The Aten – Unravelling the Mystery of the Ancient Egyptian God

In the Aten Sequence Books, our not-so-noble hero Aten has persuaded the gullible Prince Amenophis that there is a new god in Egypt called Aten, who can only be worshipped through him.  The foolish prince is then persuaded to embark on a mission to clear all obstacles, including his own elder brother, out of his way of his becoming the next Pharaoh so he can impose his new religion on the Egyptians and thus allowing Aten access to the gold he needs stored in the vaults under the Temple of Karnak. But in Ancient Egypt who or what was the Aten and how was it worshipped?

Akhenaten worshipping the sun disc

The Aten was the god the ‘heretic’ Pharaoh Akhenaten singled out from the vast pantheon of Egyptian gods and goddesses to worship.  For the first time in Egypt’s long history, there was only one official deity; only one god who could be worshipped, a god who could only be approached through the Pharaoh himself. In the ‘Great Hymn to the Aten’, which many scholars believe Akhenaten wrote himself, the king extols his god as the creator of life, the source of all nourishment and abundance for every person, animal, and plant on the planet.

So why did he choose this particular god? The Aten came to prominence during the long reign of his father, the Pharaoh Amenophis III, so it was a religious concept which was already developing not something the young prince snatched out of thin air.  The Aten would have been discussed and worshipped as he was growing up and his father’s royal palace at Malkata was referred to in ancient times as ‘the Palace of the Dazzling Aten’.

During this reign the deity is often show with the body of a man with a falcon’s head. However, references to the Aten or sun disk did start appearing much earlier in Egyptian history than the 18^th dynasty.  As far back as the Middle Kingdom, there is a reference to this radiant deity in the famous ‘Story of Sinuhe’.  The Aten was depicted as a yellow or golden sun disk and sometimes the full moon was referred to as the ‘silver Aten’. The deity’s full name was ‘Ra-Horakhty who rejoices in the horizon, in his Name as the Light which is in the sun disc’.

When he first ascended the throne Akhenaten was known by his given name Pharaoh Amenophis IV, but as he gradually embraced his new beliefs he changed his names, shut down the temples of the old priests and started building a new capital city entirely dedicated to his new religion on the Nile at what is now known as Amarna. He declared he would move to his new city, named Akhetaten, or ‘Horizon of the Aten’, with his wife and daughters and once there would never leave his city again.  To mark the boundaries of this new capital he had huge boundary stelae carved into the cliffs.

As Akhenaten was building his new capital Akhetaten, he had the name of his god carved onto these boundary stelae marking the city limits.  Sometimes it was shortened to Ra-Horus-Aten or just the Aten. From this time forward, the deity was no longer depicted in human form, but always as the sun disc emanating rays of light culminating in little hands that offered life, health and prosperity to Akhenaten and his family.  This was not a god for the people, but a deity which showered its abundance and light on Pharaoh, who then became a conduit of this divine energy to his country and people.  So in a way, it was Akhenaten himself who was now to be worshipped and seen as a god.

This was nothing particularly new in Egyptian thinking, as the Pharaoh had always been regarded as a physical manifestation of the divine, the direct link between the people and their gods.  But before there were many, many gods and goddesses in Egypt that an ordinary person could choose to honour and most houses had their own little shrines and statues of their favourite deity.  With the arrival of the Aten all this was stripped away and carvings, statues and references to the traditional gods were torn down or erased.

This new era also completely changed worship in the temples.  Not only were the old gods gone, but the temples themselves were very different.  In a traditional Egyptian temple, there would have been outer courtyards open to the sun thronging with people, but as you moved closer and closer into the heart of the complex it would get darker and darker with fewer people having access.  Finally the shrine of the god would be reached.  A dark chamber of secrets, magic and ceremonies probably only visited by the High Priest, a few of his senior clergy and the Pharaoh and his queen.

The new Aten temples were vast courts totally open to the life-giving rays of the sun.  There were rows and rows of offering tables heaped with all kinds of costly foods, drink and cups filled with smoking incense.  In the so-called Long Temple at Amarna the Egyptologists found the remains of 920 mudbrick offerings tables in a grid to the south of the temple wall and have estimated there was as many as another 150 in the central stone-built sanctuary that was, in the new way, left open to the skies.  It would be nice to think that all this abundance of food, a sure sign of Pharaoh’s wealth and power, would have been distributed among the people after the religious ceremonies were over, but there is no evidence for this.  It is not even known if the offering food was cooked on site or taken away to be prepared for feasting at the palace or a more humble family’s dinner.  Or was it just left for the god, rotting away under the merciless heat of the Egyptian sun?

