After Akhenaten: Nefertiti, Smenkhkare, and where were they all buried?
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- Опубліковано 13 кві 2022
- An online lecture by Dr Chris Naunton.
What happened after Akhenaten’s death? Where was he buried? Who succeeded him? Could it have been Nefertiti? And who was Smenkhkare? Tantalising clues have been found at Amarna and in the Valley of Kings. But how to make sense of them?
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At just after 26 minutes when you show Tutankhamun's throne it makes me think he never gave up his Aten religion. He was born in Amarna and saw the last 5 years of Akhenaten's reign and then the 5 years of Nefertiti's. His wife was a daughter of Akhenaten and Nefertiti. I think when they restored religious freedom starting in Nefertiti's reign and continuing in Tutankhamun's reign Tutankhamun and Ankhesunamun continued to worship the Aten. They also still had themselves shown in the Amarna art style.
If he was 9 or 10 when he became Pharoah and 18 or 19 when he died then the picture on the face of the throne shows the couple towards the end of his reign. He looks like he's in his late teens.
It makes me think that while religious freedom was restored and any of 100 Gods could once again be worshipped throughout the land inside of the palace Akhenaten's religion still flourished. I think that while the people may have gone back to Amun the Pharoah and Queen continued to worship as they had been raised to at Amarna. I wonder if they made trips to Akhetaten and worshipped in the great temple there from time to time. After all it was still being used through the time of Ramses 1.
Also you can see how through his reign Tutankhamun and Ankhesunamun are consistently pictured in the loose more human Amarna art style. So this means when he had the choice this was how he chose to be presented. But when he died and he wasn't making the choices anymore the art in his tomb is completely traditional. If you look at the walls of the tombs at Amarna painted in the Amarna style and then look at the walls of Tutankhamun's tomb you can see a complete reformation. Yet Tutankhamun had not chosen that reformation during his life. It was brought in upon his death.
I think that while allowing traditional worship and art in Egypt as a whole again in his own private life Tutankhamun and his Queen lived as they had before. I think they were loyal to their background.
Interesting thoughts, thanks Ingur!
@@ChristopherNaunton Thank you.
I agree. The 18th dynasty is such an interesting rabbit hole. I’d like to recommend the pyramid code by Jason shurka it may be useful to you as it was for me.
I was an avid watcher of another UA-camr who created history videos. After his unexpected death, I drifted away from the genre. One of your brilliant videos was recommended recently. Thank you to you and the algorithm for drawing me back to a subject that I love.
I'm sorry to hear of the death of your friend Cheryl, but delighted these lectures have been of interest - thank you for letting me know!
@@ChristopherNaunton wow, thank you for replying, Chris!!!
I was in Tut's tomb thirty years ago, as well as a number of the other tombs in the valley of the Kings. I never get tired of these great lectures on the subject. Thanks for a fascinating talk.
I went there 3 years ago and I don’t think it’ll ever get old, my 3 years, your 30 and all the years beyond 😊
I was in Egypt for business several times, and had a great time seeing the sights, Nile cruise, great food and fellowship.
@Simon McCreath so, you didn't get to go, that's what...🤣
Thank you for being professional and logical, and avoiding making blanket affirmations of fact of what clearly remains theory. Behaving as if we know everything is an unpleasant behavior that seems designed to keep down competition. It is common among practitioners of any field, but certainly has been an unfortunate behavior among Egyptologists.
Well said.
There’s no such thing as Egyptologists it’s a make believe profession they needed to make up a name for becoming grave and artifact thieves. I guess I’m a New Jersey ologist since I can give directions to lost drivers when I was ten years old….
Blanket statements always make me unsure. Ironic in a way.
Totally hooked on these talks. So interesting. When you feel like what else can be brought to the subject you quickly realize thats a ridiculous statement...so much fascinating history
Lovely to read this, thanks!
The general scenario around the various mummies indicates to me that there might have been a sudden, hasty removal of burials from Akhetaten to King's Valley. At some point in Tut-ankh-aten's reign he became Tut-ankh-amun and his wife's name was similarly changed. Around that time it must have become clear that Akhetaten would have to be abandoned and any burials would be unguarded and available to any grave robbers passing through. I could picture everything from the tombs being dismantled and shipped and stored. Before everyone could be properly re-entombed, Tut died. The best grave goods were quickly repurposed and stored -- thankfully safe for millennia -- in his tomb. Apparently regime change and other turmoil stopped funerary rites and reburial of the others, so they remained stored in empty caves. Thus everything from the mundane to the exquisite remains of the eighteenth dynasty were out of sight and out of mind until 1922.
simple storage and never being able to figure out what to do with the bodies really makes a lot of sense. moving these heavy things especially when resources were being re-routed back to restoring older temples must have made it the last priority, they may have even been delaying reburial until they could redesign things to feature amun more prominently, but Tutankhaten died young and his burial was the opportunity to recycle material and center the burial on Amun which would have been much harder to do with Akhenaten, I don't even think we know for sure that Tutankhamen was his name during his life time but after his death that became his name, power was restored to a completely different political group and pharaoh, and following Tut's death, nobody alive would have any interest or anything to gain politically from digging them up and making a big deal of reburying them. Frankly, Ay should mark the start of a separate intermediate dynasty but i'm getting carried away.
There are some potential complications in the DNA analyses mentioned so frequently here. Firstly, the technique is at the edge of what is possible, especially a dozen years ago or more as in the main study mentioned here. Several of the cases, e.g. the foetuses, were quite incomplete. Secondly, there is the possibility of much more consanguinity than is attestable so far, e.g. that Mutemwiya the mother of Amenhotep III could have been Yuya's sister, and that Ay could have been Yuya and Tuyu's son and in turn Nefertiti's father. Such multiple cousin couplings could make Akhenaten and Tutankhamun's mother look like siblings when they were not. Yuya and Tuyu are quite likely the key couple of the late Eighteenth Dynasty.
Also intriguing is that Tuyu was apparently descended from the great queens of the late 17th Dynasty and start of the 18th (Tetisheri, Ahhotep), which begs the question of an informal female line of queens and consorts, from the 17th into the 19th Dynasties (Nefertari Meritmut and her Ay walking stick...). The prominence of Yuya and Tuyu as Amenhotep III's parents-in-law was quite extraordinary (as per the famous scarabs), as was Queen Ty's, so Nefertiti going even further is not so surprising. There's so much we don't know about the New Kingdom, but we also know a lot more about Ancient Egypt than about any other civilization of that time.
This is brilliant! Thank you from NZ New Zealand 🇳🇿
So very interesting. I enjoyed this very much. I am fascinated with Ahkenaten and his history. Thank you.
Glad you enjoyed it, thanks for letting me know!
This is so interesting, insightful and packed full of useful information, well presented, thank you Chris for your lecturers.
Thank you that's great to know!
Great talk, so much exciting mystery about this period, thank you!
Absolutely fascinating. Thank you!
Another one! Thank you from the bottom of my heart!
Another great lecture, very interesting! Thank you
This is a fascinating topic and a great video covering it! Question for you: is there a way to find out what digs are going on in Egypt/Valley of the Kings currently? I love when I can find dig blogs or yearly progress reports to keep up on what is going on beyond the major "newsworthy" finds. Thank you!
Thank you! 🙏 The best regular source of info on current excavations that I know of is the 'digging diary' published by the Egypt Exploration Society in its twice-yearly magazine Egyptian Archaeology. More info here: www.ees.ac.uk/our-cause/publications/egyptian-archaeology.html
Very informative thanks Chris
Thank you, for some reason I missed it. I really enjoy this subject.
Great talk. Thank you for sharing your knowledge. I don't mind you running over time at all!
That's good to know, I don't seem to be able to stop it...!
Wow, this is a wonderful video. You're quite knowledgeable and I appreciate this very much.
Thanks for watching, glad you enjoyed it!
Wonderful information
I will be watching this in bed tonight . I’m not Akhenaten’s biggest fan or Nefertiti after digging more into history but I do enjoy your stuff
Why?
I love them
Thank you so much, you deserve so many more subs...
Ha ha, thank you!
Sounds to me as if the mummy in KV55 was Smenkhare. Seems to fit. In that case, he would have been the younger brother of Akhenaten and he was brought in as co-regent at a young age. But then he died prematurely, so they had to scramble and repurposed stuff that was already prepared for queen Tiye who was nearing the end of her natural life.
However, Smenkhare did leave an infant, a little son he had with his wife who was also his sister, Tutankhaten, who turned out to be the only male heir within the royal family.
That would explain why the KV55 mummy was so young, it would explain the sudden disappearance of Smenkhare, it would explain how Tutankhamun had siblings as parents.
It would leave open the question of the stone slabs which mention Akhenaten, but I find those easier to rationalise than the body of a 20 year old pharaoh. Particularly since the context of the find is so dubious.
Either way, the coffin was probably shipped over from Amarna, presumably because Tutankhamum wanted his father close by so that he could ensure that the religious rituals were observed. Maybe KV55 was intended as a temporary tomb until a proper tomb was created, but then Tutankhamun died prematurely as well and his successors had no interest in any heretic predecessor. So it could be that a proper burial of Smenkhare was twice prevented by the untimely deaths of a pharaoh. First in Alarms where Akhenaten may not have lived to see the completion of Smenkhares initial grave, then in Thebes where the same thing happened under Tutankhamun.
