Was Pharaoh Divine?

The author: Professor Yasser Metwally

http://yassermetwally.com

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Obviously the answer is ‘No’, the question is did the ‘Egyptian in the street’ believe that he was and why was it necessary that he believed the religious teachings.

To understand the development of kingship and the belief in the divinity of the pharaoh we need to look at the development of the civilisation in the Nile Valley and compare it to the progress made elsewhere in the world.

Religion and religious ceremony was necessary to hold together the primitive civilisations and cultures that were beginning to form some 7,000 years ago or more. The great fear of the time was death and the blackness that this brought. The promise of life after death for those that believed and followed the ‘true’ teachings was a big incentive to conform.

The country may have been unified under one ruler with one set of laws and a single legal and taxation system but the people would only be unified by a single religion. The various festivals, ceremonies and communal acts of worship were what really brought the people together as a nation.

Figure 1. Celebrating the “Beautiful Feast of the Valley” at Thebes (Click to enlarge figure)

We should not compare Ancient Egypt with current concepts of culture, law, morality or ethics. Holding a rich civilisation together with its growing population and rising economic prospects and holding off external forces that would love to conquer it was not any easy task. If we keep these factors in mind we will see why civilisations generally and Egypt in particular developed in the way they did.

• Development of the State

It is surmised that the development of the state of Egypt closely follows that of other states in the area that developed at about the same time.

Originally the nomadic tribes were hunter-gatherers while the climate was suitable for the growth of wooded grassland. As it dried out tribes tended to migrate to oases and flowing rivers. Those tribes that could adapt survived and gradually changed to a farming way of life for most of their food. These tribes gradually grew in size and would have traded excess produce with neighbours. This would have resulted in some intermarrying and merging into larger units 2.

When a tribe found itself short of food or women a raid would be organised against other local tribes and eventually one tribe grew stronger, dominated the area and assimilated its neighbours.

As the tribe grew in influence the tribal leader became what we would call a warlord who eventually took on the mantle of king1.

• Development of the Leader

With the growing influence of the tribe so the influence of the leader grew. The leader would mostly be male and aggressive because the means of choosing a leader was usually by fighting between challengers. The leader would then gather a powerful group around him, consisting of other aggressive males, to reinforce his leadership. The leader would remain in power so long as he could command the loyalty of his men, which he did by giving them special privileges such as the best food and the choice of the women2.

The most able leaders would have realised that the strong-arm tactics that kept the populace in order did not bring as much prosperity and power as a growing economy. It was also wasteful because it took men away from work in order to enforce his leadership. The fewer men that this took the more produce and goods there would be available for trade.

The more intelligent leaders would therefore have selected some of the more able and thinking types to act as his advisors

Brains gradually replaced brawn and the heavies would have been put in charge of the army and border guards while the king gathered about him a corpus of advisors who organised the different aspects of state affairs under his guidance. As the task grew larger and more complex these advisers would have gathered their own staff to help them.

• Development of Religion

In parallel with the growth of the tribe and warlord/king, primitive forms of religion were developing, initially worshiping in some form the sun, the moon, particular star formations and even dangerous animals. This was an important step in the development of the state.

All civilisations developed their own creation myth naming all the gods necessary to do the work. They still thought of the gods in terms of human endeavour so the sun god for example had to have helpers. They were responsible for the weather, crop fertility, the river and all types of different human and natural activities.

The leader or king was expected to provide protection for his people and this would have extended to food storage against bad harvests. If he couldn’t or hadn’t provided enough he would send his army to annex his neighbour and steal their food stocks. If he lost he would be killed and his area of influence taken over by the victors or one of his generals.

Somewhere in all this it became a custom to thank the god/s for their support against their neighbours, then thank them for the harvest and the rain. It was only a short step to asking the gods for a good harvest or a victory. If there were continual victories or good harvests this would have been followed by the king saying that the gods looked favourably on him and his kingdom.

The more powerful kings obviously said that they had the support of the gods so no one could depose them or they would incur the god’s displeasure. How the concept of divine-kingship developed is not known but there are two schools of thought. One is that a king, fearful for his position, spread the rumour that he had had a vision and the gods had told him that he was their representative or intermediary on earth. The second school thinks that a king may have returned home after a period of some months to find his queen pregnant. Her excuse was that a god, the king’s father, had visited her and impregnated her to continue the line of god-kings,. This idea appears in so many ancient religions that it was obviously copied in the mythology of many countries.

