Nefertiti

by Joyce Tyldesley

  The suggestion that Tiy and Yuya were blue-eyed blondes can be dismissed at once; the blue eyes were the unfortunate result of a modern misinterpretation of an ancient portrait. The idea that Tiy may have been of Nubian or Central African origin is worthy of more serious consideration as Tiy does appear, on some of her sculptures, to have typical Nubian features, with a broad nose and full lips. The famous wooden head recovered from Gurob actually shows Tiy as black (Plate 3); this is, however, carved from a dark wood and is counterbalanced by other representations which depict Tiy as white. Added to this evidence is a sudden vogue for short curly Nubian-style wigs among the ladies of the court, and the rising importance of the queen, which some have linked to the more matriarchal nature of the Nubian royal family. Against this theory is the undisputed fact that Egyptian sculptures were never intended to be exact likenesses; they conveyed the essence of the person rather than his or her appearance, and a lady with a light-brown skin could be painted as white (living), or black or green (deceased).

  In fact, the remarkably well-preserved mummified bodies of Yuya and Thuyu (Plates 6, 8) do not show the Central African appearance which has been assigned to Tiy and, while Yuya has been interpreted as having an unusual, almost European, physiognomy, Thuyu is generally regarded as a typical Egyptian woman. There is no reason to view Tiy as anything other than an Egyptian although it remains possible that her father may have been of (unspecified) foreign descent. Egypt, a corridor linking Africa to the Near East, had always been racially well-mixed and most families would have contained their quota of lighter- and darker-skinned members. The preoccupation with ‘colour’ and the idea of ‘race’ cutting across national boundaries is a very modern one. The Egyptians themselves drew a simple distinction between the people of Kmt who spoke Egyptian and followed Egyptian customs, and the foreigners who did not.14

  Yuya and Thuyu lived to a good old age, eventually receiving the ultimate accolade of a double burial in the Valley of the Kings, the graveyard normally reserved for the tombs of the pharaohs. Although their tomb, now numbered as KV 46, was robbed soon after it was sealed and their mummy wrappings were disturbed by the thieves, the two white-haired bodies remained encased in their nests of wooden coffins until 1905, when their tomb was rediscovered by an American expedition led by Theodore M. Davis. Davis has described the opening of the tomb, apparently a highly dramatic and almost fatal occasion, in an account which perhaps owes more to dramatic licence than to historical accuracy. Davis was accompanied on this momentous occasion by Arthur Weigall, acting Chief Inspector for the region, and Gaston Maspero, Director General of Cairo Museum. When opened, the tomb proved confusing, very dark and very hot, lit only by the candles carried by the archaeologists. The eager explorers were forced to descend a steep passageway and then scramble through the small hole made by the robbers in the doorway which blocked the burial chamber. Maspero, the stoutest member of the party, could only enter the chamber after much pushing and shoving from his colleagues. Once inside, however, it was Maspero who, bending over the gilded coffin, first read the name of the deceased as ‘Yuya’. This gave Davis a great thrill:

  Naturally excited by the announcement, and blinded by the glare of the candles, I involuntarily advanced them very near the coffin, whereupon Monsieur Maspero cried out, ‘Be careful!’ and pulled my hand back. In a moment we realized that, had my candles touched the bitumen, which I came dangerously near doing, the coffin would have been in a blaze. As the entire contents of the tomb were inflammable, and directly opposite the coffin was a corridor leading to the open air and making a draught, we undoubtedly should have lost our lives…15

  The expedition beat a hasty retreat and returned some time later, having rigged up an electric light. They found that Yuya and Thuyu had been buried with a magnificent collection of goods for use in the Field of Reeds, including two Osiris beds of growing corn16 and a full-sized chariot suitable for a former ‘Overseer of the King’s Horses’. Although Maspero offered him a share of the treasure Davis rightly felt that such an important collection should not be split up and, although some items eventually made their way to the Metropolitan Museum, New York, most of the contents of the tomb are now housed in Cairo Museum.

  Amenhotep III may have made an unconventional choice of bride, but his selection was a wise one. Tiy was to prove not only a fertile queen, but an astute woman of great political ability, well able to play an active part in her husband’s reign. Almost immediately she became a force to be reckoned with; a powerful and influential figure with a high public profile and a string of impressive titles: ‘King’s Great Wife… The Heiress, greatly praised, Mistress of All Lands who cleaves unto the King… Mistress of Upper and Lower Egypt, Lady of the Two Lands’. Mutemwia was quickly relegated to the background as Tiy became Egypt’s first lady.