Regarding Akhenaten, we know that his Sarcophagus was smashed to pieces, so I wouldn’t be surprised if his body was unceremoniously discarded back in ancient times. Or if he was kept around, then in a deliberately bad state, deprived of anything that would mark him as royal, so that he would be damned in the afterlife.
Interesting talk....👍
Great video. The male body between the ladies can be Ankenaten's brother Tuthmose.
I think smenkhkare was buried in (KV 55) and Nefertiti at valley of the Baboon near her Father AY (BV 23)
I agree . Smenkhare's body was found in KV 55 - the 20 year old male - and he was the father of Tutankhamun. Akhenaten could not produce a male child.
@@davidford8306 There are no medical, genetic or biological condition that would prevent a man, obviously capable of producing offspring, from producing male children. There simply are no such thing.
*And*, even if there were, there are no way for us to know if Akhenaten suffered from this hypothetical for-sake-of-argument condition as - as were made clear in Dr. Naunton's talk - we are yet to correctly, and with undeniable proof, identify his mummy. We have several contestants to the title, but we're yet to have a winner.
*And*, even if we did have his mummy, and this hypothetical condition did exist in reality, what's to say it could provide us with the information needed to make the diagnosis? Obviously, at this point in the conversation, we're so far out in the weeds of fantasy that a continuation down the same path would, at best, render an interruption by the "This-Sketch-is-Too-Silly-officer" as portraited by the long dead Graham Chapman of Monty Python.
Cheers!
@@davidford8306 Why do you say that? I thought the DNA of Akhenaten and Tut were pretty well matched? How would you determine that he couldn't father a male child?
@@glendabarton45barton48 What I heard was that the DNA of Tut and the mummy from KV55 was matched. We have no DNA from Akhenaten, as we have no body. Also, I am just guessing, based on Akhenaten's apparent physical deformities, and some medical conditions that could explain those deformities, that he probably could not sire male children. Who was Smenkhare? Was he another son of Amenhotep III ? Seems more likely than just some stray lover that Akhenaten brought in. There is so much about this family that we can never be sure of, it seemed kinda' nice that we finally were getting some firm evidence from DNA testing that took years to search out, and also from expert bone analysis of mummies that have been found, yet this author, Chris Naunton, is not fully accepting even that (much as I admire his work). Naunton is placing more importance of the inscriptions found alongside various mummies, which to me is not so definitive. Maybe it could help more if we had DNA results from Akhenaten's known daughters?
Zawi Hawas found the pelvis of an extremely well preserved female near the tomb of Ay in 2021. He thought it was royal. They should DNA test it.
Oh goodie ! 👍📚
I firmly believe the skeleton found in T 55 is Smenkare's for a simple reason: his teeth were in very well condition, and at that time only young people could be that way. Looking at the denture of Amenothep the third and most of the other royal mummies preserved to this day it is obvious that all of them suffered a lot because of bad teeth. The reason was the amount of sand present in bread and in all the cereal recipes the ancients used to eat that inevitably wore their enamel in the course of their lives. For this reason, only a young man could still have held such a healthy denture, and Akhenaton was certainly approaching his 40ies when he died, so he wasn't young anymore, but Smenkare died young for sure.
I have a different firm belief. We can’t know, but all the evidence - other than the age at death debate - puts Akhenaten in the tomb for me. Even if not Akhenaten, no direct evidence in the tomb puts Smenkhkare there. The relationship of Ankhkheperure Smenkhkare to Ankhkheperure Neferneferuaten, if indeed they are separate individuals, requires some kind of explanation. Ankhkheperure Neferneferuaten, according to the known evidence I’m aware of, seems fairly likely to be Nefertiti. So I’d like to see some thoughts to explain what relationship Neferneferuaten and Smenkhkare had that one would use the throne name of the other, it was a unique event for the period. More precisely, what was Smenkhkare’s relationship to or with Nefertiti that he (or she?) would adopt her throne name, or conversely, why would Nefertiti adopt Smenkhkare’s (his/her?) throne name?
@@glennmaillard5972 Where do you put Meritaten in this Mystery?
@@massimosquecco8956 I have no firm idea. I do note that the third cartouche on Meryre II’s tomb wall does not with any certainty, that is actually readable, contain the name Meritaten. Sue Moseley in her book on Amarna reproduced original drawings by Hay and the results of pressings by Lepsius, and how experts get Meritaten is a little unclear to me. But, having said that, I lean much to the view Nefertiti is Ankhkheperure Smenkhkare, and I do see her needing a GRW - for ritual reasons and/or reasons of state, like Hatshetsup needed with her own daughter, Neferure, to serve as Gods wife of Amun. (No Gods wife of Amun for Akhenaten, so I suspect the GRW was that figure by default, an alternative ‘Atenist’ female to a God’s wife, if that makes sense).
Meryre II’s depiction of Ankhkheperure Smenkhkare Djeserkheperure I suspect was originally Neferkheperure Akhenaten and Neferneferuaten Nefertiti. The first cartouche (Neferkheperure) only needed the Ankh sign altered into a Nefer sign, not a major alteration, to turn Neferkheperure into Ankhkheperure. The Smenkhkare cartouche and the Meritaten cartouche are the hardest to read. Both would have had the most major alterations. Perhaps this is part of the reason they are not preserved as well as the Ankhkheperure cartouche? Or at least, how good they were preserved before the cartouches were totally destroyed after Hay and Lepsius saw them. The alteration to Ankhkheperure and Meritaten occurred late, I’m guessing, in the period when Nefertiti was known as Ankhkheperure Neferneferuaten and created the nomen ‘Smenkhkare’.
If Smenkhkare was indeed a male, I have no idea how to for ‘him’ into the Amarna time line. ‘He’ just does not seem to fit anywhere. I just don’t buy a short Coregency with Akhenaten. I also have seen no motives put forward for either Neferneferuaten Nefertiti or Smenkhkare adopting the throne name (Ankhkheperure) of the other. Why? It just didn’t happen otherwise in the 18th Dynasty. And I’m not aware of any example prior to that.
I probably haven’t added much regards Meritaten, lol. Mostly repeated my last comment. As I said, I’m not sure what to do with her. But female ‘helper’ of Nefertiti as pharaoh, recommends itself to me. Though I do harbour the idea that Meritaten was mother or foster mother/nurse of Tut.
@@glennmaillard5972 I thank you so much for taking the time to explicate your point of view, which obviously was formed after many studies and much thought. I m no scholar or expert in ancient Egyptian culture, just very curious and passionate about certain periods of their great civilization. I cannot even read the hieroglyphs and my direct references are the artifacts that they left behind for us to interpret. This is why I keep thinking about a small limestone head covered with a blue crown, which corresponds to a war helmet. From what I know, and is not much, only males were portrayed donning such a headpiece. It is anonymous and many scholars cannot allocate to Tut, this is why somebody on the net tried to identify it as the Meritaton image. Even Hatshepsut herself didn't let herself. Sorry I have guests I'll go on later...
@@massimosquecco8956 I’m just an interested amateur too. I rely totally on the research of those far more trained and experienced. I find it fun reading over the articles and essays of those more expert than me. I’m an ex-cop and like to know if stated facts are established facts. There can be quite a difference! Lol. I like to fact check, no matter what the reputation is of any interested Egyptologist, professional or amateur, current or in the past. Having said that, my speculations are as open to dispute as anyone’s! 👍
When Princess Diana died the Queen Mother had already laid out her funeral plans and with her permission used it for Diana.
I've resumed watching this excellent video after a month or more and ... wow. I see you came to the line of thought that the kv55 mummy is not Akhenaten. I think you thought it probably was him before because of the magic bricks. I remember saying that I saw a woman who was an expert on dating the age of the dead as saying the mummy was 20 to 23 and she was rated one of the best in the world. So I always thought it wasn't Akhenaten as he was about 40 when he died. Nice that you've seen many sources now saying the same about the mummy's age and so you also think it was not Akhenaten. But again as you say we are still left not knowing who he was. Smenkhare is likely because this mummy was a pharoah and we know that Smenkhare was an Amarna period pharoah and there just doesn't seem to be anyone else. The fact that this Smenkhare was younger than Akhenaten as otherwise he would have been pharoah before him and that he did die before Tut reigned and probably before Akhenaten died and therefore probably died while quite young also helps that he might be the kv55 mummy. But yep sadly we don't know for a fact.
I think that Tutankhamun's mother, as she was Akhenaten and Smenkhare's full sister, was Nebetah who I think was renamed Beketaten by Akhenaten when she moved with their mother Queen Tiye to Amarna. Her 3 older sisters don't seem to have gone to Amarna. I think she then married her brother Smenkhare and they had Tutankhaten. She died sometime before Smenkhare was then made co pharoah by Akhenaten with Smenkhare then marrying Meritaten as his great royal wife.
Ive read it takes less brick to build a wall in that fashion. Compared to a straight wall
I was wondering if a facial reconstruction had been done on the skull from KV55, and google shows me that it has. The resulting face looks nothing like any of the sculptures of Akhenaton, but does rather resemble the face on Tutankhamun's coffin # 2. Which would point me toward that mummy being more likely to be Smenkhkare.