The Pharaoh was central to Egyptian life. He encompassed both the secular and sacred which to Egyptians were one and the same. He settled legal disputes and led the religious rituals that sustained Egypt. The Pharaoh was not only a god-king but was responsible for holding the balance of ma’at, that was the rule of order over the chaos that was waiting to envelope the world. As long as king and commoner alike honoured the gods and obeyed the laws set down by them the balance was maintained and all would be well. Should the Pharaoh fail all the world would suffer and descend into the unthinkable state of anarchy.

Even the Pharaohs ritual vestments were designed to show his power. The symbols of the gods were the kings tools of office. The crook, to reward the innocent, the flail, to punish the guilty, the dual crown, showing his authority to rule the two-lands, and the Ureaus Cobra or Eye of Ra seeing all that the Pharaoh did, good or evil.

Figure 2.  King with Crook and Flail crossing his chest (Click to enlarge figure)

The spirit of Horus, which entered into him at his coronation, was thought to reside within him to guide him along the path of ma’at. Then when he died his spirit was merged with Osiris from where he could guide his successors.

• Why Divinity was Essential

As each kingdom grew each king had to be as great as the king of his neighbouring state otherwise his followers would defect to the superior king and oust the mortal. No one would want to be governed by an inferior king. So gradually this idea of divine kingship was developed. This was aided by the priests who found it to be in their own interest to support the king, who supported them in return, rather than risk getting the blame and being slaughtered for not propitiating the gods when things went wrong.

Figure 3.  An image of the goddess, Hathor (Click to enlarge figure)

The divine king then could not be deposed unless he lost the favour of the gods in which case he was no longer divine and could be replaced. As the head of the state and of divine origin he was also head of the religion and led the most important religious rites and services. This only served to reinforce his position.

The concepts of divine kingship and immaculate conception were of such importance in Egyptian belief that many of the kings had mammisi built showing their conception by Osiris and the shaping of the new-born by the god Khnum with the goddess Hathor present at his birth. A beautiful example of this can be seen in the forecourt of the Temple of Isis at Philae. Here we can see the story told in the Ptolomey I mammisi.

Figure 4.  The Temple of Philae (Click to enlarge figure)

In many civilisations the divinity of the leader or strong juju-medicine was passed on to his supporters and soldiers who believed that no harm could come to them if they were true believers. (This was the case with the followers of The (Mad) Mahdi who sacked Khartoum and the Simbas in the Congo in the 1970s). As a result the army would follow the king into battle without fear. This idea may have been part of the reason why Ramesses II described the battle of Qadesh in the way that he did. His soldiers had supposedly deserted him so the invincible Pharaoh took on the opposing army single-handed and drove them off, thus saving the day for Egypt (more or less, according to the Egyptian story).

• Conclusion

The concept of divine kingship was central to the continuance of rule and civil order in Egypt. The Pharaoh was seen as the emissary of the gods and life was good as long as the religious rites were performed and ma’at was maintained. The king’s notional strength came from the support of the gods and as long as this was maintained no ill could befall the country. Once this was lost, however, the kingdom was thrown into turmoil until a new strong king, who had the support of the gods, took the throne.

The importance of this was recognised by all the pharaohs up to Roman times and each new king perpetuated the myth of divine conception as a means of legitimising his (and sometimes her) claim to the throne.

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References

1. Bronowski, Prof. J; The Ascent of Man
2. Kemp, Barry J; Ancient Egypt

The Kings (Pharaohs) of Ancient Egypt

The author: Professor Yasser Metwally

http://yassermetwally.com

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The title of “Pharaoh” actually comes to us from the Greek language and its use in the Old Testament. It originates in the Egyptian Per-aa, meaning “Great House”, a designation of the palace, which first came to be used as a label for the king around 1450 BC, though it only became common usage some centuries later. For most of the time, the usual word for the king of ancient Egypt was nesu, but a whole range of titles were applicable to any full statement of a king’s names and titulary.