Another unusual feature of these new temples was that there was no cult statue of the deity, which had to be washed and dressed in fresh clothes every day.  Because the interlinking courtyards and the inner sanctuary were all open to the sky, the sun disc was worshiped directly, by tracking its daily progress from where it rose in the east and set in the west.  There were priests in the Aten temples, but Akhenaten himself presided over some of the worship; acting as a High Priest and leading the other worshippers in reciting or singing ‘The Great Hymn to Aten’ and other prayers. 

The royal ladies of Amarna played an unusually prominent part in this worship, and Akhenaten’s queen Nefertiti was usually shown the same size as her husband, accompanying him with their six daughters in all his activities.  One of the great honours that could be bestowed on these royal women was having a small, open cult shrine, known as a ‘sunshade’ or ‘kiosk’ dedicated to them.  One of the features of the Amarna period was a turning away from the stylised art and formal depictions of gods and people towards a more natural style of art showing beautiful scenes of trees, pools, animals and all the bounty nature had to offer.  These ‘sunshades’ were often set in beautiful, sunlit surroundings where there was pools containing fish and colourful plants and flowers.  They created an oasis of tranquillity, somewhere for the women to come where it was quiet and peaceful, a place for contemplation and prayer.  

But even here human conflict crept in.  In one of the larger known sites for the ‘sunshades’ called the Maru-Aten, the names and titles of one Amarna royal lady was erased and recarved with the names and titles of Akhenaten’s oldest daughter Princess Meritaten.  It used to be thought that it had been her mother Nefertiti’s name which had been removed, but now many Egyptologists believe that it was the name of one of Akhenaten’s other queens, Kiya, which had been struck from history.

For all its glittering brilliance, the cult of the sun disc and Akhenaten’s new capital city were to last for less than twenty years.  This self-imposed exile and concentration on religion rather than affairs of state had weakened the Egyptian empire. There is also some evidence that a plague which was sweeping through the Middle East at that time, reached the Egyptian court killing some of the female members of the royal family.  When Akhenaten died there were a few shadowy years were who his successor was is disputed, some scholars thinking it was a young king called Smenkhare and others that Queen Nefertiti seized the throne and ruled on her own. 

But a few years later, when the young boy king Tutankhamen came to the throne, the capital was moved back to Thebes, the temples and old gods were reinstated and the names of Akhenaten and his god were erased.  Unfortunately Tutankhamen was destined to die young and the glittering 18^th dynasty came to an end with the reign of Horemheb, who saw to it that any last traces of this religious experiment were destroyed forever.  Akhetaten had been hastily constructed of mudbrick and any stone which had been used was stripped and used elsewhere, so it swiftly fell into disrepair and crumbled.  The tombs which had been carved in the hillsides were left empty and no more offerings were made in the temples.

Akhenaten image David Holt , Jean-Pierre Dalbera Wikimedia Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 2.5 Generic

Sources:

Amarna Project - http://amarnaproject.com/pages/amarna_the_place/central_city/index.shtml

The Aten - Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aten

Ancient Egypt Online - http://www.ancientegyptonline.co.uk/amarnareligion.html

Are There Any More Undiscovered Royal Tombs in The Valley of the Kings?

Aten wants gold, more gold and more gold.  And then he has to work out how to make the fuel he desperately needs so he can get back to conquering the Universe with his Uncle Lucie.  While he tries to work out how to get into the massive treasure vaults beneath Karnak Temple, he sets up a little tomb robbing ring.  Aten’s goal is to find intact royals tombs brimming with gold treasure.  Finding an intact royal tomb in the Valley of the Kings is also the dream of many Egyptologists today.  But was the tomb of the boy king Tutankhamen the last big discovery that the Valley of the Kings will yield or are there more amazing finds just waiting to be unearthed?

The discovery of the tomb of a minor pharaoh from the end of the 18^th dynasty in 1922 by Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon rocked the world.  Never before had an almost intact pharaoh’s tomb been found in the Valley of the Kings, and this discovery gave us not only fabulous treasures but a great deal of valuable information on the end of the Amarna period. But is the boy king’s tomb the last great discovery to be made in the Royal Necropolis or are there more undisturbed tombs hidden in the cliffs and valley floor waiting to be found?