My thoughts from what I've seen so far. Likely the priests of Amun destroyed the mummy of Akhenaten soon after reclaiming power, to deny him an afterlife and obliterate his memory. So when Amarna was dismantled, the mummy of the younger disgraced pharaoh was stashed in KV55 with the minimum of borrowed grave goods. The other royal mummies found still in the Amarna tomb, that didn't share his total disgrace, were stashed in KV35. The rest of the grave goods were all repurposed for Tutankhamun, which served the dual purpose of providing him an exceptionally lavish funeral, and getting rid of all the now unfashionable Amarna-style objects. The families of the nobility claimed their deceased loved ones and what grave goods they could pack from the tombs of the nobles, and any remaining leftover funerary objects and detritus were then packed up by the priests and stashed in KV63, so that the whole embarrassing era could be buried and forgotten.
Am I missing a piece of evidence that would point otherwise?
I just wrote an essay about Akhenaten and Tutankhamun and said I'd take a break for a while, but here I am back with them again. :D Thanks for the talk, I really enjoyed it.
Great to know, thanks!
Finding that the younger lady was the full sister of the KV55 mummy does not rule her out as being Nefertiti. The typical situation in the royal family was for the young pharaoh to marry his sister and we have no information about Nefertiti’s parentage. Akhenaten could have been as young as 29 when he died.
Or if Kv 55 was the Deceased brother to Akhenaten and the younger Lady the Brothers wife. Who IS the One giving birth to Tut /The younger Lady (Sister) or?
Maybe She dies when he was born?
I just wonder How it theese IS connections put together?
Nefertiti's reign did slightly overlap King Tutankhamen's reign. Also, Smenkhkare being a co-regent during Akhenatenn's reign because Akhenaten was aloff in administering his duties as Pharaoh. Akhenaten was also unsure of Tutankhamen's physical strength to ward off the high priests and effectualy engage is regional affairs. I believe Tutankhamen was not his first choice to succeed him.
In base alle varie ricostruzioni fatte e dati alla mano, per me l'ipotesi più probabile è che Nefertiti sia succeduta ad Akhenaten e quella rappresentata nella tomba di Merira II, che tralaltro era un suo diretto funzionario, è sempre lei che viene associata al trono assieme alla figlia Merytaten, quest'ultima divenuta sposa reale al posto della defunta Kya, morta probabilmente dando alla luce Tutankhaten verso l'undicesimo/dodicesimo anno di regno (su questo poi ci torno su). Smenkhare probabilmente è sempre lei durante la coreggenza, poi trasforma ulteriormente il nome una volta divenuta faraone dato che Tutankhaten era ancora troppo piccolo per regnare (5/6 anni ?) alla morte di Akhenaten. Tutankhaten prenderà poi il suo posto e gran parte del corredo funebre di Nefertiti verrà riutilizzato per lui (sarcofagi e canopi compresi) e quasi certamente anche la tomba stessa (KV62) come fatto notare da Reeves in riferimento alle decorazioni della tomba , probabilmente a causa del fatto che quella prevista non era ancora pronta (WV23 poi utilizzata da Ay). Tornando a Kya, azzardo l'ipotesi che esso fosse il "nomignolo" (scimmietta ?) della sorella di Akhenaten (non si sa quale, Sitamen o un'altra), nonchè sposa reale, che ha dato al faraone l'agognato figlio maschio (Tut) morendone purtroppo di parto e che altri non sia che la Young Lady scoperta nella KV35 come si evincerebbe dai famosi esami del DNA. Quest'ultima era probabilmente l'occupante della tomba KV55 riutilizzata poi per le spoglie di Akhenaten, padre di Tutankhaten (sempre da DNA). In ogni caso se Smenkhare è esistito veramente quale maschio, probabilmente è deceduto prima di Akhenaten stesso.
Vita prosperità e salute.
Luke
P.S.: il DNA su Young Boy di KV35 non è stato fatto, ma anch'io credo possa essere il principe Tutmosi. Il Dna su KV21 A e B sono stati fatti, ma se per Ankhesenamen non sembrano esserci dubbi, per l'altra era troppo deteriorato. La mandibola suggerisce che potrebbe essere Nefertiti stessa, ma è solo una sensazione a vista, mentre qualche piccola traccia di DNA indicherebbe che potrebbero anche essere sorelle e quindi Meritaten o un'altra figlia di Akhenaten.
Dr. Naunton.
Thanks for your work and making this video that is chock-full of information and excellent references.
I disagree with some of the current positions about Amarna.
I hold that Queen Tiye and Amenhotep III are the parents of Nefertiti.
Nefertiti and Amenhotep III are the parents of Meritaten.
Meritaten and Akhenaten (her full brother) are the parents of Tutankhamun.
Nefertiti and Akhenaten (also her full brother) are the parents of Ankhesenamun.
The nest of three coffins in the tomb of Tutankhamun represent mothers and daughters.
The outermost coffin represents Queen Tiye.
The middle represents Nefertiti.
The third (of solid gold) represents Meritaten.
The gold mask inside the coffin represents Ankhesenamun.
Ankhesenamun was of course queen of Tutankhamun, who were both children of Akhenaten (conceived with his sisters).
Hello, can I ask you for an evidence or books about these info as am interested to know more about them
At 56 minutes you say how Nefertiti is thought to have disappeared from view but that in year 16 of Akhenaten's reign she appears again in an inscription at Dayr Abu Hinnis. I've often thought that the deaths of 4 of her 6 daughters probably to disease over just a year or two maybe in years 12 and 13 might have made her disappear. I think after such a trauma of losing 4 of her children she might well have withdrawn from public life and even duties for quite awhile. Maybe she ultimately only reemerged after a long period of withdrawal.
Akhenaten is King Tut’s father and the son of Amenhotep III.
I wonder what Akhenaten's relationship was with the god Re in all of this. His last two daughters had "-re" as part of their name instead of "-aten". Then there is Smenkhkare. It would seem that Re was, in some sense, seen favorably, if not completely subsumed into Aten. This leads to one further thought; how much influence (if any) would have the fourth and fifth dynasty kings had on Akhenaten's concepts of "royal power" (assuming he had known about it)?
Good question! The full name of the Aten (as it appears across two cartouches on various monuments) was 'Re, ruler of the two horizons, who rejoices in the Horizon, in his name of light, which is the Aten' (this is the later of two versions but the first also refers to Ra). So the Aten was considered to be a form of Ra by Akhenaten which probably explains why the name is still prominent e.g., as you have said, in various royal names. I'm not aware of any clear evidence thatAkhenaten was directly influenced by the 5th and 6th Dynasty kings but he may have been aware of the particular emphasis placed on Ra in those times. Thanks for watching!
Mike,I suspected the same about the 5th dynasty connection. Was Akhenaten trying to turn back the clock and return to the Re cult of earlier times?
@@Dominic-mm6yf I 'think' he was trying to do two things. One, genuinely promote his belief in Aten and, two, try to break the powerful priesthood of Amun. I'm not sure if he was trying to re-establish Pharaonic power and position as was had in the Old Kingdom. It doesn't seem so. He did reassert his position as the only intercessor to "divinity", undercutting the position of the priesthood(s). In hindsight, he may have been trying to stave off (knowingly or unknowingly) what came about in the 21st Dynasty. It's hard to definitively prove this without direct evidence, so, it's complete conjecture.
If some of the items are repurposed,say canonic jars were reused ,were they looting other tombs
I think in this case it's slightly more complicated than simple 'looting' i.e. for material gain. The re-use of e.g. Kiya's burial equipment was perhaps in some sense permitted because she had fallen out of favour, and was perhaps not worthy of such fine equipment. Or perhaps it was simply easier/better for her equipment to be re-used than for new items to be made i.e. because she had fallen out of favour and/or because they were to be re-used for someone - perhaps Akhenaten himself - who was by the time of the KV 55 deposit also out of favour. I hope that makes sense...!
I wonder if it was the same type of build, for the giant land platform, Eridu in Iraq sits on, you have to really zoom out to appreciate the size and scale of the land works there, much bigger than the US military just above the site, in between Eridu and Ur. It’s unbelievably large and looks old.
What is your position on the authenticity of the discovery of the bust of Nefertiti?
Good question, and worth asking because the bust is so unlike almost anything else we have from ancient Egypt at any period, and so much like more modern sculpture. But, I was involved in a film a few years ago during which samples from the bust were analysed an d shown to be of the right date so I think it must be genuine despite how extraordinary it is.
Very interesting upload.
I greatly struggled listening however, with your vocal click, sometimes with several per sentence.
Has anyone done an analysis of the faces of Tutankhamun which appear on objects in his tomb to figure out how many people had their objects appropriated for the burial?
Yes, the faces have been looked at very closely by various scholars. It's an inexact science - the artists' intention seems only rarely, if ever, to have been to capture a genuine likeness of the individual, and portraits were idealised, meaning that images of different people often look very alike, and images of the same person can look very different. However most art historians would, I think, agree that Tutankhamun had a distinctive and identifiable portrait and that some of the material from the tomb doesn't match it e.g. the middle coffin and canopic coffinettes, which seem to have someone else's face.
@@ChristopherNaunton Thanks, Doc.
It's very curious that we've found Akhenaten's mummy in the valley of the kings but not Nefertiti's. Their remains were obviously moved back to Waset. i.e. Luxor after the king's death. Why weren't they buried (or reburied) together? Chris, do you perhaps think she was buried with her daughters?