  Although strong queens had been a feature of the earlier 18th Dynasty, Tiy’s immediate predecessors had been remote figures of little political importance. Tradition dictated that the queen, or rather the ‘King’s Great Wife’, for there was no word for queen in Egyptian, should remain in the background, supporting her husband as and when required. The absence of the specific title ‘Queen’ both reflects the general shortage of kinship terms within Egypt and reinforces the overwhelming importance of the king. Only at times of dynastic crisis, usually following the premature death of a king, did the queen step forward. Tiy, however, soon abandoned the customary queenly reticence. She became the first consort to be regularly depicted beside her husband and the first queen whose name was consistently linked with that of the king on both official inscriptions and more private objects. A colossal statue designed for inclusion in Amenhotep’s mortuary temple even shows Tiy at the same scale as her husband, an important development in a culture where size really did matter because size was directly equated with status.

  Her religious profile rose equally high, and Tiy was allowed an increasingly prominent role in the rituals of her husband’s reign. The queens of Egypt had traditionally been associated with the ancient goddess Hathor, who herself could appear as a royal wife and mother, and the features and actions of the two had often been blurred together so that the queen could appear as the living representative of Hathor on earth. Hathor, the cow-headed goddess of love, motherhood and drunkenness, was allied to the solar cults through her roles as the daughter of Re and the mother of the solar child, and was the alter ego of the fierce lion-headed goddess of war Sekhmet. Tiy became the first queen to adopt Hathor’s cow horns and sun disc in her formal head-dress, and the first queen to be consistently associated with the use of the sistrum, a religious rattle whose handle usually featured Hathor’s head. The sistrum was used to provide the music which would soothe the gods during worship. Its inclusion as part of the iconography of queenship emphasizes Tiy’s new dual role of queen-priestess.17

  At the same time Tiy became closely identified with Maat, daughter of Re and personification of truth, who, in an ideal world, would be the constant companion of the king. In the Theban tomb of the Queen’s steward Kheruef (TT 192), Tiy and Hathor accompany the seated Amenhotep III. Tiy is here taking the role of Maat, and indeed is specifically described as ‘The Principal Wife of the King, beloved of him, Tiy, may she live. It is like Maat following Re that she is in the following of Your Majesty [Amenhotep III].’18 In the contemporary tomb of Ramose (TT 55), where we see Amenhotep IV sitting on a throne with Maat beside him, Maat has been given Tiy’s features.

  Towards the end of his reign Amenhotep established a cult to a deified form of himself, ‘Amenhotep, Lord of Nubia’. Tiy, as consort of the semi-divine king, developed her own divinity until a temple was dedicated to her at Sedeinga in Nubia, the complement of her husband’s fortified temple at nearby Soleb. Here Tiy appears in the guise of Hathor-Tefnut, ‘Great of Fearsomeness’, and she is seen in the form of a striding sphinx stalking across the tops of the temple pillars. This is not our only representation of Tiy as a sphinx. A carnelian bracelet plaque now held i
n the Metropolitan Museum, New York, shows Tiy as a winged sphinx holding her husband’s cartouche in her human arms, while in the tomb of Kheruef she assumes the role of defender of Egypt as a sphinx trampling underfoot two bound female prisoners. Although the queen-sphinx was by no means an unusual symbol in 18th Dynasty art, such sphinxes had hitherto been essentially passive. Now we see Tiy, as she dominates the enemies of Egypt, appropriating a role formerly reserved for the king. The origins of the queen-sphinx motif are obscure, although it is generally agreed that she is connected with the solar deities as a daughter of the sun god. Some experts identify the queen-sphinx with Hathor in the form Sekhmet, while others have suggested that she may be linked to Tefnut, daughter of the creator god.

  Convention dictated that husbands should love their wives, and Egyptian kings always took care to be seen to be behaving in a conventional manner. Nevertheless, the pride which Amenhotep obviously took in his bride, the unprecedented prominence which he allowed her and his habit of linking her name to his on all possible occasions, must be taken as a sign that Amenhotep felt a deep affection for Tiy. Seldom are we able to detect such a genuine emotion amid the conventions and calculated formulae of Egyptian monuments.