Excavation in the Valley of the Kings - November 2008

That there are many tombs yet to be unearthed in Egypt has been amply demonstrated over the last few weeks.  In Abydos, the sacred heart of Ancient Egypt, a huge quartzite sarcophagus discovered a year ago has been identified as belonging to an obscure pharaoh of the 13^th dynasty called Sobekhotep I,  leading to the discovery close by of the tomb of a previously unknown king.  Hieroglyphs painted on the tomb walls gave his name as Senebkay.  And just around the corner from the Valley of the Kings at el-Khokha, a beautifully painted tomb of a courtier from the Ramesside Period is being excavated.  The tomb belonged to the Chief Brewer of the Temple of Mut called Khonsu-em-heb and the exquisitely painted frescos show him and his wife Mutemheb feasting and making offerings to the gods. So could there possibly be more royal tombs waiting to be found in the Valley of the Kings?

The first burial in the arid, remote valley was a departure from tradition.  In earlier dynasties, pharaoh’s tombs had been built in plain sight as a sign of their power and prestige.  From the earliest mastaba tombs to the pyramids, these tombs were as large and lavish as the pharaoh’s treasury and length of his reign allowed.  Even as late as the 17^th dynasty, pharaohs were buried in small pyramids at Dra’ Abu el-Naga, a necropolis in the Theban hills. So why did a high court official called Ineni dig a rock cut tomb for his royal master, boasting ‘alone, no one seeing and no one hearing’?  Possibly because it was becoming obvious that most of these ostentatious, very visible tombs were being entered by tomb robbers, who stole the precious funerary treasure and ripped the pharaoh’s mummies apart looking for amulets and jewellery.

Valley of the Kings

But although it might have been possible to conceal the location of one royal tomb, as successive pharaoh’s carried on digging their tombs in the same valley, the site of the royal necropolis became well known and a workmen’s village was built at Deir-el Medina to house the men who dug and decorated these fabulous sepulchres.  To date sixty four tombs have been found in the Royal Valley, belonging to queens, royal children and favoured courtiers as well as the mighty pharaohs themselves.  So who is missing?  Which pharaoh’s tombs have not yet been found?  The two main contenders are Thutmosis II from the early 18^th dynasty and Ramesses VIII from the 20^th dynasty.  The mummy of Ramesses XI has also not been found and though a tomb was dug for him in the Valley of the Kings, there is no evidence he was actually buried in it. Most of the tombs of the queens from the 18^th dynasty have also not yet been located and there may also be smaller tombs of princes, princesses and royal officials still awaiting their turn to be discovered.

In 2007 Dr Zahi Hawass appointed an Egyptian team of archaeologists headed by Afifi Rohiem to start excavating in parts of the Royal Valley where he believed there might be a new tomb.  At the same time the Glen Dash Foundation for Archaeological Research undertook thorough ground-penetrating radar investigations of the cliffs and valley floor.  The Egyptologists worked between 2007 and 2010, starting with the area around the tomb of Merenptah.  Their excavations rediscovered some ancient graffiti first recorded by Jaroslav Czerny and the remains of some workmen’s huts, which have been carefully recorded.  Tantalisingly, one of the ancient graffito was written by an official called Userhat who said that he had created a burial for his father close by.

The Egyptian found two cuttings in the rock that could be tomb entrances, one where the rubble has been disturbed, suggesting that whatever is there has already been disturbed, and one where it had not. Could this be the entrance to an intact tomb?  These two new tomb entrances became known as KV64 and KV65.  The KV64 entrance was found close to Merenptah’s tomb and is Ramesside in appearance.  It was thought this could possibly be the entrance to the tomb of Pharaoh Ramesses VIII. The other tomb entrance was cut and in the style of the 18^th dynasty and Dr Hawass stated in a lecture that he thought this could be the tomb of an individual from the Amarna period and that some debris has been excavated that had the name of a previously unknown queen on it.

However, for some reason no further investigations of these tomb entrances were undertaken, possibly they were halted by the civil unrest that started during 2011. In January 2012 a team from the University of Basel in Switzerland stumbled across a new tomb in the valley completely by chance.  When they opened it they found it contained the undisturbed coffin and beautifully wrapped mummy of a temple singer called Nehmes Bastet dating from the 22^nd dynasty. The tomb, now officially designated as KV64, was not originally built for her but had been usurped from an earlier period. The inscriptions show that Nehmes Bastet was the daughter of the High Priest of Amun, so are there more burials from this family and period still awaiting discovery in the Valley?