Figure 1. Ramesses the second (Click to enlarge figure)

According to Egyptian legend, the first kings of Egypt were later some of Egypt’s most famous gods. We really do not know whether some of these individuals actually existed in human form or what regions of Egypt they may have ruled over. Only at the end of the Predynastic period, prior to the unification of Egypt, can we recognize specific kings who most likely ruled over either northern or southern Egypt. According to many sources, the first real king of Egypt, therefore ruling over the unified land, was Menes, who would have ruled Egypt around 3100 BC, but we have little if any archaeological basis for this name. Most scholars today believe that he may have been a king named Narmer, or more likely still, Aha, two figures that are better attested in the archaeological record. However, Menes might have also been a legendary composition of several rulers. After these first rulers of a unified Egypt, the Egyptian monarchy lasted in a recognizable form for over three thousand years, basically ending with Cleopatra, though even Roman emperors attempted to style themselves as Egyptian pharaohs. We know of 170 or more specific pharaohs during this period of time. Although many changes occurred during that time, almost all of the fundamentals remained the same.

Kings were not only males, and unlike in modern monarchies, the ruler of ancient Egypt, whether male or female, was always called a king. In fact, Egypt had some very noteworthy female rulers such as Hatshepsut and others.

Figure 2. Tuthmosis III (Click to enlarge figure)

In ancient (Pharaonic) Egypt, the pinnacle of Egyptian society, and indeed of religion, was the king. Below him were the layers of the educated bureaucracy which consisted of nobles, priests and civil servants, and under them were the great mass of common people, usually living very poor, agricultural based lives. Except during the earliest of themes, when the highest official was apparently a Chancellor, for most of Egyptian history, the man or men just under the king were Viziers, (tjaty), a position that was roughly similar to a modern Prime Minister.

Figure 3. Muntohotob II (Click to enlarge figure)

In many if not most accounts, the king is viewed as an incarnation of Horus, a falcon god, and the posthumous son of Osiris, who himself was a divine king slain by his brother, Seth. Horus fought his uncle for the return of the throne, and part of the accession process of the king was the proper burial of his predecessor, as Horus carrying out the last rites of Osiris. In fact, there are a number of cases where such an act may have been the legal basis for a non-royal figure’s ascent of the throne. However, more usual was the succession of the eldest son, whose status as heir was frequently, if not always, proclaimed during his father’s lifetime. Furthermore, there were a number of instances where this was taken a step further by the heir’s coronation as a co-regent prior to the father’s death. This has actually led to much confusion among scholars, because in some cases, the young heir began to count his regnal years only after the death of his father, while in other instances, he started to do so from the moment of his coronation. The ancient Egyptians did not use era dating as we do today (BC or AD), but rather relied on regnal dating of the king’s rule, and therefore potential difficulties for modern, if not ancient, historians can easily be imagined.

The king himself (or herself) was the figure upon whom the whole administrative structure of the state rested. These god-kings usually commanded tremendous resources. The Pharaoh was the head of the civil administration, the supreme warlord and the chief priest of every god in the kingdom. All offerings were made in his name and the entire priesthood acted in his stead. In fact, he was himself a divine being, considered the physical offspring of a god. The myth of the ruler’s divine birth centered on the god assuming the form of (or becoming incarnate in) the king’s father, who then impregnated his wife, who accordingly bore the divine ruler.

Of course, the king was also subject to some rather grave responsibilities. Through his dealings with the gods, he was tasked with keeping the order, or ma’at of the land, and therefore keeping out chaos, often in the form of the enemies of Egypt from foreign lands. But he was also responsible for making sufficient offerings and otherwise satisfying the gods so that they would bless Egypt with a bountiful Nile flood, and therefore a good enough harvest to feed his people. When he failed at these tasks, he could bear not only blame, but a weakening of the state and thus his power. In drastic cases, such as at the end of the Old Kingdom, this could actually lead to a complete collapse of the Egyptian state.

Figure 4. Seti I (Click to enlarge figure)

Even today, many questions remain about the kings of ancient Egypt. We have a fairly good idea of their order through time, though often scholars disagree about specific dates related to our current form of the calendar. Our evidence of their order comes mostly from various “kings’ lists, that almost exclusively were made during the New Kingdom. Another source is the Egyptian history written by Manetho, an Egyptian priest, but over the years, there have been modifications to both the kings’ lists and Manetho’s history made through archaeological discovery. Nevertheless, there are periods of Egyptian history, particularly those known as intermediate periods, where very little information exits on who ruled (usually only a part of) Egypt.

