In order to determine the extent of the influence of the surviving princesses, we must initially try to get some idea of their ages. The first picture to show all six daughters alive is one in the so-called King's House, a series of private chambers which had been joined to the ceremonial palace by a bridge. Here, wall paintings show the king and queen seated on stools with their six daughters before them, the youngest, Sotepenre, is a babe in her mother's lap. Luckily, we can deduce the latest possible date of this scene because the name of the Aten in its earlier form.
The Aten, meaning literally 'sun disc', had originally been considered the day-time aspect, or role, played by the Middle Kingdom god Re-Herakhte. The full hieroglyphic title of the Aten was: 'Re-Herakhte, who rejoices in the horizon in his name of the light which is in the sun disc.'
An abbreviated version of this title was the glyph for Re-Horus, the falcon god, which is how the name of the Aten appears in the early years of Akhenaten's reign. From the year 9, however, Akhenaten decreed that his omnipotent god could no longer be represented in such a form, and instead could only be represented by a radiant disc or by the phonetically written word Aten – a reed followed by three other symbols one on top of the other.
As the accompanying inscriptions of the King's House illustration uses the earlier form of the god's name – i.e. the falcon glyph for the Aten, rather than the reed glyph – it must have been made before the year 9. In other words, all six daughters were living by the year 8. As she is a baby, Sotepenre cannot have been born much before the King's House was built around the year 7. This youngest daughter was therefore about eight by the time Nefertiti died around the year 15. Little Sotepenre also helps us work out the approximate age of the others.
In tombs of the high steward Huya and the harem overseer Meryre, reliefs show the royal family attending an event which is dated as the year 12. As Sotepenre is shown for the first time at an official occasion, we know that the princesses could participate in ceremonial events once they reach the age of five. Accordingly, as Ankhesenpaaten does not appear on the boundary stelae until in the year 6, but does in the year 8, she must have been around twelve or thirteen when her mother dies, and her younger sister Neferneferuaten-ta-sherit was around ten. The elder sister Meritaten already appears around the year 3 of Akhenaten's reign, officially accompanying her mother in reliefs at the Aten Temple at Karnak, so she must have been around seventeen or eighteen when Nefertiti died. Her three sisters being so young, all immediate influence must therefore have fallen to Meritaten.
Between the years 14 and 15 Meritaten is referred to in the Amarna Letters sent to Akhenaten by various correspondents, such as Burnaburiash II of Babylon and Abi-milki of Tyre. They call her by the affectionate nickname 'Mayati', and refer to her as 'the mistress of your house', implying that she assumed the duties of the 'Great Royal Wife' or 'Chief Queen'.
There is evidence that Meritaten may have been opposed in taking over from Nefertiti by Akhenaten's second wife Kiya, who seems to have enjoyed considerable influence. A toilet vessel from Amarna in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art and a calcite vase in the British Museum are inscribed with Kiya's full title. The text includes a rectangular panel containing the early names of the Aten, and the names and titles of Akhenaten, followed by three columns of glyphs reading: 'The wife and greatly beloved of the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Living in Truth, Lord of the Two Lands, Neferkheperure Wa'enre [Akhenaten's titles], the Goodly Child of the Living Aten, who shall be living for ever, Kiya.'
This formula, with one or two minor adjustments, is found whenever Kiya is referred to on her monuments, showing that she was far more than simply a member of Akhenaten's harem. Akhenaten had other wives, but they bear no such distinguishing titles. For example, a certain Ipy is simply called the 'Royal Ornament'. In fact, so important was Kiya that she had her own Maru, or 'viewing temple', discovered in the southern area of Amarna by the British archaeologist Leonard Woolley in 1921. Such temples, with their pools and gardens where the owner could sit and be rejuvenated in the sun's rays, were an exceptional privilege usually reserved for senior royalty like Nefertiti and the Queen Mother. Kiya even had a personal chapel near the entrance to the Great Temple.