So there is a strong chance there are still some major finds to be made in the Valley of the Kings. KV63 is now thought to have been more of a storage chamber for burials of the Amarna period, rather than a royal tomb.  Most of the burials of the royal ladies of this period have not yet been located and finding the tomb of one of the major figures, such as the iconic beauty Queen Nefertiti, would be very exciting and help to clarify what really happened during this shadowy part of Ancient Egyptian history.  The mystery tomb KV55 could be the tomb of the heretic Pharaoh Akhenaten or his ephemeral successor Smenkhare, so is either of these king’s tombs still concealed in the cliffs somewhere?

Western Branch of the Valley of the Kings

We also still do not know the complete family tree of the pharaoh’s or of their court officials, so there could be tombs to be discovered that belonged to queens, royal children, ladies of the harem or nobles we have never before encountered in Egyptian history.  Also all the tombs visited by tourists are in the eastern branch of the Valley of the Kings.  There is a western branch that contains the tombs of Amenophis III and Ay that is rarely visited and has not yet been thoroughly surveyed or excavated. But although a tomb stuffed full of golden treasure would captivate the media and the public the world over, any find, however small, adds to our knowledge of our ancient past and fills in another piece of the puzzle.

Sources: Wikipaedia, BBC News

What Happened to the Three Youngest Amarna Princesses?

The heretic Pharaoh Akhenaten and his beautiful wife Queen Nefertiti had six daughters, who were often shown with them on their monuments and in tomb decorations.  Before this time at the end of the 18^th dynasty it was rare for Pharaoh’s to be shown with their offspring or even alongside their royal wives, and there are probably many royal children who have not made it onto the pages of history from Ancient Egypt. But from these illustrations from Amarna it would appear that these little girls lived a privileged life of luxury and ease in the royal palace and also that they were loved and included in both the public and private lives of their parents.  But life expectancy was not very long in Ancient Egypt, even for the cosseted children of royalty, so what did happen to the three youngest Amarna princesses Neferneferuaten Tasherit, Neferneferure and Setepenre?

Amarna Princesses - Neferneferuaten and Neferneferure

What draws many people to the Amarna period of Ancient Egypt is the innovative, more realistic style of the art and statuary.  For the first time in Ancient Egypt’s long history the palaces were decorated with colourful scenes from nature, such as flying birds, fish in ponds, gambolling calves and plants.  The royal family were also shown in a more natural guise for the first time.  No longer were the Pharaoh and his Great Royal Wife shown in the perfect, formal poses of earlier reigns; they were drawn or carved with pot bellies and long, spindly limbs, doing the kind of things that ordinary families do, such as playing with the children and showing affection to one another. Some of the most charming scenes from this time depict the young Amarna princesses playing with each other, cuddling with their parents or even being naughty by poking a chariot horse with a stick.  But, as well as being attractive images, these carvings and wall paintings provide us with most of the evidence we have regarding the lives of these royal children.

Their royal father Akhenaten abandoned the traditional capital and religion of Egypt and built an entirely new city called Akhetaten, based on the worship of the Aten or sun disk, for his family and to be the principle royal administrative centre.  It is very likely that Neferneferuaten Tasherit (Beauty of the Beauties of Aten’ – Tasherit means ‘the younger one’ or ‘little’) was the first of the royal sisters to have been born in the new city, followed by Neferneferure (‘Most Beautiful One of Re’) shortly after and then the youngest princess, Setepenre (‘Chosen of Re’).  The very first image we have of them all dates to around year 9 and is a wall painting from the King’s House in Amarna. It shows the entire royal family relaxing, with Neferneferuaten Tasherit painted sitting with her sister Neferneferure on a cushion.  The fresco is very badly damaged unfortunately and all that is left of the picture of the youngest daughter, Setepenre, is her tiny hand.

The three youngest Amarna princesses are also shown in the decorations on the walls of the noble’s tombs at Amarna.  It is in these tombs that we see the last scenes that show Nefertiti surrounded by all six of her daughters.  In year 12 of Akhenaten a ‘Great Durbar’ was held at Amarna where foreign rulers and vassals came from all corners of the Empire to pay tribute and give offerings to the Pharaoh.  The three little princesses are shown with their elder sisters standing behind Akhenaten and Nefertiti as they receive tribute in the tombs of Meryre II and Huya, the Chief Steward of their grandmother Queen Tiye, and in one of the registers Neferneferure is shown holding a pet gazelle, which her youngest sister Setepenre leans forward to pet.  This ‘Great Durbar’ seems to be the nadir of Akhenaten’s reign, as after this glittering event things seem to start falling apart at Akhetaten and many members of the royal family slip away into the shadows of history.