Figure 5. Akhenaten  (Click to enlarge figure)

Basically, Manetho divided up ancient Egyptian history into thirty dynasties, though this division is a bit difficult, and modern scholarship has proven it to be not completely (and sometimes not at all) accurate. Most of the time, a dynasty consisted of a related family of rulers, though sometimes dynasties seem to have been broken up due to the establishment of a new capital. In a number of instances, modern Egyptologists believe that he may have been incorrect about the end of a family line.

Even today, the power that an ancient Egyptian pharaoh commanded in ancient Egypt and the resources under his control can seem staggering. One need only think in terms of the Great Pyramids, the wealth of gold and the grand temples to gain some understanding of their power. They commanded resources that many modern day states would be hard pressed to emulate, and they did so at a time when much of the remainder of the ancient world were struggling for a foothold in history.

Figure 6. Horemheb (Click to enlarge figure)

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References

1. Chronicle of the Pharaohs (The Reign-By-Reign Record of the Rulers and Dynasties of Ancient Egypt) Clayton, Peter A. 1994 Thames and Hudson Ltd ISBN 0-500-05074-0

2. History of Ancient Egypt, A Grimal, Nicolas 1988 Blackwell None Stated

3. Monarchs of the Nile Dodson, Aidan 1995 Rubicon Press ISBN 0-948695-20-x

4. Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, The Shaw, Ian 2000 Oxford University Press ISBN 0-19-815034-2

Pyramids of Giza Sound and Light Show, Egypt

The author: Professor Yasser Metwally

http://yassermetwally.com

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The Great Pyramids of Egypt

The author: Professor Yasser Metwally

http://yassermetwally.com

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There are no more famous ancient sites within Egypt, or for that matter elsewhere in the world, than the Great Pyramids at Giza. They are, without question, the icon most associated with the Egypt. They have been both the main destination for tourists, and a source of imaginative thought to the world for over three thousand years.

Video 1. The great Egyptian pyramids

However, there are actually over 100 pyramids in Egypt, many of which are relatively unknown to anyone who is not an ancient Egypt enthusiast. All but a very few are grouped around and near the City of Cairo, just south of the Nile Delta. Otherwise, only one royal pyramid is known in southern Egypt (at Abydos), that being the one built by Ahmose, founder of the 18th Dynasty and Egypt’s New Kingdom. It may have also been the last royal pyramid built in Egypt.

Hence, major pyramids were not built throughout Egypt’s ancient history. The Pyramid Age began with a burst of building, starting with the 3rd Dynasty reign of Djoser. Some of the early kings, most specifically Snefru, built more than one pyramid. Almost all of the kings added to their number through the end of the Middle Kingdom, with the possible exception of the First Intermediate Period between the Old and Middle Kingdoms. After the first Pharaoh of Egypt’s New Kingdom, Ahmose, royal pyramid building by Egyptians ceased entirely. Somewhat abruptly the kings of the New Kingdom chose, rather than making their tombs completely obvious, to hide them in the hills of the West Bank of Thebes (modern Luxor).

Video 2. The great Egyptian pyramids

However, smaller pyramids were constructed, for example in the Deir el-Medina necropolis, by private individuals. The Late Period Nubians who ruled Egypt also built relatively small pyramids with much steeper sides, though these were in fact constructed in Nubia itself. This tradition was carried on in Nubia after these southern rulers lost control of Egypt, and eventually, more pyramids were actually built in Nubia than Egypt, though on a much smaller scale.

Other pyramids in the world certainly exist, but their purpose, for the most part, was different than those of ancient Egypt. The most famous outside Egypt are probably those located in Mexico and to the south of Mexico, but these appear to have been built more as temples. In Egypt, all but a select few of the pyramids were built as tombs, sometimes to hold the physical body of a pharaoh (as well as other individuals), or to hold the soul of the deceased (as in the case of the small cult pyramids built next to the larger ones). Otherwise, the purpose of only a few small, regional stepped pyramids remains elusive.

While pyramids were, for the most part, tombs for the Pharaohs of Egypt, one must nevertheless question the reason that Egyptian rulers chose this particular shape, and for that matter, why they built them so large. Today, we believe that they chose the shape in order to mimic the Benben, a pyramid shaped stone found in the earliest of temples, which itself is thought to symbolize the primeval mound from which the Egyptians believed life emerged. This also connected the pyramid to Re, the Sun God, as it was he, according to some of the ancient Egypt mythology, who rose from the primeval mound to create life.

