaten.  However, this has stirred up even more debate with some experts rejecting this identification.

So what really happened in this tomb?  Was KV55 a cache of miscellaneous funerary objects from the Amarna period that had been brought back from the royal necropolis at Akhetaten for safe keeping?  Was the tomb the original burial of Queen Tiye, the tomb being opened in antiquity and the remains of the burial of Akhenaten placed in the tomb, with at some later stage the burial of Tiye being removed elsewhere and the funerary objects of Akhenaten defaced and his name removed?  Were the burials of Tiye, Akhenaten and Smenkhkare all in the tomb together at some stage?

Skull from KV55

Unless some new evidence is uncovered, we might never know.  It is perhaps worth remembering that several of the funerary items, including one of the coffins, found in the burial of Tutankhamun are believed to have previously belonged to Smenkhkare.  They were referred to as ‘heirlooms’ by Howard Carter, but would such costly items really have been excluded from Smenkhkare’s burial?  Maybe they were not unused ‘heirlooms’ that had been put into storage at all, maybe they had once been part of Smenkhkare’s grave goods and had either been taken from KV55 directly or brought from a another location and briefly stored in KV55 before being used in the burial of Tutankhamun?

There is so much more evidence and knowledge still to emerge from the shifting sands of Egypt; hopefully some of it will help to shed more light on the riddle that is KV55.


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Get Twitter Buttons KV55 sarcophagus image Hans Ollermann Wikimedia Creative Commons Share Alike Attribution 2.0 Generic

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