  Tiy was not – to modern eyes at least – a great beauty. Her image, preserved in sculpture and painting, shows a determined-looking lady with a triangular-shaped face and the heavy-lidded almond-shaped eyes typical of the art of her time. Her face is often dominated by the long, heavy wig which dwarfs her features. Tiy rarely smiles, and her mouth frequently has a decided downward cast which gives her a dissatisfied expression. Beauty is, however, in the eye of the beholder, and at least one observer has seen in Tiy’s portraits ‘a face of pure Egyptian type, youthful and sweet, with a slightly projecting chin’.19 Others have sensed the power behind the mask, noticing ‘a realistic interpretation of imperious royal dignity’,20 and interpreting Tiy as a ruthless and determined woman, initially pretty but growing increasingly ‘pinched and shrewish’.21

  Although Tiy was the beloved of Amenhotep III, she was by no means his only beloved. The kings of the New Kingdom were polygamous, maintaining large harems which included their numerous wives, sisters and aunts plus a multitude of children and the servants and administrators who looked after them. The royal harem was housed in one or more permanent harem-palaces, which the king visited as he travelled between the royal residences which were dotted up and down the Nile. The harem of Amenhotep III, as befitted the ruler of a vast empire, was enormous, and throughout his reign the king took a keen interest in increasing its numbers so that by his death it housed well over 1,000 women. There was no disgrace in being a secondary or minor wife – indeed it was an honour to be selected for the king – but with one husband among so many it could never be a full-time occupation. In the secluded seraglios of the Ottoman Empire the women idled away their days in preparing themselves for a royal visit that might never come. In more down-to-earth Egypt the ladies of the harem were semi-independent, receiving an income from the palace and from their own estates, but also running a highly profitable textile business supervising the women who wove the linen cloth which Egypt consumed in such great quantities in her funerary rites.

  The majority of the royal women were Egyptian ladies who provided the king with pleasure, status, and doubtless many children, but who had no political or ritual importance. Their names go unrecorded, and their children are ignored in the royal histories. Occasionally a harem lady would have the great good fortune to give birth to a future king. She would then be elevated to the status of ‘King’s Mother’ and enjoy national prominence during her son’s reign. This was, however, exceptional, as it depended upon the failure of the queen consort to produce a surviving male heir, and the ability of the mother to promote the cause of her own son.

  Included among the women of the harem were a number of foreigners. Some were girls of lowly birth, sent as tribute or booty to the Egyptian court, while others were the daughters and sisters of minor rulers bound by oath of allegiance to Amenhotep. These vassals could not resist the demands of the ‘father’ who controlled them, and sent their daughters as brides – and perhaps hostages – as and when required. A few privileged royal brides were the daughters or sisters of rulers of importance who could confidently address the mighty king of Egypt as ‘brother’. We know that Amenhotep contracted several of these diplomatic unions and was married to at least two princesses from Mitanni, two princesses from Syria, two princesses from Babylon and a princess from the Anatolian state of Arzawa. This trade in royal brides was strictly one-way traffic: Amenhotep demanded and received his foreign wives, but when Kadashman-Enlil of Babylon requested an Egyptian princess, Amenhotep turned him down with a flat refusal, even though Kadashman-Enlil’s own sister was already a bride in the Egyptian harem. Amenhotep’s original letter on this subject is unfortunately lost, but the Babylonian’s indignant reply, quoting Amenhotep’s words, was preserved in the royal archives:

  … When I wrote to you about marrying your daughter you wrote to me saying ‘From time immemorial no daughter of the king of Egypt has been given in marriage to anyone.’ Why do you say this? You are the king and you may do as you please. If you were to give a daughter, who would say anything about it?22

  Amenhotep stood firm. As ruler of the dominant world power he had no reason to change his mind. Kadashman-Enlil, constantly threatened by the volatile political situation outside the stability of the Egyptian empire, could not afford to be offended. He needed a powerful big brother. He therefore took steps to assure himself that his Egyptian sister was still alive and well. ‘You are now asking for my daughter’s hand in marriage, but my sister whom my father gave to you is already there with you, although no one has seen her or knows whether she is alive or dead’,23 and then sent his daughter to join her aunt.