As far the great size of many of the pyramids in Egypt, we can really only surmise that the Pharaohs were making a statement about their own power and perhaps, about the glory and strength of their country. However, it should also be remembered that many of the latter pyramids were not nearly as large as the Great Pyramids at Giza (and elsewhere).

Pyramids evolved. The first of them was not a perfectly formed pyramid. In fact, the first Pyramid we believe that was built in Egypt, that of Djoser, was not a true pyramid at all with smooth sides and a point at the top. Rather, its sides were stepped, and the top of the pyramid truncated with a flat surface (as best we know). As the Egyptian pyramids evolved, there were failures as well glorious failures until finally, they got it right with what was probably the first smooth sided true pyramid built at Meidum. In fact, pyramids continued to evolve throughout their history, perhaps not always in outward appearances, but in the way that they were built and in the theology surrounding their construction. For example, towards the latter part of Egypt’s Pyramid Age, Osirian beliefs seem to have had more and more impact on the arrangement and layout of the subterranean chambers.

However, soon after the first pyramids were built, their form became somewhat standardized. Royal pyramid complexes included the main pyramid, a courtyard surrounding the main pyramid, a much smaller cult pyramid for the king’s soul, a mortuary temple situated next to the main pyramid, an enclosure wall and a causeway that led down to a valley temple. Some pyramid complexes included subsidiary, smaller pyramids for family members, and most were surrounded by some sort of tombs for family members.

Our thinking on pyramids has evolved considerably over the years. Many of us who are a bit older were taught that the pyramids were built using Jewish slave labor, which is a fabrication of immense proportions. Most of the pyramids were built long before the Jews made their appearance historically and currently, many if not most scholars believe they were not built using slave labor at all (or perhaps a nominal number of slaves).

Otherwise, we can also dismiss offhand alternative theories related to aliens or some lost culture being responsible for pyramid building. There is just far too much evidence, including tools, drawings, evolutionary changes, and even worker villages that rule these farfetched ideas obsolete.

However, some mysteries remain, even in some of the best well known Pyramids. The most famous of them all, the Great Pyramid of Khufu, continues, year after year, to give up a few more secrets, and there doubtless remains much to learn from these Egyptian treasures. There may even be one or more pyramids yet to be discovered.

Tutankhamen tomb discovered

The author: Professor Yasser Metwally

http://yassermetwally.com

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The tomb of Tutankhamen, the Pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt, was discovered by Howard Carter in 1923. The tomb in the Valley of the Kings was nearly intact when it was found and the discovery sparked worldwide press attention. Thus, Tutankhamen is now one of the most popular and widely recognised of Pharaohs. King Tut ruled 1333 BC – 1324 BC. He began his reign at the age of nine.

Queen Hatshepsut…Queen of Egypt

The author: Professor Yasser Metwally

http://yassermetwally.com

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Born in the 15th century BC, Hatshepsut, daughter of Tuthmose I and Aahmes, both of royal lineage, was the favorite of their three children. When her two brothers died, she was in the unique position to gain the throne upon the death of her father. To have a female pharaoh was unprecedented, and probably most definitely unheard of as well. When Tuthmose I passed away, his son by the commoner Moutnofrit, Tuthmose II, technically ascended the throne. For the few years of his reign, however, Hatshepsut seems to have held the reins. From markings on his mummy, archaeologists believe Tuthmose II had a skin disease, and he died after ruling only three or four years. Hatshepsut, his half sister and wife, had produced no offspring with him (her daughter Nefrure was most likely the daughter of her lover Senmut), although he had sired a son through the commoner Isis. This son, Tuthmose III, was in line for the throne, but due to his age Hatshepsut was allowed to reign as queen dowager.

Figure 1. Queen Hatshepsut’s family tree (Click to enlarge figure)

Hatshepsut was not one to sit back and wait for her nephew to age enough to take her place. As a favorite daughter of a popular pharaoh, and as a charismatic and beautiful lady in her own right, she was able to command enough of a following to actually take control as pharaoh. She ruled for about 15 years, until her death in 1458 BC, and left behind more monuments and works of art than any Egyptian queen to come.