There is evidence from the Amarna letters that a great plague was sweeping through the Middle East at that time and that unwittingly the coming together of so many people from different countries could have helped it to spread.  It is thought that the three youngest Amarna princesses may have been victims of whatever disease it was that was ravaging the population of Egypt.  The tiny Setepenre may have been the first to die, as there is no evidence of her after years 13-14.  Her name does appear on Wall C in the Royal Tomb, along with that of four of her sisters. She is also not shown on a wall in another chamber of the tomb that shows her parents and family mourning the death of her older sister Princess Meketaten.  No evidence of her burial has been found, although she was very likely interred in the Royal Tomb and, heartbreakingly, the little girl was probably not even six years old when she died.

Princess Neferneferure is also missing from the death scene of Meketaten in the royal tomb at Amarna, so may also have died by years 13-14.  However, it is important to remember that we do not know that much about the protocol surrounding royal burial ceremonies; these two princesses may simply have been too young to have been mourners in the scene.  However, Neferneferure’s name is plastered over on Wall C in another chamber in the tomb.  She could also have been buried in the Royal Tomb, although there is some evidence she could have been buried in another tomb at Amarna, Tomb 29, based on an inscription that was discovered on the handle of a pot that refers to the ‘inner (burial) chamber of Neferneferure’.  If she was indeed interred in this other tomb, it could be that she died after her father Akhenaten and the Royal Tomb was already sealed and could not be opened for another burial.

Akhenaten, Nefertiti and their daughters

Again we cannot be certain what happened to Neferneferuaten; when she died or what was the cause of her death.  She is shown on the walls of the royal tomb mourning the death of her elder sister Meketaten accompanied by Meritaten and Ankhesenpaaten, so was presumably still alive at this time, which was around year 14.  There has been speculation that Neferneferuaten could have been married to a foreign ruler, one of her father Pharaoh Akhenaten’s vassals, and sent abroad but this has never been proved and would have been highly unusual. Egyptian princesses were married within the royal family or to prominent courtiers, and not married off into foreign royal families as diplomatic bargaining pieces. There is also a theory that she could have been her father’s mysterious co-regent, a shadowy figure who may have been either male or female. However, it is thought that she died before Tutankhamun and her sister Ankhesenpaaten (Ankhesenamun) came to the throne, as there is no evidence of her during their reign that has so far come to light.

Perhaps we will never know what the ultimate fate of these three young Amarna princesses was, but the sands of Egypt still hold many secrets and new evidence may be found during future excavations. So hopefully there are artefacts out there still waiting to be found that might give us more clues and further glimpses into the extraordinary royal lives of these three little girls.

Image Amarna Princesses - Neferneferuaten and Neferneferure Wikimedia Commons Any Purpose

Image Akhenaten, Nefertiti and their daughters Wikimedia Commons Public Domain

In Search of the Historical Prince Dhutmose

The Aten Sequence Books are set in Ancient Egypt and although many of the characters are purely fictional, I have ‘borrowed’ some real historical characters and woven them into my stories.

One of these characters is Prince Dhutmose; Crown Prince and eldest son of Pharaoh Amenophis III.  In the books he is a young prince undergoing his military training in the Kap, a training school for the young boys of royal and noble blood.  At the beginning of the story line he is just a young prince having a good time hunting, racing his chariot, wrestling and having fun with his friends before Aten shows up and embroils him in his schemes to steal the gold from the vaults of the temple of Karnak.  In the second book, ‘Hall of the Golden Crocodiles’, we also meet Dhutmose’s beloved pet, the cat Ta-miu who, being a royal cat, can talk, do magic and is much more than she seems. So what can history tell us about the real Prince Dhutmose?

Sarcophagus of Prince Thutmose's cat Ta-miu

Although we do not know a great deal about the historical Prince Dhutmose, isn’t it amazing that we do know that just over 3,000 years ago a young prince loved his cat?

For all our knowledge of ancient civilisations, we rarely catch even the faintest whispers of the personal, intimate lives that these people once led.  Even for royalty, beyond the formal inscriptions that rulers used to trumpet their achievements or show their reverence to their gods, we usually know very little about the real characters beneath the glittering regalia and formality of court life.