There is also evidence that Kiya not only enjoyed far greater privileges than most pharaohs' secondary wives, but that her standing continued to grow. It comes from a series of decorated stone slabs found during a German excavation in 1939 at Hermopolis, near modern Ashmunein, a few kilometres down the Nile from Amarna. Called the Hermopolis Talatat (from an Arabic word), they are made from limestone which was finer and more compact than local stone. It was soon clear that they had originally come from buildings at Amarna and, about fifty years after the city was abandoned, had been ferried downstream to be used as foundation rubble in a temple built by Ramesses II. Dating from the later part of Akhenaten's reign, the talatat show Kiya functioning in an important capacity in the Great Temple itself and refer to her as the king's 'favourite'.
Meritaten clearly saw Kiya as a power rival. Kiya had obviously enjoyed Nefertiti's favour, but once the queen was gone, Meritaten had Kiya evicted from her Maru temple and appropriated it for herself. Inscriptions from the temple are found to have been changed to Meritaten's name, and Kiya's portraits are replaced with those of the princess. Kiya was still alive after Nefertiti's death but remained very much inferior to the princesses. One of the Hermopolis Talatat shows the royal family at a religious service, at which Akhenaten officiates at an altar. Nefertiti is absent, so it must be after her death, but the surviving daughters and Kiya are present. Kiya, however, is both behind, and on a lower level than the princesses, who are clearly of superior status.
From around the year 15, for the first time we find Meritaten accompanied by a husband – the enigmatic Smenkhkare. Various statues and reliefs, together with a scene on a box and a damaged box lid found in Tutankhamun's tomb, show them together late in Akhenaten's reign. Almost immediately Smenkhkare is elevated to co-regent, and bricks found stamped with his name at the royal apartments have suggested that a great hall was built especially for his coronation to the south of the palace.
No giant reliefs survive to commemorate the co-regency, but a number of smaller finds attest to it having occurred. In the early excavations of Amarna, Flinders Petrie found a small stone stela inscribed with two cartouches bearing Akhenaten and Smenkhkare's names, placed beside one another as coregents are shown in other reigns. During excavations of the Great Temple of Amarna in 1933, a sculptor's model of the two kings also came to light. Carved in sunk relief, the limestone tablet shows Akhenaten and an unnamed co-regent both wearing a pharaonic uraeus on their foreheads. Additional evidence of the co-regency are other minor artifacts, such as the Stela of Pase from Amarna, which appear to show Akhenaten and another king sitting side by side, although the pieces lack text identifying the pair.
From the mummy in Tomb 55 we can gather that Smenkhkare was about the same age as Meritaten, but where he came from is a complete mystery as he appears nowhere before this time. The customary line of succession from early in the New Kingdom was via the eldest daughter of the king's 'Chief Wife', which had often meant an incestuous marriage to secure the throne for the king's eldest son, although, as we have seen, this seems to have been abandoned for at least three generations. Akhenaten and Tuthmosis IV seem to have married foreigners, and Amonhotep III married the daughter of a courtier. As Akhenaten apparently had no legitimate son, whoever married Meritaten would thus become successor. It stands to reason, therefore, that Smenkhkare would have been her closest legitimate male relative.
As Smenkhkare's name is often found accompanied by the title Nefernefruaten, a designation that Nefertiti used and the name given to one of her daughters, it would seem that he was related to Nefertiti in some way – perhaps the son of her sister, Mutnodjme. Reliefs from the early tombs of Akhenaten's reign often show Mutnodjme among the royal entourage acting as Nefertiti's lady-in-waiting. She is desc
ribed as: 'The sister of the Chief Queen Neferneferuaten-Nefertiti, living for ever and ever, Mutnodjme.'
On a number of occasions, for example in reliefs in Ay's tomb, she appears with two small figures, whom some have taken to be attendant dwarfs, but could equally be two young sons, one perhaps being Smenkhkare. Some scholars have dismissed her as Smenkhkare's mother as she is pictured wearing a sidelock normally associated with children, which would seemingly make her too young to have a son who was around seventeen by the fifteenth year of Akhenaten's reign. However, there are examples of older women wearing such a sidelock in the immediate pre-Amarna period, which may indicate that it was an adult fashion for a while. Mutnodjme disappears from view as the reign wears on but reappears again about fourteen years after Akhenaten's reign, married to the general Horemheb to legitimate his claim to the throne. Here she bears the titles of 'Heiress' and 'Great Queen', so it would seem that through her the line of succession was deemed to have descended.