Figure 2. Queen Hatshepsut’s (Click to enlarge figure)

Hatshepsut, as a female, had many obstacles to overcome. There was always a threat of revolt, especially as her bitter nephew came of age. Using propaganda and keen political skills, she deftly jumped each hurdle she faced. To quell the fears of her people, she became a “king” in all statuary and relief during her reign. She even dressed in the traditional garb of male rulers: the shendyt kilt, the nemes headdress with its uraeus and khat headcloth, and the false beard. Although there were no wars during her reign, she proved her sovereignty by ordering expeditions to the land of Punt, in present-day Somalia, in search of the ivory, animals, spices, gold and aromatic trees that Egyptians coveted. These expeditions are well documented in the hieroglyphic inscriptions on the walls of her temple. With these inscriptions are included incised representations of the journey, including humorous images of the Puntites and their queen, at whom the Egyptians no doubt looked while restraining a giggle; the queen has folds of fat hanging over her knees and elbows, her back is crooked and she has an aquiline nose. To the short, thin Egyptian she was probably quite a sight. Hatshepsut, in a final bid to be recognized as a legitimate queen, constructed a fabulous temple in the Valley of the Kings, of all places, by a tall plateau at Deir-el-Bahri, across the Nile from Thebes.

Figure 3. Queen Hatshepsut’s (Click to enlarge figure)

Hatshepsut was a master politician, and an elegant stateswoman with enough charisma to keep control of an entire country for twenty years. Her charisma and experience could carry her only so far, however. She used two devices to ensure the legitimacy of her position. The first was to emphasize not only her relationship to Tuthmose I, but her favor from that popular ruler. She claimed to have been handpicked by her father, above her two brothers and her half-brother. In her temple are written the words of Khnum, the divine potter who sculpted the forms of the gods:

I will make you to be the first of all living creatures, you will rise as king of Upper and of Lower Egypt, as your father Amon, who loves you, did ordain.

This assertion has validity, as other texts indicate. Her second conceit was more doubtful, however: she claims a direct divine lineage. As in the previous passage, she claims Amon is her father. On the walls of her tomb is inscribed a story detailing the night the Theban god Amon-Re approached Aahmes in the form of Tuthmose I.

Amon took the form of the noble King Tuthmose and found the queen sleeping in her room. When the pleasant odours that proceeded from him announced his presence she woke. he gave her his heart and showed himself in his godlike splendour. When he approached the queen she wept for joy at his strength and beauty and he gave her his love…

Figure 4. Queen Hatshepsut’s (Click to enlarge figure)

These propaganda worked well to cement Hatshepsut’s position. But as Tuthmose III grew, her sovereignty grew tenuous. He not only resented his lack of authority, but no doubt harbored only ill will towards his step-mother’s consort Senmut. Senmut originally intended to be buried in the tomb he designed for Hatshepsut, but was actually buried nearby in his own tomb. Not long after his death, however, his sarcophagus was completely destroyed. The hard stone that had been carved for his funerary coffin was found in over 1,200 pieces. His mummy was never found. Hatshepsut’s mummy was likewise stolen and her tomb destroyed. Only one of the canopic jars was found, the one containing her liver. After her death, it is presumed that Tuthmose III ordered the systematic erasure of her name from any monument she had built, including her temple at Deir-el-Bahri. Since most of the images of her were actually males, it was convenient to simply change the name “Hatshepsut” to “Tuthmose” I, II or III wherever there was a caption. Senmut’s name was also removed. Whether Tuthmose killed Hatshepsut, Senmut and Nofrure is questionable but likely. Since he paid little respect to her in death, it is quite possible he paid even less in life.

Figure 5. Queen Hatshepsut’s (Click to enlarge figure)

While this account is the most accepted of theories, the Hatshepsut Problem was a source of endless debate near the turn of the twentieth century. The archeaologists Edouard Naville and Kurt Sethe went head-to-head on the order of rule between the three Tuthmoses and Hatshepsut. Since it is generally assumed that if one ruler’s name is replaced with another, the second ruler is in power at the time, a confusing problem exists. Theoretical timelines indicate that the succession followed this sequence:

1. Tuthmose I

2. Tuthmose III

3. Tuthmose III and Hatshepsut, together

4. Tuthmose III alone

5. Tuthmose I and Tuthmose II

6. Tuthmose II alone

7. Hatshepsut and Tuthmose III

8. Tuthmose III alone

This sequence seems as illogical as it is complicated, and only after the discovery of the tomb of Ineni, the architect of the tomb of Tuthmose I. His description follows a more intuitive sequence, and disproves the previously-held belief that only Tuthmose III would put his name in Hatshepsut’s place.