But just occasionally we do get a small glimpse into these past lives and loves, and one of these rare glimpses comes from a young boy’s love for his cat. Prince Dhutmose was so fond of his cat that he had a fine limestone sarcophagus carved for her, had her body mummified and then carefully buried. The limestone sarcophagus is now on display in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and shows the cat sitting before an offering table heaped with goodies for the afterlife.  It seems that her owner wanted her to enjoy her time after death as much as she had appreciated being a cosseted royal pet in life.  We know from the inscriptions that she was called Ta-miu, which literally meant ‘she-cat’ and that her owner was Crown Prince Dhutmose, or Thutmose, the eldest son of the mighty Pharaoh Amenophis III and his great royal wife, Queen Tiye.

Living in the 21^st century, where Prince William and Prince Harry have practically every moment of their lives captured on film and the details of their day-to-day lives endlessly scrutinised and pored over, it may seem strange to us that back in Ancient Egypt it was actually very rare for there to be any mention of royal children or even their queens, on a Pharaoh’s monuments. What we do know about the Egyptian royal families over the thousands of years of Egyptian history tends to have been pieced together from titles and inscriptions found in tombs or on statues or funerary equipment. Even today there is much speculation about some of the relationships in the Egyptian royal family and how they fitted together. However, this started to change towards the end of the 18^th dynasty and Amenophis III had his wife Queen Tiye shown alongside him on statues and had the names and titles of his children carved onto some of his monuments.  However, it was still usually only the royal princesses who were mentioned and during the ensuing Amarna period the famous heretic Pharaoh Akhenaten and his beautiful wife Queen Nefertiti were often shown with their six daughters.

So the fact that we know that Prince Dhutmose even existed is a miracle, as he did not outlive his father and become Pharaoh.  Although we do not know many details of his life, he seems to have been born between years 16-19 of his father’s reign and have died young sometime between years 25-30.  His titles were listed on Ta-miu’s sarcophagus as ‘Crown Prince, Overseer of the Priests of Upper and Lower Egypt, High Priest of Ptah in Memphis and Sm-Priest (of Ptah)’, so he could well have spent much of his short life in Egypt’s ancient capital Memphis.  As he was young, we also do not know whether these titles were purely honorary or whether he did undertake priestly duties in the temple of Ptah.  However, there is evidence that he officiated at the burial of one of the first Apis bulls at Saqqara, the large royal necropolis over on the west bank of the Nile from Memphis.  He may also have had connections to the military as an ivory whip found in the tomb of the boy king Tutankhamun is inscribed with the titles ‘The King’s son, the troop commander, Thutmose, repeating of births’, although again we cannot really be sure that the whip’s owner was our Dhutmose and not another royal prince with the same name.

How Prince Dhutmose died or his exact age at death is unknown, but his demise paved the way for the emergence of his younger brother Prince Amenophis onto the political scene.  It is interesting to speculate what would have happened if the young prince had lived and had succeeded to his father’s throne.  Would he have led Egypt away from the worship of Amen and the traditional gods as his brother was to do, or did he share Akhenaten’s beliefs in the pre-eminence of the Aten?  Prince Dhutmose’s tomb has never been discovered, but there is a mummy that was discovered in the KV35 cache in the tomb of Amenophis II that has been identified by some as his remains, although others think that it may be Prince Webensenu, a son of Amenophis II, as some of his canopic jars were also found in the tomb.  The mummy is of a young boy of around 11 years of age, who still wears the sidelock of youth, and his identification as Prince Dhutmose comes from the proximity of the remains to another mummy known as the ‘elder lady’ who has been identified through DNA analysis as being Queen Tiye, his mother.

Maybe there is more evidence of Prince Dhutmose still to be excavated from beneath the shifting sands off Egypt and we will be able to piece together some more of the details of his life?  Maybe even his tomb is still out there somewhere in the hills of Thebes or in the necropolis of Saqqara waiting to be found?  But the one thing we do know is that the young prince dearly loved his cat.


Sarcophagus of Prince Thutmose's cat Ta-miu image, Larazoni Wikimedia Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic

Nefertiti – Where Did She Come From and Where Did She Go?