Hi Nicholas, Well the jury is still out as to whether or not the KV 55 is Akhenaten (it could be Smenkhkare in which case Akhenaten's mummy is still 'missing'). My guess would be that Nefertiti was buried in the Valley of Kings but extensive excavations in both the main and western wadis in recent years have revealed nothing. It may well be that there is nothing left to find...
I think that Arkenaten chose a different place, some place cleverly conceaved. I think you'll find that his own temple is the one place he wanted to rest maybe?
Well, Barry Kemp and the Amarna Project (www.amarnaproject.com/pages/amarna_the_place/index.shtml) have been leading new excavations at the Great Aten Temple in recent years and I gather they have found some evidence of funerary rituals being performed there. That's something to keep an eye on!
@@ChristopherNaunton I think I know where they are, hidden in plain sight at the entrance to the temple. Look to the left and to the right of the entrance, actually buried in the ground.
Great talk. Just for the record, it is my view that Smenkhkare was a female co-regent and sister of Akhenaten. She was the mother of Tutankhamun and a second wife of Akhenaten. Her name was Sitamun.
What happened to Sitamun needs to be explained, as she was so prominent at Malkata late in the reign of her father (literally hundreds of jar labels with her name found there from the time of the jubilees). However, I feel that there are other candidates for a sister-wife of Akhenaten, and I can't say which she could be. Baketaten is the only one shown at Amarna, but she is depicted as a pre-teen of a similar age to Meritaten. Not impossible that she was promoted to queen towards the end of Akhenaten's reign. A lot depends on when she was born. If she was born around the time Amehotep III died she would have been the same age as Meritaten; if there was a coregency she could have been younger.
@@rymerster: I cannot see how Beketaten can be the sister-wife of Akhenaten and therefore the mother of Tutankhamun ... too young. In my view, (since I follow the long co-regency position) Sitamun was made co-regent pharaoh with Akhenaten following the death of her father, Amenhotep III. She ruled at Malkata, became her brother Akhenaten's bride (and second Great Royal Wife), gave birth to the male heir, Tutankhaten, and took the nomen Smenkhkare since an Amun name would not have been acceptable in the mid-reign of Akhenaten. She may even be identified in the informal reliefs of Amarna by her pet-name, Kiya.
@@MANDALABANDIII I agree, Baketaten seems too young to be the mother of Tut. The Year 8 change to the name of the Aten or the Year 12 durbar might be the points at which the coregency ended as Amenhotep III died. I think the year 8 is the strongest possibility as that’s when Akhenaten seems to have ramped-up the proscription of Amun worship and images.
Sitamun is a very attractive option as the sister-wife of Akhenaten, her titles may need some further examination as she was definitely a GRW but I’ll look into if a king is specified. If not, it’s plausible she was also married to Akhenaten.
I think Kiya is someone else, non-royal, not Tut’s mother. All of Kiya’s appearances are in places where the old names of the Aten appear, therefore before year 9. She’s not present in any of the Year 12 scenes whereas others such as Mutenberet are. Therefore I think she died before Tutankhamun was born. Her titles do not indicate anything except in relation to the king and being a favourite. So that takes us back to Sitamun who must have taken another name - Sitre? Smenkhkare? No idea. I just don’t think Smenkhkare can be Kiya.
@@rymerster: You are on the right track. I suggest Akhenaten becomes A III's co-regent at the latter's first jubilee in Year 30. Smenkhkare/Sitamun becomes Akhenaten's co-regent at A III's third jubilee in Year 37/8. She spent some of the time prior to that at Amarna as Kiya until her formal coronation as Smenkhkare in Year 8/9 of Akhenaten, replacing A III as king in Thebes. At this point, she is no longer referred to by her pet name. Tutankhamun is born in Year 8 of Akhenaten and is crowned as Tutankhaten in Year 17 of Akhenaten aged 9 or 10. Following the death of Nefertiti in her Year 3, Tut changes his name to Tutankhamun.
Whoever came after Akhenaten and before Tutankhamun, was dealt with by Ay, Horemheb and the Priests of Amun ☠️☠️
I’m pretty sure I read in the 1960s that the Malkata Palace was built for Queen Tiy and the lake was built to accommodate a boat built for the Queen for her pleasure. I also remember reading that Akhenaten was a co regent with his father for a number of years before his father died. In those days there was never a suggestion that Tutankhamen was Akhenaten’s son. It was thought he might have been a younger son of Amenhotep III. Thank you for mentioning Smenkhare was Nefertiti. Later some tried to make out this was a homosexual partner of Akhenaten.
Hi and thanks for watching! I think the idea that Malqata was built for Tiye may come from the 'lake scarabs' in which Amenhotep III says that he built a great Lake for Tiye - there was also a great lake - the 'Birket Habu' - at Malqata of course, but it's now thought that the lake mentioned in the scarabs was elsewhere. The idea of a coregency between Amenhotep III and Akhenaten is still there but the consensus view now seems to be that there is no good evidence to support the idea. The DNA analysis of the KV 55 mummy shows that whoever that was, was the father of Tutankhamun. This cannot have been Amenhotep III, as his mummy was found elsewhere. While some thing that Nefertiti and Smenkhkare were one and the same, I favour the alternative view that Smenkhkare was male, and perhaps a brother / half-brother of Akhenaten, and Nefertiti male. The debate continues however!
@@ChristopherNaunton thank you for your response. In the 60s there were no computers readily available and, as I live in Australia, it was not easy to get varied reading material in the subject. I think it was Cyril Aldred’s book on the subject that I read. Although I’ve had a lifetime passion for Ancient Egypt but I have never been there. I’m now an armchair traveller through UA-cam!
@@annmolloy8600 Lovely, I hope you're enjoying it!
Is it possible that Smenhkhare married a sister before being raised to the status of a coregent? Perhaps he was made coregent BECAUSE he had a son? Sisterwife may have died before this elevation, making it possible for Meritaten to be his great royal wife...and stepmom of Tut. And isn't nurse/wetnurse a term used for stepmother? Which might indicate 'Maya' could be Mayati i. e. Meritaten.
Interesting thoughts, thanks! Everything you suggest is *possible* I think, although the identification of Maia with Meritaten doesn't seem likely to me - as far as I'm aware there is no evidence to associate that points to this - the names are different even if we could suggest that one is a contraction of the other, and we'd need to explain why 'Maia' makes no mention of her earlier status as king's daughter and great royal wife. The erasure of Akhenaten's memory could explain it but there's no evidence... The debate goes on!
Ah I see I jumped the gun. I thought you were saying you believed Akhenaten was not the kv55 mummy because of age but I see now at 1 hour 49 that you still believe he was. Fair enough. I still believe it's Smenkhare. :)
I agree with you that Smenkhare died at Amarna and was originally buried there. I can't see him being buried anywhere else as I think Akhenaten would not have wanted it. So I guess maybe they filled up tomb 26 like a family crypt and then later moved people to the valley of the kings. People like Meketaten, Queen Tiye, Neferneferure, Setepenre, Neferneferuaten Tasherit, Bekataten, Smenkhare, Akhenaten and Meritaten. I think they all died at Amarna roughly in that order.
As for Nefertiti she may well have been buried in the valley of the kings but I think she was moved from her original tomb wherever that was in the valley to kv21 for safe keeping by priests. I think this because the younger lady found in kv21 is the mother of Tutankhamun's children and therefore highly likely to be Ankhesenamun. The older lady found there was the mother of that younger lady and therefore likely Nefertiti. For this reason I think Reeves got it wrong on the hidden burial behind Tut's tomb idea.
The age of the KV55 mummy is still an object of debate. The rest of the evidence points directly to Akhenaten. The bones were 3,500 years old and in poor condition. There is surely room for debate regards to age. Aging old bones can apparently be notoriously difficult. This Spitalfields example - a cemetery only couple of hundred years old but with written records to confirm ages - shows just how uncertain it can be. The mummy is far more likely than not to be Akhenaten.
Could Kv 55 be the younger brother of Akhenaten who died before Akhenaten The Older brother Akhenaten became Ruler after him
Just wonder
🤔🌍👩🏼🏫✍️🇩🇰
It could be a brother of Akhenaten e.g. prince Thutmose who was Amenhotep III's eldest son and in line to inherit the throne before his early death. However as the KV 55 individual seems to have been pharaoh the only known candidates are Akhenaten himself, and Ankhkheperure Smenkhkare, who may have been a brother of Akhenaten (if you believe Smenkhkare was male, not all Egyptologists do!).
In a practical sense, why are the ancient Egyptian clay bottles shaped like that? They look like the would easily topple over and break. Was there a cool science to it?
So as to collect and trap sediments most effectively?
@@ChristopherNaunton That's interesting. Makes sense. But they didn't have holders? Or were they merely laid against the wall or in some sort of formation? I just wonder how they would have been stored or transported on a boat or cart. Thank you Chris. I've saved all of your YT videos to a play list and replay them often. I really appreciate them and your work.
I understand that they did have stands for clay vessels…which is the letter G in hieroglyphs.
1:20:50 🛑 1:22:00 1:22:55 / 1:25:40 cc [1:23:44 🏴☠] 1:28:22 Guess Shu 😏 1:29:25
1:30:15 cc for the win 1:31:05 1:31:44 cc / 1:31:58 to 1:32:01 / 1:32:12 to 1:32:18 cc 1:33:13 😭 1:34:23 🏴☠
1:35:15 cc No indication who carried out this 'DNA analysis'
1:44:56 1:47:53 1:49:33
I really want them to do a reconstruction of what the older lady (Queen Thye) looked like. Also, why didn’t the DNA test the young male? Is he Thutmosis, older brother of Akhenaten, or perhaps Smenkhare? So many questions.