Not only was Hatshepsut’s name erased, but some of her monuments were destroyed. She built two obelisks of red granite, the largest built to that point. This was a continuation of the works of her father, who was not able to complete all his construction plans. Her name appeared on the obelisks, but instead of toppling them, Tuthmose III ordered them sheathed in masonry. Their gilded pyramidions were probably the only original elements to be exposed. Later, one of the obelisks was destroyed after all.

Video 1. The Egypatian royal mummies

In all, Hatshepsut accomplished what no woman had before her. She ruled the most powerful, advanced civilization in the world, successfully, for twenty years. Even if there were some who resented her success, her success stands for all eternity.

Figure 6. Queen Hatshepsut’s (Click to enlarge figure)

Queen Hatshepsut was the first great woman in recorded history: the forerunner of such figures as Cleopatra, Catherine the Great and Elizabeth I.

Her rise to power went against all the conventions of her time. She was the first wife and Queen of Thutmose II and on his death proclaimed herself Pharaoh, denying the old king’s son, her nephew, his inheritance. To support her cause she claimed the God Amun-Ra spoke, saying “welcome my sweet daughter, my favourite, the king of Upper and Lower Egypt, Maatkare, Hatshepsut. Thou art the King, taking possession of the Two Lands.” She dressed as a king, even wearing a false beard and the Egyptian people seem to have accepted this unprecedented behaviour.

Video 2. The identification of Queen Hatshepsut’s mummy by DNA analysis (comment in the arabic language)

She remained in power for twenty years and during this time the Egyptian economy flourished, she expanded trading relations and built magnificent temples as well as restoring many others. Eventually her nephew grew into a man and took his rightful place as pharaoh. The circumstances of this event are unknown and what became of Hatshepsut is a mystery.

Figure 7. Queen Hatshepsut’s temple at Deir el Bahri (Click to enlarge figure)

Hatshepsut’s successor became the greatest of all Pharaohs, Thutmose III, “the Napoleon of ancient Egypt.” He had her name cut away from the temple walls which suggests he was not overly fond of his auntie. But the fact that she was able to contain the ambitions of this charismatic and wily fellow for so many years, hints at the qualities of her character.

Figure 8. Queen Hatshepsut’s temple at Deir el Bahri (Click to enlarge figure)

Figure 9. Parade’ and ‘The Army’ are etchings made from drawings done at Deir el Bahri. ‘The Army’ represents a trading expedition to the Land of Punt (thought to be somewhere on the coast of Somalia) and shows Nehsi the Nubian general. (Click to enlarge figure)

The Great Sphinx of Giza

The author: Professor Yasser Metwally

http://yassermetwally.com

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In a depression to the south of Khafre’s pyramid at Giza near Cairo sits a huge creature with the head of a human and a lion’s body. This monumental statue, the first truly colossal royal sculpture in Egypt, known as the Great Sphinx, is a national symbol of Egypt, both ancient and modern. It has stirred the imagination of poets, scholars, adventurers and tourists for centuries and has also inspired a wealth of speculation about its age, its meaning, and the secrets that it might hold.

The word “sphinx”, which means ’strangler’, was first given by the Greeks to a fabulous creature which had the head of a woman, the body of a lion and the wings of a bird. In Egypt, there are numerous sphinxes, usually with the head of a king wearing his headdress and the body of a lion. There are, however, sphinxes with ram heads that are associated with the god Amun.

Figure 1. The Great Sphinx of Giza (Click to enlarge figure)

The Great Sphinx is to the northeast of Khafre’s (Chephren) Valley Temple. Where it sits was once a quarry. We believe that Khafre’s workers shaped the stone into the lion and gave it their king’s face over 4,500 years ago. Khafre’s name was also mentioned on the Dream Stele, which sits between the paws of the great beast. However, no one is completely certain that it is in fact the face of Khafre, though indeed that is the preponderance of thought. Recently, however, it has been argued that Khufu, builder of the Great Pyramid, may have also had the Great Sphinx built.