When Aten gets stuck on Earth, he goes to Ancient Egypt at the beginning of the Amarna period so that he can steal the gold kept in the vaults of the great temple of Amen at Karnak. He manages to drag most of the Egyptian royal family into his adventures and this includes possibly the most beautiful queen to ever reign in Egypt, Nefertiti.  Although in the Aten Sequence books Nefertiti’s exploits are all fictional, there is a real mystery surrounding the historical queen as her origins are shadowy and we don’t know how or when she died. So who was this charismatic, glamorous Egyptian queen, whose name was ‘a beautiful woman has come’?  Where did she come from and what happened to her?

Queen Nefertiti

There are many theories about the origins of Nefertiti.  She is first documented historically after the accession to the throne of her husband Amenophis IV, who later became known as Akhenaten.  She was his Great Royal Wife, and unlike earlier Egyptian consorts, who were shadowy figures, was depicted on temple and tomb walls and in statuary in equal size to her husband.  She is also shown engaging in some unusual activities for a queen, such as driving her own chariot and even smiting the enemies of Egypt, imagery that is normally reserved for kings.  The precedent had been set in the earlier reign of her husband’s father Amenophis III, when his Great Royal Wife Tiye was given prominence on many of his monuments. Also unusual in Egyptian art, were the images of the royal couple kissing and embracing and showing affection to their daughters.  Either they really were a devoted couple in love; or that putting emphasis on or depicting the love and closeness of the royal family was important in some way to the new cult of the Aten.

It is very unlikely that Nefertiti was a daughter of Amenophis III, as her titles do not include ‘King’s Daughter’, ‘King’s Daughter Whom He Loves’ or ‘King’s Daughter of His Body’.  She is referred to as ‘Heiress’, ‘Lady of the Two Lands’, ‘Mistress of Upper and Lower Egypt’ and ‘Great Royal Wife’, but none of these titles imply in any way that she came from a royal background.

It has been postulated that Nefertiti was a foreign princess; sent from the court of either the Hittites or the Mitanni to be married to pharaoh and cement alliances between the two countries.  However, there is no evidence to either support this or refute it.   Several princesses from foreign courts are on record as arriving in the harem of Amenophis III.  Tadukhipa, the daughter of Tushratta King of Mitanni arrived at court in Year 36, and has been identified both with Nefertiti and a lesser wife of Akhenaten called Kiya.

If Nefertiti was, indeed, of Egyptian descent; then who were her parents?  Her only known relative is her sister, or half-sister, Mutnodjmet, whose name means ‘Sweet One of Mut’.  She is referred to in inscriptions in tombs at Amarna as ‘sister of the King’s Great Wife, Neferneferuaten-Nefertiti’ and is often portrayed with the elder three of Nefertiti’s own daughters. Mutnodjmet is also frequently depicted being accompanied by two dwarfs.  She is believed to have been a daughter of Ay and Tey, as she features prominently in their tomb at Amarna

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Ay was a prominent courtier of Akhenaten’s, holding the title ‘Overseer of All the Horses of His Majesty’.  He is thought to have been the son of Yuya and Thuya,who originated from the regional town of Akhmin, therefore making him a brother to Tiye, the Great Royal Wife of Amenophis III.  Therefore, if Ay was also the father of Nefertiti, this would explain how she was close enough to the Royal Family to marry one of the princes.  However, there is no indication that Ay’s wife Tey was Nefertiti’s birth mother, as nowhere does she claim the title of Queen’s mother, only that of nurse.  Neither does Ay claim the title of ‘Queen’s Father’; but he did claim the title ‘God’s Father’ which had been held by his father Yuya before him.  Yuya was a fairly uncommon name in Ancient Egypt, which has led to a belief that he, too, was of foreign origin.

Nefertiti was influential in Akhenaten’s breaking away from the old god’s of Egypt and the adopting of the worship of the Aten.  By year 5, Amenophis IV had changed his name to Akhenaten and by Year 7 the royal couple with their daughters had moved to the new capital they had built at Akhetaten, modern day Amarna.  The couple had six daughters, Meritaten, Meketaten, Ankhesenpaaten, Neferneferuaten, Neferneferure and Setepenre.  There is no evidence that they had any sons; but Amenophis III in the previous reign had never mentioned any of his sons on his monuments, so there could have been princes that we have no evidence for.  Amenophis III also paved the way to the prominence of the Amarna princesses on their father’s monuments, as he portrayed his daughter’s with their names and titles on his statues and temples.  Indeed, several of them were also given the title ‘King’s Wife’, indicating that they were married to their father, although we do not know whether these marriages were actual or purely symbolic.