I'm confused. You keep mentioning the daughters of Akhaten but where does Tutankhamun fit into the children of A and N?
DNA (2011) showed that the parents of Tutankhamen were full siblings, both the children of Amenhotep III. The mother was most likely Sitamun who had also been married to her father, Amenhotep III. It is not known if the mysterious Beketaten was daughter of Amenhotep III or Akhenaten. Nefertiti had six daughters with Akhetaten.
Hi Jackie, for Tutankhamun's family relationships (about which much remains obscure) I'd recommend the companion lecture to this one: 'Tutankhamun in Life, Death & Afterlife' ua-cam.com/video/ixIFV-NpNO4/v-deo.html&lc=UgwVliC5Mc7m8fYWOrV4AaABAg
@@suzanking5625 Consider that Nefertiti had six daughters of which the youngest five were children of Akhenaten.
Meritaten was his sister and the mother of Tutankhamun.
Nefertiti was also his sister and the mother of Ankhesenamun.
Tutankhamun and Ankhesenamun were siblings who became king and queen (as had Akhenaten and Nefertiti).
Was not Horemheb Tut's legal chosen successor? I believe at the time of Tut's passing, Horemheb was in the field, holding back an invasion force. So he could not abandon his troops to back and perform that all important Opening of the Mouth ceremony. He had to give up the throne to fulfill his duties.
I don't think we have any evidence for this?
So, who was Tutankhamens father and mother?
If only we knew the answer to that! More here: ua-cam.com/video/ixIFV-NpNO4/v-deo.html
I'm still early into the presentation, so bear with any redundant information I bring to the table, but I believe Tutankhamen's mother was identified as "The Younger Lady" in Tomb KV35.
I am so surprised that they never found Ay’s and Horemheb’s mummies. Lost to eternity or still hidden cache? Edit: I know elder lady, the lower image on your slide, is currently identified as Tiye. However, did you notice how much the shape of her face matches the head of Nefertiti, above her? The same square jaw. High cheekbones. Very even features. I know one basis of the match is the hair sample, but how reliable is that? I can’t help but wonder.
Ay and Horemheb's mummies must, it seems, have been somewhere else, possibly 'cached' in Horemheb's tomb and subsequently lost. On this possibility see my lecture on Royal Mummies: ua-cam.com/video/ExXq_mcFhc0/v-deo.html (at 1:48:07 approx.). Interesting observation about the 'Elder Lady' and the Nefertiti bust! The lock of hair that matches that on the Elder Lady's head comes from a vessel inscribed with Tiye's name - you could argue that perhaps someone else's hair got into that box, but the DNA evidence shows that the Elder Lady was the offspring off Yuya and Thuya, and the mother of the KV 55 mummy (product of a union with Tiye's husband Amenhotep III) , whether it was Akhenaten or Smenkhkare, would seem to have been of the right generation to have been a son of Tiye. Altogether the case that the elder Lady was Tiye is very compelling!
@@ChristopherNaunton Thank you. I appreciate the explanation. Years ago, hair matching used to be considered unreliable, for criminal cases, not just archaeological. The technology has certainly advanced! I will look into the lecture you posted.
What a great presentation. Thank you. What are your thoughts on Sigmund Freud's theory that Akhenaten was Moses? If true, Smenkare could be in KV 35...
No he was the pharoah that Joseph met
To be honest, Tutankhamen’s parents were actually brother and sister.
Some wrong conclusions: The KV55 individual has NOT always been judged to have been 20 years old at death. Far from it. The first highly qualified examiner, Dr. Smith, a professor of anatomy, wrote to Arthur Weigall [the antiquities official who sent him the bones] that his opinion was "died around the age of 30". Latest exam by CT-scan in Cairo gives an age window even higher than that. So high, in fact, that I wonder if it was not influenced by the degenerated hip of the dead individual, a condition that normally manifests later in life. However, it can have been caused by a trauma in a young individual.
Smenkhkare. I have written a lot about him, to be sure. I have held the opinion that the box containing the various cartouches found in KV62 was left over from the reign of Akhenaten, naming him, Nefertiti as Ankhkheperure Neferneferuaten, and Queen Merytaten. The speculation was that the first two were coregents for a time, with Merytaten being given the Great Royal Wife title as it was not being used by Nefertiti then. This may still be the case but it can also be a box from Tut's reign, mentioning his father, his mother, and a queen who was significant to him--Merytaten. Every recent royal except Smenkhkare. Technically, there is no heirloom of Smenkhkare in KV62. Even the calcite vase that has been concluded was a sign of a coregency between Akhenaten and Smenkhkare, had the inscription nearly all erased. That's because Smenkhkare was persona non grata in Tut's reign as the former, being judged a better candidate for a husband to Meryaten, had been made king, displacing the true heir, tiny Tutankhamun, the late-arriving son of the GRW, Nefertiti. A coregency always has a motive behind it, one being to divert the natural order of succession while one could, creating the future pharaoh. In other words, Akhenaten chose Merytaten's future over that of Tutankhaten, which he was called at the time.
Sitamen was the eldest daughter of Amenhotep III. If she wasn't already too old for Akhenaten by Year 30 [which is when Akhenaten became a coregent] Sitamen would have logically become the next queen of Egypt and not Nefertiti. In fact, that Sitamen would be too old for any surviving son of AIII was already known, as she became a royal concubine of her father [great consolation prize!] even prior to becoming one of his queens. So to try to make her a wife of someone even younger than Akhenaten, Smenkhkare, isn't logical. Merytaten was the only attested wife of that short-lived king.
Oh--and a king who is meant to be permanent is only beloved of the gods in his cartouche. The fact that Neferneferuaten is beloved of Akhenaten under one of his names means she was only intended to be a temporary coregent--perhaps twice in her lifetime.
I forgot to mention that Dr. Hawass recently said that the young prince from KV35 is going to be examined and his DNA tested. But he is really a prince and not a young king because he still evidences the princely sidelock and otherwise shaved head, which royal children wore until they attained puberty. After that they wore a wig like an adult. Dr. Smith's conclusion that the prince died at around the age of eleven is consistent with that.
Thanks for your thoughts Marianne! I hope you would agree that even if some anatomists have suggested that the age at death could be higher, the majority reached the same conclusion i.e. that the individual died at around 20 or so - it doesn't change the fact that there is still the 'problem' that the anatomical evidence generally doesn't support the identification of the mummy with Akhenaten. For what it's worth, in my view the mummy is more likely to be that of Akhenaten on the basis that the anatomy does allow for the possibility that the individual died at an older age, and that all the inscriptional evidence points to Akhenaten and none to anyone else....
I'm not sure I mentioned Sitamun in the talk (but I could be wrong!)? And I'm not sure that you can apply any rules about 'beloved of gods / the king' to the historical situation at the end of the Amarna period - this was after all a time when we know all kinds of rules were being broken.
@@ChristopherNaunton There weren't all that many examiners of the KV55 skeleton. All had to be influenced by something about these remains. All mentioned the unerupted wisdom teeth, a sign of youth, although those teeth don't erupt in all persons. As it happened, this was common in the younger generations of royals--all had unerupted. Yet CT-scan did not uphold the "age 20" [or less] determination of some who did not have the benefit of this technology. I don't recall if you mentioned Sitamun or not but some commentators here already had so I chimed in. As for the "breaking rules" at the time of the Amarna period--then why is there an insistence that Nefertiti must be ruled out as the Younger Lady because she is not styled "king's daughter"? Why should she have been when she started her queenly career as a goddess, the only official one at Akhetaten--Tefnut? In one of the earlier tombs there, that of Ay and Tey, the latter claims to have "nursed the goddess", Nefertiti. After the reign of Akhenaten, no other queen was styled king's daughter, either, until the dynasty ended. So one can't have it both ways--formalities needing to be observed when one objects and "rules broken" pled otherwise.
Hello 👋
What evidence do we have that Akhenaten died in his 16th year if we don't have a body? Could both Nefertiti and Akhenaten travelled outside of Egypt? It was common for Pharaohs to go on war campaigns and it seems that during and after Amenhotep III there was ample access to relatively large ships. Many of the talatat from Amarna depict both Nefertiti and Akhenaten on such large boats.
Whether or not we have the body doesn't necessarily help us to understand at what point in his reign he died. It's true that age at death can help, but as we don't know age at accession it can't provide more than a guide to how long he reigned for. The highest regnal date we have for Akhenaten is year 17 (from a wine jar label from Amarna) so our best guess at the moment is that that was his final year and the year of his death. But it's not impossible that an inscription of year 18 or even higher could crop up at some point in which case estimates of the length of his reign would have to be revised. Hope that makes sense!
@@ChristopherNaunton It seems pretty clear from the contexts within many of the Amarna letters (Hymn to the Pharaoh, etc.) that the Atenist religious reforms were meant to be implemented beyond the traditional boundaries of Egypt. What arguments would you have against Akhenaten and/or Nefertiti making a boat trip to and around Cyprus near where the frontlines of their military campaigns being led by Horemheb were being waged?