  The diplomatic marriages were celebrated as a means of linking two mighty rulers rather than two mighty states. The bond was always a highly personal one between the bridegroom and his father-in-law, and should either party die a new union would be necessary. Thus, although Amenhotep was already married to a Babylonian princess, the daughter of King Kurigalzu, the accession of Kurigalzu’s son Kadashman-Enlil had to be marked by marriage with one of the new king’s daughters.

  Negotiations with Mitanni followed a similar pattern. Tuthmosis IV had married the daughter of Artatama I but this link was severed by the death of the two kings. Therefore, in the tenth year of his reign Amenhotep III married Gilukhepa, the daughter of Shuttarna, king of Mitanni, and a scarab was issued to commemorate the arrival of the bride and her retinue:

  Year 10… The King of Upper and Lower Egypt, the Lord of Ritual, Nebmaatre chosen of Re, Son of Re, Amenhotep ruler of Thebes, and the king’s principal wife Tiy, may she live… The wonders that were brought to his majesty were the daughter of Shuttarna, King of Mitanni, Gilukhepa, and the chief women of her entourage, totalling three hundred and seventeen women.24

  We have to wonder how happy the 317 women of Gilukhepa’s entourage would have been to accompany their mistress into effective exile in a distant land.

  Several years later Shuttarna died and, after a struggle during which his elder son was assassinated, his younger son, Tushratta, brother of Gilukhepa, took the throne. The now elderly Amenhotep III immediately opened negotiations for the hand of Tadukhepa, daughter of Tushratta. The two kings exchanged magnificent gifts, Amenhotep supplying a bride-price ‘beyond measure, covering all the earth and reaching to the heavens’25 and Tushratta providing an extensive dowry which included a chariot, four swift horses, and a variety of expensive household and personal items including linen garments, shoes, a golden bread shovel and even an inlaid lapis-lazuli fly-whisk.26 Eventually, all negotiations complete, Tadukhepa and her retinue followed her aunt to Egypt.

  Once the foreign princesses arrived in Egypt, they and their retinues were absorbed into the harem and to all intents and purposes disappeared. Although their families never forgot
their Egyptian womenfolk – Tushratta was punctilious in remembering his sister and his daughter in his correspondence, on one occasion sending Gilukhepa a greeting gift of golden trinkets including toggle pins, earrings, a finger ring and a phial of perfumed oil27 – they played a peripheral role in the everyday life of the royal family. The queen consort led a very different, and far more public, life. Although Tiy had her own quarters in the harem, she also had a place at court. She owned property in her own right, and derived a good income from her estates which were administered by her stewards and worked by her servants. Most importantly, Tiy, as queen, was at the centre of royal family life. It was the queen, the king and their young children, together with the king’s mother, who formed the true royal family.

  Tiy bore her husband at least six children: two sons, Tuthmosis and Amenhotep, named after their grandfather and father respectively, and four daughters, Sitamen (Daughter of Amen), Henut-Taneb (Mistress of All Lands), Isis (the name of a goddess which literally means ‘throne’) and Nebetah (Lady of the Palace). Princess Sitamen, almost certainly the eldest daughter, was her father’s favourite and as such was accorded an unusually prominent position within the royal family until, at around Year 31, Sitamen received the ultimate promotion becoming a royal wife alongside her mother. Sitamen’s affairs were controlled by the great Amenhotep son of Hapu who held the post of ‘High-Steward of the Princess Sitamen’. She had her own palace, her own estates, and her own furniture, some of which was included among the grave goods within her maternal grandparents’ tomb. A scene on the back of an ornate chair recovered from this tomb shows Sitamen, ‘the Eldest Daughter of the King, whom he loves’, sitting to receive an offering of a golden necklace proffered by a servant.28 Sitamen is dressed in a long skirt and an elaborate collar. On her head she wears a short wig and an intricate crown of lotus blossom but the double uraeus (or cobra) at her brow has been replaced by a pair of gazelle heads whose significance is not now apparent but which may be intended to designate a subordinate or minor queen. In her hands she holds the sistrum and menit beads which associate her with the cult of Hathor. Eventually Sitamen received the high accolade of ‘Great King’s Wife’, although we can see from contemporary illustrations that she never took precedence over her mother.