The cracks seem to have started appearing at Akhetaten around Year 12.  Princess Meketaten appears to have died at that time.  There are theories that she died in childbirth, or that she died of a plague that was sweeping through the Middle East during this period.  The two younger princesses’, Neferneferure and Setepenre also seem to disappear from the records around that time, also possibly victims of the plague.

Nefertiti herself disappears from history around Year 14 of her husband’s reign.  The question is did she die, did she fall from grace in some way, or did she change her name and rule briefly as co-regent and as pharaoh after her husband’s death?  There are no historical records of her death and there is no evidence of her being buried in the royal tomb at Amarna, although some jewellery bearing her cartouche was discovered outside.

Royal Chariot at Amarna

 

In the tomb of Amenophis II in the Valley of the Kings, three mummies were found in a side chamber.  One of these, known as the ‘Younger Woman’ was put forward as being the mummy of Nefertiti.  The style of mummification points to the late 18^th dynasty, there was a distinctive wig in the ‘Nubian’ style known to be worn by Nefertiti found nearby, the mummy has double piercing in her ears as Nefertiti is depicted as having, the lower half of the face is mutilated, and a snapped off arm in the bent position reserved for royal women of the period was believed to have belonged to the body.  However, other women of the royal court are depicted wearing similar wigs and with double pierced ears.  It was believed that the mutilation of the face was a deliberate act to destroy the identity of the mummy after embalming had taken place, as an act of vengeance against the wife of the ‘heretic’ king.

 

However, it has been argued that if the wound had been inflicted post-embalming there would be fragments of bone and dried flesh in it.  Indeed, it was pointed out that there were very few pieces of the relevant bones found in the sinus cavity and therefore it was most likely that the wound was inflicted before death.  It was also found that the bent arm did not actually belong to the mummy; but it was rather a straight arm also found in the vicinity that was the correct one.  However, when the DNA of the ‘Younger Woman’ mummy was analysed during the ‘Tutankhamun Family Project’ in 2010, it was shown that this royal lady was, in fact, one of the daughters of Amenophis III and Queen Tiye and the mother of the famous boy king Tutankhamun. Which daughter is not certain, but although Amenophis III married several of his daughters, there is no evidence that he married either Nebetah or Baketaten, so they could have married their brother and given birth to Tutankhamun.

So the mummy of the beautiful Queen Nefertiti has still not been found. Positively identifying her remains may have given us valuable evidence about how she was related to the royal family, her health during her life and, possibly. give us the cause of her death.  So what was her eventual fate?  The ‘fall from grace’ theory comes from the fact that some cartouches and titles of Nefertiti were thought to have been removed from monuments and replaced by those of her daughter Meritaten’s.  It is now believed, however, that it was one of Akhenaten’s other queens, Kiya, whose name and titles were replaced.

Nefertiti as an older woman

The theory that seems to be gaining popularity is the one that Nefertiti lived on for several years under a different name, either as a Co-Regent with Akhenaten or as pharaoh on her own.  It is believed by some that she first changed her name to Ankhkheperure Neferneferuaten as Co-regent and then to Ankhkheperure Smenkhare, as she ruled briefly alone.  Some of the evidence for this comes from the Co-Regency Stela in the Petrie Museum in London, which depicts Akhenaten, Nefertiti and Meritaten.  At some time later Nefertiti’s name was chiselled out and replaced with Ankhkheperure Neferneferuaten, and Meritaten’s replaced with that of her sister Ankhesenpaaten.  The two names have also been associated with the ephemeral pharaoh Smenkhare, who is thought to have ruled for approximately three years after the death of Akhenaten, and who was believed to be married to the royal couple’s eldest daughter Meritaten.  It has been suggested that Nefertiti assumed the crown as Smenkhare, and that Meritaten acted as her queen consort after the death of Akhenaten.

It may be that we will never really know what happened in those shadowy years at the court at Akhetaten.  Is the truth still buried under the shifting sands of Egypt, or has all the evidence been lost forever?  There is undoubtedly a lot still to be found, and new discoveries, such as the new tomb KV 63 in the Valley of the Kings, will hopefully fill in some of the missing details of the this fascinating period in Egypt’s ancient past.


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Queen Nefertiti image Wikimedia Commons Public Domain
Older Nefertiti image Wikimedia Commons Public Domain
Amarna Chariot Image Kurohito Wikimedia Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 3.0 Unported