@@aguyinavan6087 The main argument would be that there is simply no evidence for it - it's not impossible that they ventured beyond Egypt's borders attempting to spread their reforms around a wider area than Egypt alone but we could only speculate about this until there is evidence for it.
Why egyptologies put semenkhra Reign before neferneferuaton?
Some believe they are one and the same person. It's Dodson's view - and I find this the a persuasive interpretation - that Smenkhkare was co-regent with Akhenaten but died before the latter; Neferneferuaten (= Nefertiti) became pharaoh on her husband's death and therefore reigned after Smenkhkare. But there's still considerable room for alternative explanations!
@@ChristopherNaunton thx for answer. as a hobby Egyptology (fan) I would like to present my theory to you.
it is often said (as well as in the wikipedia article about nefertiti) that she was not mentioned as a king's daughter or wife and therefore did not distance herself from the royal family.
First, we do not know where Nefertiti came from because we have no record of her before her marriage to Akhenaten! for example in the reign of amenhotep 3.
She comes out of nowhere, which speaks for me that she was not introduced but was known.
As will be explained in more detail shortly, in my view it would be more plausible to assume that the wife of Pharaoh Akhenaten came from the royal family and that Nefertiti could not be an outsider. There is no connection to eje with Nefertiti! Eje would have mentioned that he was the father of the pharaoh's wife.
But since the Younger Lady looks similar to Nefertiti, I assume that she is Nefertiti herself (as Joan Fletcher claims) or Nefertiti's sister.
i can't imagine that it can be a woman outside of the family of akhenaten who then has facial features similar to those of the women of the royal family.
Because one thing is fact. Akhenaten changed his name for theological reasons.
From Amenhotep to Akhenaten.
I assume that the daughters of amenhotep 3 ,sitamun and Isis could not keep their names while Akhenaten fought the amun cult and ban!
So it makes sense to assume that sitamun and Isis had to rename each other.
Sitamun and Isis were the great royal consort of Amenhotep 3 and therefore candidates for the new queen of the coming new pharaoh.
everything else would be a reduction in rank and status and both would have tried to change that.
we have the same thing with meritaton, who also married echnaton and rose to become a great royal wife.
then, after the death of akhenaten, she became the great royal wife of semenkhkare and neferneferuaton.
Akhenaten saw himself as the heir of the creator god atum whose living incarnation was aton. He saw himself as shu and Nefertiti as tefnu. They were also siblings, like Isis and Osiris.
So it makes sense that Akhenaten has to marry his sister for theological reasons!
And then there are 6 other deities that the daughters embody, so the nine deities of atum were represented by : aton - atum
Nefertiti and Akhenaten shu and tefnu. And the daughters the other 6 gods.
Therefore, mentioning other children (Tutankhamun) of Akhenaten and Nefertiti was avoided.
We have two throne names with neferneferuaton.
Anchchperura and anchtcheperura.
They differ only in the feminine hieroglyph (loaf of bread).
Perhaps an intentional or unintentional indication that behind this throne name was a female regent? If the feminine t had been introduced unintentionally because the sculptor knew she/he (neferneferuaton) was female, that would be the best proof of Nefertiti's reign as pharaoh Neferneferuaton!
Then we have anchcheperura with semchkare.
I assume that Nefertiti ruled with Akhenaten with their epihet neferneferuaton as Pharaoh's proper names.
First or accidentally with anchtcheperura, then with anchchperura. Then the renaming of the proper name to semenchkare.
Regarding the co-regency of Anchchperura neferneferuaton and Akhenaten, I assume that it lasted three years until Akhenaten died.
neferneferuaton then changed its name to semenchkare.
we have no mention of akhnaton smenchkare and meritaton together.
we have only mentioned Akhenaten neferneferutaon and meritaton together.
therefore I assume the name semenchkare was not used by Nefertiti before neferneferutaon.
I prove that neferneferuaton cannot be a male heir as follows.
Neferneferuaton was first the ephit of nefertiti and the name of one of her daughters! Neferneferutaon is a gender-neutral name, but it would be difficult for any Egyptian in the Armana period to guess who the name was!
Neferneferuaton Nefertiti Queen of Akhenaten, Neferneferuaton daughter of Akhenaten, and then another paharao neferneferuaton???
We're already confused, how must the farmers and writers of the time have fared with such confusion? then the fact that both semenchkare and neferneferuaton have the same throne name leads to even more confusion.
And that there is a throne name with a feminine T and without.
So there must have been at least one female Pharao.
I Order of Reign would it be difficult, when akhenaten dies and a Male successor Rose to Power and After neferneferuatons or semenchkares dead, nefertiti came Back too Power ist for me unbelievable as well.
Furthermore, I assume that kv21a is anchesamun and the other mummy is kv21b meritaton. Because this tomb was not made in the time of Tutankhamun.
We can assume that Tutankhamun gave up armana and moved to Memphis and buried his family in the Valley of the Kings.
Tejekv35el, Akhenaten's elder brother thutmosis and kv35 yl and Akhenaten in kv55.
Anchesamun and meritaton briefly outlived Tutankhamun.
There was a ring that testified to the marriage of aye and anchesamun. So anchesamun must be the dahamazu affaire.
Because she was married to a "servant" with aye (eje).
Meritaton was married to Echnaton and neferneferuaton! Which is also not to be forgotten. Meritaton is the bridge between the reign of Akhenaten and neferneferuaton/ semenchkare.
This is also logical because the rule should remain in the family, which succeeded up to Tutankhamun but no longer after his death, and so eje came to power as a pharaoh, who may also be related, but not the father of Nefertiti. The father of tuja, who is himself the father of teje, was also called eje!
manetho mentioned three achencheres. I think that echnaton, neferneferuaton aka nefertiti and then semchkare could be meant. i hope you can answer me again. udn give me a nice feedback.
greetings from germany. thx for your work and yt channel and stuff. very awesome !
Good morning everyone God bless us all Amen 🙏 ✨ 🙌
Can't cause if the smacking sound
Notice anahksunamun is standing but all of Akhenaten/Nefertiti are both sitting. Notice the seats Akhenaten and Nefertiti sit on and her drappy dress
Do you think that all the inbreeding complicates the scientist's ability to accurately interpret DNA results? It seems a highly specialized field of study and I can't help but wonder about that. Does inbreeding muddy those waters?
Well, I am not a specialist in the DNA as such but I understand that, yes, the intermarriage within the royal family at this time does make things more complicated, and difficult to establish the precise relationship between individuals - siblings/cousins can be very difficult to distinguish I gather which does make drawing clear conclusions very difficult in this case!
Smenkhare could very well be the father of tutankhamun
More likely that Semenkhare is the stepmother of Tuthankhamun, otherwise called Nefertiti.
No
Something Zahi announced? I'm out.
1:33:00 I wonder if he had a gold grill
Gotta idea idea ask the descendent of the the Ancient Egyptians in west African the Yoruba people y’all know that right research it
Wonderful lecture! Thank you!
There are a lot of things I do not understand. It has long been said that no one knows Nefertiti's parentage. In Tutankhamun's tomb are two mummified babies or fetuses, both female. It is assumed these children were the product of Tut and Nefertiti's daughter Ankhsenpa'aten. If so, mtDNA from the fetuses should = Ankhsenpa'aten = Nefertiti = ....whoever else in the lineup. (Yuya & Thuya?) I cannot find any DNA testing on the fetuses.
For all the paintings and inscriptions, I don't think anyone knows much about how Egyptian royal families prepared for succession. In more recent times we know how seriously the succession was planned far in advance of the death of a monarch, the basic heir and a spare, etc. Pharaohs were said to have had vast harems with many wives and concubines. Surely there were lots of children? What happened to those offspring?
If this scenario is accurate, why were only Akhenaten and his brother who died, mentioned in the line of succession? When the brother died, did other brothers move up in line in case Akhenaten died young?
It seems Tut ascended the throne when he was 9. The little understood years of Smenkhare and Nefertiti may only have been place holding until Tut was old enough to rule. Perhaps he was around 4 or 5 years old when Akhenaten died? Maybe the female pharaoh was Nefertiti acting as regent and co-ruling with a very young Tut?
Beyond the scope of this lecture, the dynasty seemed to fall apart with Tut's death. I have never understood why there were not a number of brothers, nephews or cousins who descended from Akhenaten's parents, who could have continued the dynasty.
So many questions and so much we do not know.
Perhaps read the Wikipedia pages for tomb KV21, tomb KV35 and "The Younger Lady". I know it is often said you can't trust Wiki, but those pages seem to present information and theories without claiming definitive facts. It seems that DNA testing done on the badly degraded mummies in KV21 did not yield sufficient data to make definitive conclusions. If you read the Wiki page for the two fetuses ("317a and 317b mummies"), under the 'Parentage' section it states, "DNA analysis was conducted as part of the Tutankhamun Family Project and although only partial matches were obtained, it was enough to conclude that both mummies were the children of Tutankhamun. Only a partial DNA profile was able to be obtained from the KV21A mummy, but it suggests that she was the mother of the two children. However, the results were not statistically significant enough to be confirmed." 🙂
@@brenspin Thanks. I have read some Wikipedia entries on Akhenaten's family but don't think I have read this specific part. I figure we can check and double check waht is in Wikipedia. It is a good clearing house of information.
