Ancient Near Eastern History and Culture by William H. Stiebing Jr. & Susan N. Helft

Author:William H. Stiebing Jr. & Susan N. Helft [Stiebing Jr., William H.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781138082403
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2017-09-07T06:00:00+00:00

Debating the Evidence: The Revolution’s Denouement

Our knowledge of the last five years of Akhenaton’s reign is even more confused and uncertain than it is for the rest of the Amarna Period. That there was a coregency during Akhenaton’s last one to three years on the throne is almost certain. A stele depicts Akhenaton seated beside a second king, but with a loving pose. Unfortunately, the names of the two kings had not yet been added when work on it ceased. Other inscriptions provide the names of two kings who seem to have been coregents with Akhenaton (Murnane 1995: 205–210). One king is named Ankhkheperure Smenkhkare (“Kheperure [a shortened form of Akhenaton’s praenomen] Lives,” “Vigorous is the Ka of Re”). The other is designated Ankhkheperure Neferneferuaton (“Kheperure Lives,” “Beautiful [or Perfect] Indeed is the Beauty [or Perfection] of the Aton”). It was once widely assumed that Ankhkheperure Smenkhkare and Ankhkheperure Neferneferuaton were the same person—that for some reason Smenkhkare, a possible son or younger brother of Akhenaton, had changed his name to Neferneferuaton during his reign. However, there are several lines of evidence that Neferneferuaton was a woman, and probably Nefertiti.

For one thing, the name “Neferneferuaton” had previously been part of Nefertiti’s name. King Neferneferuaton also used Nefertiti’s epithet “Beloved of Waenre (Akhenaton)” following her name, sometimes with a feminine ending. Furthermore, partially erased inscriptions of Neferneferuaton inside coffin-shaped canopic containers reused for Tutankhamun contained the epithet “effective for her husband.” These inscriptions prove that Neferneferuaton was a woman (and the king’s wife) (Gabolde 1998: 153–157; Dodson and Hilton 2004: 285, note 111; Dodson 2009c: 36). While, none of these arguments are conclusive, some Egyptologists have reasoned that King Neferneferuaton was actually Nefertiti after Akhenaton made her his coregent in the latter part of his reign (Harris 1973, 1974; Samson 1977, 1978; Reeves 2001: 162–173). This would explain why Nefertiti disappeared from most Amarna records after about the thirteenth year of the king.8

Even so, there are good reasons to doubt Nefertiti’s status as a ruling pharaoh. A new inscription found in 2012 CE names Nefertiti as the King’s Chief Wife in Akhenaton’s sixteenth regnal year (Perre 2013, 2014; Dodson 2014: 133). Surely she would have been referred to with the titles of the king had she been coregent at that time. She is also never given pharaonic titles in later inscriptions describing her children’s parentage. Likewise, a fragmentary shabti made for Nefertiti and supposedly found near the royal tomb at Amarna also calls her Chief Wife, suggesting that she had no other titles at the time of her death (Aldred 1988: 229–230; Tyldesley 1998: 151, 176; 2006: 132–134). These issues have led to the suggestion that Neferneferuaton was actually Meritaton, Nefertiti and Akhenaton’s daughter and the wife of Smenkhkare (e.g., Dodson and Hilton 2004: 143; Tyldesley 2012: 188, 204). This was the view held in the second edition of this book. However, Aidan Dodson has noted that a box fragment from the tomb of Tutankhamun contained the names of Akhenaton, Neferneferuaton,

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