Within a couple of years of the co-regency with Smenkhkare, Akhenaten himself disappears from the scene. Of all the scraps of pottery and inscriptions found at Amarna, nothing bears a date later than year 17 of Akhenaten's reign. We know that this must be the last year of his reign as a docket from a honey jar found at Amarna bears the date 'Year 17', which has been partly expunged and 'Year l' written below it. This clearly demonstrates that Akhenaten has died and another pharaoh has taken over. However, this pharaoh is almost certainly Tutankhamun, as a docket from a wine jar from the same source reads, 'Year 1, wine from the estate of Smenkhkare, deceased'. The 'Year l' therefore has to refer to Tutankhamun. The question is, did Smenkhkare and Meritaten enjoy an independent reign? The probability is that they did. In the tomb of the harem overseer Meryre, Smenkhkare and Meritaten are shown in the accoutrements of reigning royalty rewarding the owner, while Akhenaten is nowhere to be seen. Likewise, a painted slab in the Berlin Museum, found at Amarna in the early 1900s, shows them alone as king and queen.
It would appear that in the brief period of their reign, Meritaten took drastic steps against her rival Kiya, from which she had been restrained while her father was still alive. Not only did she excise Kiya's name from inscriptions, but defaced her representations in the most spiteful way. On illustrations on blocks found at Hermopolis, and on fragments of the Great Temple reliefs, we see that the eyes have been gouged from Kiya's image. Akhenaten's second wife had clearly been disgraced, and possibly killed. As the last we hear of her is in the year 16, she may not have survived long after Akhenaten's death.
Significantly, Kiya is a crucial figure in the mystery of Tomb 55, for it seems to have been for her that the burial effects in the tomb were initially made. From the feminine gender of the inscriptions, the characteristic court lady's wig on the coffin, and the female heads on the Canopic jars, we know that the original owner was a woman. Furthermore, from the inscription on the footboard of the coffin we can tell she was of exalted rank. It is an intimate address that, by its context, can only have been to Akhenaten:
Utterance by [cartouche cut out], deceased: 'May I breathe the sweet breath that comes forth from thy mouth, may I behold thy beauty daily; my prayer is that I might hear thy sweet, breezelike voice, and my limbs be rejuvenated in life through love of thee! Mayest thou extend me thine arms bearing thy spirit, that I may receive it and live by it. Mayest thou call on my name for eternity, and it shall never cease from thy mouth, O my father [cartouche cut out] thou being [excised text] for ever and ever, living like the sun disc [excised text] the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, living on Truth, Lord of the Two Lands [cartouche cut out], thou beautiful child of the sun disc, who shall be here, living, living, for ever and ever [cut out; replaced with cartouche also cut out].
Although, at first glance, this inscription would seem to be made for a child of Akhenaten, as he is addressed as 'father', this was a common form of address used by Akhenaten's subjects, signifying that the king was their 'heavenly father'. All the same, the woman for whom the inscription was made is certainly close to the pharaoh, to have addressed him so intimately.
She was not, however, a 'Chief Queen'. The figures on both the coffin and Canopic jars show evidence of having had a uraeus added to the brow to make it suitable for the king for whom they were being adapted. The original female owner, therefore, had not been entitled to wear such a device, which rules out a 'Chief Queen' like Nefertiti or Meritaten who would have worn the royal serpent. Neither had the name of the original owner been contained in a cartouche, which again excludes a 'Chief Queen'. It all fits with a secondary queen like Kiya, however, who although not entitled to the uraeus or a cartouche, was close enough to the king to address him in an intimate manner.
When the German scholar Rolf Krauss succeeded in showing that the inscribed panels on the Canopic jars had been adapted to apply specifically to Akhenaten (see Chapter One), he also discovered that they had once contained Kiya's personal title. High-ranking Egyptians favoured the use of long titles, uniquely associating them with their king. Such a title had been on the Canopic jars and had been altered so that it applied only to Akhenaten. There had originally been a 'landscape' panel containing the early names of the Aten, together with the appellations of Akhenaten, followed by a 'portrait' panel to the right containing the name and epithets of the owner. The 'portrait' panel had been removed, but the surviving inscription in the 'landscape' panel formed a part of Kiya's unique title found elsewhere.