@@annalisette5897 I think it is a bad clearing house. In the 2010 publication of the DNA testing of some royal mummies related to Tut, the poor autosomal results of a mummy KV21A did not preclude her from being assumed to be a wife of Tutankhamun and the mother of the foetuses--who also had very incomplete results. I don't think this was the best science--but there it is. However, ten years later, there was another publication dealing with the y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA of the same mummies. This time there was no mention of KV21A or the tiny babies.
They inbreeded far too much. And to destroy The Aten, the Egyptians had to remove everything! And return to their old gods that they felt had not failed them and let slaves get the total best of them. Plus, this was all linked in with the loss of their trade with the Minoans. In fact, when Thera blew up the Minoan capital and chief city, it led to the bronze age collapse - with what happened afterwards. And what is west of Thera? Malta. And East? Crete. And the amount of land that Tarshish controlled (long before Carthage controlled just some of it) fits Plato's account. His view of Atlantis is really 2 cultures that were bitter rivals, combined into one.
There is a brief mention of a 'preliminary DNA study' of the two foetuses mentioned on p. 140 of Hawass and Selim, Scanning the Pharaohs which suggested to the authors that mummy KV 21A was their mother. I don't know if there is more to go on than that.
We do not know in detail how the Egyptian king and his courtiers prepared for the succession. Broadly speaking the king was succeeded by a male heir, perhaps 'normally' the eldest but in most instances we could not be sure that there were not older male children who for whatever reason were not considered eligible or suitable. We can see in some cases that while one son may have been in line at one point they did not, in the event, become pharaoh, perhaps because they pre-deceased their father or fell out of favour for some reason. We have lots of evidence of other male children of pharaoh occupying other important positions, particularly within the temple hierarchy, frequently as chief priests of Ptah or Amun etc. It's not always the case that the king was succeeded by a son of course - there are times when it appears to have been a brother, an uncle, a nephew, a wife or even someone unrelated.
You suggestions about the reasons for Smenkhkare and Nefertiti's position as pharaoh are very plausible. As to why the throne passed to a commoner at the time of Tutankhamun's death and not to another member of the royal family, however distant, again we cannot know but perhaps there really were no obvious candidates (it has been suggested that widespread illness may have led to a sudden dearth), or that Akhenaten had isolated himself from other branches of the royal family, or that all of them had become so tainted by his actions that the officials of the day felt a change to a new line was the best way forward.
Thanks for your thoughts!
For me "The Younger Lady" is Nefertiti. She got the same face and jawline as the bust of Nefertiti. Put that crown on the mummy and it's clear as day.
The Royal Mummies of UR.......?.??
Nefertiti Left Egypt To Jordan .
Black African civilization.
Nefertiti Buried In Jordan.
not far try local first
Recently I wrote a description of a few basic facts we are experiencing relative to *"Academia and History/Ancient History"* + the focus for greater harmony and gaining progress in discoveries with greater successes.
*"The 1st Point",* I encourage when "in focus on and discussions in" the History Subject is to make a Conscious Effort to separate Personal from the Content. Toward the Content, I suggest adapting a "diagnosing, defining, rather that deeming", deeming any personal, be that with self or others) clear definitive basics.
My degrees are in:
Sociology, Journalism, and History, with this in mind, what I share comes through with greater scope of purpose.
Zawee Hawass, by the way, makes it most clear that he be seen as a Mainstream Egyptologist. (I do not desire to review or judge his choice, nor him as a person.)
Academics of any venue are the 1st of all Professions whom I feel should be required to complete a study/class/and certification of mastery of the subject content relative to: The value if the Higher Mind vs Lower Mind aka Ego Mind aka Adolescent Mind.
The subject of *"Mature in Mind", Thought, Behavior, and all that this comprises including Wisdom, resides in the Higher Mind, and being in the Higher Mind requires making a habit of "Conscious in Thought" and "Applying the Higher Mind".* The effort initially requiring some will, and at times, quite a bit of will, lol.
Our Ego Mind is our weak zone and it causes vast unnecessary negative experiences.
Here I shall copy a recent share, with a clip of an article I wrote and from a subject I am currently working in study and possibly for a book, Academic in its Content and Purpose, although not limited to that scope of value.
This was written in response to a comment that pointed out the Speaker had made fact errors in some of his statements, and he had, however ...
___________________________
Copy:
I'm afraid none can do more to misguide minds on facts than the "Mainstream Academia, the 19th and 20th Century Archaeologists and Egyptologists". (This explained in the area noted by 💠)
I shall attach a clip from an article I prepared related to the subject. (Please note closing remark)
I've come to realize that, in the present era, Academia must address and manage the facts of their content, particularly in the subject of History:
*(1) Audit the current Content used in Education, Textbooks, and Resource Information.*
*(2) Academia must further establish a method for clarification and management of established accepted facts and thus establish:
1. A Central Hub of History Facts, determined by the existing "Standards of Science and Research" and having certification through "Peer Review/Journal Publishing"
2. This would be best be served by establishing an Academic Association and Governing Board to oversee the History Hub, and the Association, and the Board respectfully, would include positions representing a variety of Academic Subjects: History, Anthropology, Archaeology, Sociology, Geology/Geo-Physics, Science, Physics/Quantum Physics, Genetics, Math, Legal/Judicial, Philosophy, Religion, Education and Research. ,
Note: A separate content that records the major "Theories" and where neither the 2 "Fact and Theory" be confused.
Clarification:
▶ Summary reference for the "Standards of Science and Research" includes:
"The mind is to be fully open and free of: Beliefs, Theories, Opinions, as these would interfere with the already proven 'Research Methodologies' used to reveal the greater facts from the data entered."
+ all relative content of artifacts and data are to be considered in the study/Research and applied to the analysis of the chosen 'Research Methodology' (the method of data analysis, Math, Statistical Theorem, Calculation method chosen.)
*Present State of History:* The content is highly inconsistent, lacks valid resources, and is *compromised due to the lack of or all together ignoring of the "Standards of Science and Research", lack of an established System to Confirm, Certify, and Validate Facts, and lack of a Centralized Hub for Storing and Managing the Content
Fatal Flaws in the Content used in History Education, Education Tools such as Books, Documentaries, and other Medias, and these largely accepted as Facts, are demonstrated in the following:
💠
▶ The Academics that ascribe to *"Mainstream Academics"* actually stand in opposition to the "Standards of Science and Research" I having established a "Paradigm and Timeline" based on a 19th Century Theory, and they use this "Theory based Paradigm and Timeline" as if it were Fact. It has become their "Tool for Measure and Compassion", ignoring and/or discrediting all Theories, Artifacts, Fossils, Written and Oral Histories that don't fit or support their Paradigm and Timeline.
This practice is also used in their Teachings and Writings, and largely without mention of the point, Theory.
▶ The Academics whom strictly adhere to the practice of the "Standards of Science and Research" are described as *"Authentic Academics".*
Further Academic Certification is highly recommended to allow for greater ease in cooperation and providing a method for the Individual to establish a method for greater potentials in discoveries and successes in all areas of Academic Subject Expertise and Focus, particularly in the subjects of the Sciences and History.
This subject is one that I have been focused on in my areas of degrees, Sociology and History: *"Establishing the Method of Academic Mature Mind Thought Process and the Wisdom Value".*
cc:file/Mature/Thought/Habit/Behavior/20220701
bbartlett
___________________________
I hope you find the intended value I seek to share here as worthy to your consideration and your scope of perspective, and ultimately in benefit to your Academic Outlook + your works and your Successes.
If it is about Facts, Ethics, and Greater Discoveries, then:
It is about the "Standards" and the "Higher Mind vs the Ego Mind"
... and then the Management of the Facts for their value and for being the Resources for those desiring to expand their knowledge and to do their works.
Best Regards,
Beth Bartlett
Tennessee, USA
PS: REALLY enjoyed this presentation and awaiting continuance. Sub'd
Just a thought...Amenhotep lll was the Pharaoh of the Bible (not Ramses) in which all the gods of Egypt were worthless against the plagues from God. Maybe Akhenaten lost all faith in these gods and turned to one god ...the sun.
Yes, Arielle Kozloff suggests something very similar in her book on Amenhotep III: amzn.to/45yYr0E
I would not put much value/credence on what Joann Fletcher has to say. I watched a History Special wherein she proudly announced that she'd found the mummy of Nefertiti because of a wig. DNA later showed that the mummy was a male, and in his early 30's.
Joan Fletcher was Not wrong because this mentioned mummy is the best candidate for nerfertiti.
And IT was not only the wig that Drives her to this conclusion.
Kv35yl ist tutankhamun mother and the sister of kv55 Akhenaton.
Theological make this all Sense.
Akhenaton saw himself self as a living representativ of the 9 goddess of atum.
Amenhotep III is the living Aton.
Nerfertiti is tefnu and akhenaton is shu.
There 6 daughters are the other 6 goddess.
I think nerfertiti was the oldest daughter from amenhotep III.
Her Name was before sitamun.
Sitamun was hieress to Throne.
She was a great royal Queen.
We know from manetho that the daughter of Pharao became Pharao.
Nerfertitis epihet was neferneferuaton.
That was the Birth Name from the Pharao neferneferuaton.
Throne Name was AnkhcheperuRA.
We found a pleg with an feminin t Letter inside the Throne Name.
AnkhTcheperuRA.
Nerfertiti ruled equaly beside akhenaton.
She was depicted in killing the enemys of egypt pose.
and wears the war crone.
So Joan Fletcher was right.