Closer analysis reveals that Kiya's remains had already been laid peacefully to rest in the burial effects, before her tomb was plundered to provide the trappings for the sacrilegious interment planned for Akhenaten. Although the coffin could have been prepared for Kiya at any time, the gold-sheathed footboard text would not usually be inscribed until her death. In fact, the inscription actually tells us that she is deceased. This conjecture is further supported by an inscription on the gold bands surrounding the coffin. Here a glyph for the word 'truth' was in a form of the squatting goddess Maat that was avoided after year 8 of Akhenaten's reign in favour of a phonetic spelling. This later spelling, however, was used in the prayer on the footboard and in the columns of inscriptions on the gold lining of the coffin lid. If the inscriptions had been made at the same time as the burial effects they would have been in the earlier form. The conclusion, therefore, is that the coffin was made in the early part of Akhenaten's reign but actually used for Kiya in the later years.
Her tomb having been plundered for her burial effects implies that Kiya had been specifically chosen as the person whose funerary items were intended to be used for Akhenaten's bizarre entombment. There must have been dozens of such funerary items lying in storage awaiting use by their owners upon their deaths. Why not commandeer any of these? Alternatively, why not simply make a coffin and Canopic jars specially for the purpose? For the perpetrators to have gone to such trouble to appropriate Kiya's coffin and Canopic jars means that the king's secondary wife was deliberately chosen to playa part in the macabre procedure. The only person we know of who had both the authority to disinter someone of Kiya's rank, and the apparent resentment of her to have done so, is Meritaten.
Indeed the state of the face mask on the coffin in Tomb 55 is a tell-tale clue which points to Meritaten. Because the addition of the uraeus to the forehead, we know that the face had been the likeness, not of the person it was adapted for, but of the original owner, Kiya. As her face was still on the Canopic jars, the removal of the mask was not intended to obscure Kiya's features, so must have been part of the macabre ritual. However, not all the face was torn away – one eye remained. What this was meant to signify is difficult to tell, but this is exactly the same peculiar manner in which Meritaten desecrated Kiya's statues – by chiselling out one of the eyes. As relief figures were always shown in profile, there was only one eye visible to excise.
If Meritaten had been responsible for planning the profane interment of Akhenaten, then she must at some point have turned against him. The
same is true of her husband: a number of small artefacts, such as ring-bezels and furniture-knobs, bearing Smenkhkare's name show that he ultimately dropped the title – 'Beloved of Akhenaten' – presumably to distance himself from the king. It seems unlikely that Meritaten and Smenkhkare actually overthrew Akhenaten; rather they chose to renounce him once he had died. However, it does not seem that the couple abandoned Atenism. On the contrary, they appeared to have embraced it with fanatical zeal, persecuting those who failed to convert.
Although Akhenaten abolished the Amun priesthood and established Atenism as the state religion, there is no evidence that he oppressed those who still revered the old gods. Outside Amarna, life seems to have gone on pretty much as usual, and shrines to the traditional deities continued to be erected privately at Thebes and elsewhere. Sometime before the abandonment of Amarna, however, the Temple of Amun at Karnak suffered frenzied desecration, and monuments to Amun-Re were destroyed throughout Thebes. His obelisks were toppled, his statues were smashed to pieces, and the tallest of buildings were scaled to eradicate inscriptions bearing his name. The god's name was even proscribed from being used in personal names such as Amonhotep, and it is this particular edict which enables us to date the time of the destruction to the late Amarna period.
A number of inscriptions concerning Amonhotep III still employ the Amon (i.e. Amun) element until the very last years of Akhenaten's reign – text on the shrine from Tomb 55, for instance. As Akhenaten himself commissioned the shrine to be made around the time of Tiye's death, it shows that the violent suppression of the Amun cult had not occurred by the year 14 when the queen died. As it occurred so late in his reign it seems highly unlikely that Akhenaten himself was responsible. By this time the king had apparently all but lost interest in the world. As we have seen, artisans were virtually ignoring the official artistic decrees, seemingly without reproach. There is absolutely nothing to suggest that Akhenaten was becoming more of a hardliner. On the contrary, someone who is contemplating extreme acts of repression would hardly have relinquished much of his power to a co-regent.
Atlantis and the Ten Plagues of Egypt: The Secret History Hidden in the Valley of the Kings Page 9