You have no idea what was edited out by the production team - that is no grounds to dismiss someone's knowledge. Especially someone who has achieved the status of professor, which means a panel of her peers looked over her work and deemed it of superior quality and originality. To dismiss them because of a small moment in a TV series, which is not 100% under their control - is not only rude but also downright preposterous.
@Suzan, I totally agree! Joann Fletcher has also been kicked out of Egypt TWICE for making false announcements, and was also suspected of removing artifacts from various locations, and attempting to take them out of the country.
@@thorstenhortheiswanderingf8291Fletcher was proven wrong, and Hawass proved it.
@@allan9603 how ?do you mean the dna Analysis?
I think because kv21a and b have a Lack of good DNA the have to Test IT again.
There is only one Gen in a satalite molekul that differs.
That could be Masseure Problem.
the Bad condition from the fetus from kv62 might caused IT.
Replication failure , a Mutation!
The Rest of the DNA fits perfektly.
So there is only a Questionable Proof against that kv35yl could be nerfertiti.
If Not.
Than kv35yl is she a Sister of nerfertiti.
But IT must BE clear that nerfertiti was a royal Family member.
I think IT was sitamun the oldest daughter from amenhotep III.
She was hieress for the throne.
We found No trace of burial etc.
Sitamun Just vanished.
And i think IT IS reasonable to think that she might have changed her Name!
And Isis too.
So ive have No Problem that kv35yl might maybe Not nerfertiti but a Sister of her.
If you See the bust from nerfertiti in Berlin you can See that she must BE related to the royal Family.
Kv21a und b must BE Family members too.
But the DNA Test have to be done again!
Then we truly know.
I'll find my grave lol
Prominent nilotic african features and customs are all present here and the skull of the unknown pharoah is unmistakably aficanwith the ower jaw prognamsim and the elongated skull inkeeping with african features...Tiye whos fatehr is from nubia, yet they depict her as an arab
Used to call them grave robbers.. Now it's archaeologist... Same thing..Let the dead rest.
Lovely nips
I am a descendent by proof of DNA test reults
All of that Gold Plating had to be accomplished with electricity and Not a 20 Volt Bagdad Battery , There has to be evidence of Gilding tools and Drills and Saws , Why are they Hiding a Long History of Powered Tools ?
Aten could stand for Aton the creators name
The names 'Aten' (sun disk) and 'Atum' (creator god) are certainly different and relate to different gods, even if there are similarities between the two.
Semenkhare is Nefertiti
Who knows, but I agree. I also think it quite reasonable to speculate Kiya = Nefertiti. 👍😎
@@glennmaillard5972 Maybe Nefertiti ruled as regent for tut ankh amon but also as female pharaoh also we shouldn't forget that Hatshepsut ruled as female pharaoh yet she mscilainsed herself in some statues. so it's more likely it was her.
Consider Meritaten (mother of Tutankhamun) was Smenkhkare (in a co-regency or as a sole king with Nefertiti still on as queen).
Neither had lost her title as Akhenaten's Great Royal Wife but each in turn necssarily assumed the kingship to hold the throne for Tutankhamun to come of age.
Meritaten's throne name was Smenkhkare. She died suddenly while holding the throne for her son.
Neferneferuaten (Nefertiti) then assumed the throne to hold it for her grandson.
Nefertiti brought Tutankhamun into his reign.
@@starcapture3040 Yes. My thoughts pretty much too. Its an interesting detail that neither Neferneferuaten nor Smenkhkare appear to have had the other three royal names pharaohs had. Just praenomen (throne name) and nomen (Son of Ra name, usually given at birth). Like they never assumed full status. Or there was some uncertainty as to how Nefertiti saw herself as pharaoh. ‘Neferneferuaten’ appeared as a name for Nefertiti seemingly at or around the time Amenophis (IV) became Akhenaten. Though it was added to Nefertiti, not exchanged for that name. ‘Smenkhkare’ is a curious name. It is a throne name in an earlier dynasty, but not one you find anywhere else in the 18th dynasty, nothing similar. It seems to pop out from nowhere. It seems more throne name than birth name. Sounds like it was chosen late in the Amarna Period for mine. I think Nefertiti dropped Neferneferuaten for Smenkhkare late in her time at Akhetaten and likely after Akhenaten’s death. (Edit: Btw I missed your response two months ago! My apologies).
@@gandolph999 An immediate problem arises for me. Smenkhkare does sound like a throne name to me. But there was a mud seal with dual cartouches on it found by Pendlebury at Akhetaten (Amarna). The cartouches contained the names Ankhkheperure Smenkhkare djeserkheperure. Throne name and nomen. Though the nomen (Smenkhkare) dues sound kind of ‘selected’ to me, and not the original nomen, the Son of Ra name usually given at birth. Akhenaten changed his nomen from Amenophis to Akhenaten. And he seems to have given Nefertiti the added name Neferneferuaten, which I think she used with Ankhkheperure to make Ankhkheperure Neferneferuaten. So ‘Smenkhkare’ appears to be utilised as a nomen not a praenomen (throne name). I guess Meritaten might have become Ankhkheperure Smenkhkare. And she adopted her mother’s throne name of Ankhkheperure and chose ‘Smenkhkare’ as her new nomen. That’s feasible. So we have Neferkheperure Akhenaten then Ankhkheperure Neferneferuaten and then Ankhkheperure Smenkhkare. Akhenaten then Nefertiti then Meritaten. It does actually work logically. Meritaten adopting her mother’s throne name might seem reasonable. An oddity but if so it might fit an odd situation. Btw I leave open the idea that Meritaten was mother of Tutankhamun.
Mumbles
Egypt
Shop lie'ing to the word
Ancient Egypt was African people period not Egyptians and Mediterranean dark 🌑 skin b.s i know people who visit the museums in Egypt and told me that the mummies were pue African people period I saw some of the mummies online I said right up front i notice that they were pure African people period
Facts
All you need to know is, Akhenaten was faced down by Moses. After he came back, without his household guards from the Sea of Reeds, he didn't live very long. As you'd expect - him and The Aten were seen as UTTER failures. He wasn't mummified, BUT, was still a Pharaoh. So, they dumped him into a wooden sarcophagus. And tared out his identity. But it can't be hid from the wise. His skeleton has been recovered. He was (after she returned, she did travel with Moses, her adopted kin) replaced in a few months, by Nefertiti, but she reinvented and renamed herself. To get clear of the whole Aten ruinous mess. Smenkhkare? He was Akhenaten's first born, Tutankhaten's older brother. The real miracle is the poison gases of the tenth plague were not allowed to kill ALL the Egyptians. As it otherwise would have!
Sadly, where Tutankhaten grew into a strong, kind, and merciful man. Who set the kingdom back upright, his brother was a vain fool, filled with pride and cruelty worthy of Hitler. He was thrown in with the mass graves near Amarna. And will never have his remans known or identified. Like Jack The Ripper, his reward is to have his identity lost for ever. The eternal fame they desired always denied them. A reminder of Cain's fate nearly 12 thousand years before the Younger Dryas Flood.
I have read that his brother was Thutmose and Thoth the Great. But I have never met any of them so it’s all hearsay.
@@heathermacgregorrhn6258 ...Just wait 4 years ^_^
@@supernautacus what's in 4 years??
@@queenbeedat8726 ...Wait and see! You'll be alive and healthy, and very well-off too. You won't be able to miss the event. but in your blessed case, you'll welcome it! ^_^
Nefertiti and Akhenaten are King Tuts parents... Thats the truth and yall know it
Let me stop you!!! Were they black or white???
To keep some healthy perspective here, everyone involved in this niche makes wild claims. The constantly stepping over each other's feet, desperate to make a claim about finding the next lost this or that involving a once-in-a-lifetime experience blah blah blah. Everyone has one or more theories about any given topic. Few are able to prove anything to a convincing degree of certainty. I think you all make far more out of this than necessary or warranted. As a discipline, egyptology it is a soft social study, not a hard science. You're kidding yourself if you think it's a serious academic discipline outside of the tiny little world of people who find this stuff fascinating. Once you get into it, you very quickly realize the necessity for self-promotion. Fletcher is no different than Naunton, and the list goes on and on. Bob Brier, for example, is cringe-worthy entertainment. It's one of those areas where amateurs can achieve the same level of knowledge, or more, than academics who wrote a dissertation. I wonder, how many of you have read these dissertations which get pumped out annually by a variety of different universities elbowing each other in an attempt to create or maintain departamental legitimacy. Quite eye-opening if you do. Insiders know that on-site work is not a prerequisite to credibility. We should all be asking these academics what lens, what investigatory framework did they learn in college and are now using to spit out their opinions. That's what separates the valuable from the hacks. Anytime I come across one who has a tendency to romanticize or glorify any period of ancient Egypt, I fasten my seatbelt all the tighter. The study of ancient Egypt is one of those areas where anyone can make a wild claim and get away with it because it's potentially plausible and yet conveniently unprovable.
very interesting, great information, but you are not a good speaker, you are hard to listen to, smaking your lips...🙄
Then YOU go and present the whole series. Really?! Such a silly comment...
Look, I'm very sorry, this guy is a Dr, but if he doesn't recognise that there is nothing strange about the statue.
If you don't recognise an African face, you have no credibility, unless, unless you want to carry favor with Dr Zahi Hawass.
After all in his view Egypt had nothing to do with Africa.