Figure 2. The Great Sphinx of Giza (Click to enlarge figure)

The Great Sphinx is believed to be the most immense stone sculpture in the round ever made by man. However, it must be noted that the Sphinx is not an isolated monument and that it must be examined in the context of its surroundings. Specifically, like many of Egypt’s monuments, it is a complex which consists not only of the great statue itself, but also of its old temple, a New Kingdom temple and some other small structures. It is also closely related to Khafre’s Valley Temple, which itself had four colossal sphinx statues each more than 26 feet long.

Figure 3. The Great Sphinx of Giza (Click to enlarge figure)

The material of the Sphinx is the limestone bedrock of what geologists call the Muqqatam Formation, which originated fifty million years ago from sediments deposited at the bottom of sea waters that engulfed northeast Africa during the Middle Eocene period. An embankment formed along what is now the north-northwest side of the plateau. Nummulites, which are small, disk-shaped fossils named after the Latin word for ‘coin’, pack the embankment. These were once the shells of now extinct planktonic organisms. There was a shoal and coral reef that grew over the southern slope of the embankment. Carbonate mud deposited in the lagoon petrified into the layers from which the ancient builders, some fifty million years later, carved out the Great Sphinx.

Video 1. The Great Sphinx of Giza

To do so, they trenched out a deep, U-shaped ditch that isolated a huge rectangular bedrock block for carving the Sphinx. This enclosure is deepest immediately around the body, with a shelf at the rear of the monument where it was left unfinished and a shallower extension to the north where important archaeological finds have been made.

Figure 4. The Great Sphinx of Giza (Click to enlarge figure)

The good, hard limestone that lay around the Sphinx’s head was probably all quarried for blocks to build the pyramids. The limestone removed to shape the body of the beast was evidently employed to build the two temples to the east of the Sphinx, on a terrace lower than the floor of the Sphinx enclosure, one almost directly in front of the paws, the other to the south of the first one.

It is generally thought that quarrying around the original knoll revealed rock that was too poor in quality for construction. Therefore, some visionary individual conceived of the plan to turn what was left of the knoll into the Sphinx. However, the Sphinx may equally well have been planned from the start for this location, good rock or bad. The walls of the Sphinx enclosure are of the same characteristics as the strata of the Sphinx body and exhibit similar states of erosion.

Video 2 The Great Sphinx of Giza

The bedrock body of the Sphinx became a standing section of the deeper limestone layers of the Giza Plateau. The lowest stratum of the Sphinx is the hard, brittle rock of the ancient reef, referred to as Member I. All of the geological layers slope about three degrees from northwest to southeast, so they are higher at the rump of the Sphinx and lower at the front paws. Hence, the surface of this area has not appreciably weathered compared to the layers above it.

Figure 5. The Great Sphinx of Giza (Click to enlarge figure)

Most of the Sphnix’s lion body and the south wall and the upper part of the ditch were carved into the Member II, which consists of seven layers that are soft near the bottom, but become progressively harder near the top. However, the rock actually alternates between hard and soft. The head and neck of the Great Sphinx are made of Member III, which is better stone, though it becomes harder further up.

The Sphinx faces the rising sun with a temple to the front which resembles the sun temples which were built later by the kings of the 5th Dynasty. The lion was a solar symbol in more than one ancient Near Eastern culture. The royal human head on a lion’s body symbolized power and might, controlled by the intelligence of the pharaoh, guarantor of the cosmic order, or ma’at. Its symbolism survived for two and a half millennia in the iconography of Egyptian civilization.

Figure 6. The Great Sphinx of Giza (Click to enlarge figure)

The head and face of the Sphinx certainly reflect a style that belongs to Egypt’s Old Kingdom, and to the 4th Dynasty in particular. The overall form of his face is broad, almost square, with a broad chin. The headdress (known as the ‘nemes’ head-cloth), with its fold over the top of the head and its triangular planes behind the ears, the presence of the royal ‘uraeus’ cobra on the brow, the treatment of the eyes and lips all evidence that the Sphinx was carved during this period.

The sculptures of kings Djedefre, Khafre and Menkaure and other Old Kingdom Pharaohs, all show the same configuration that we see on the Sphinx. Some scholars believe that the Great Sphinx was originally bearded with the sort of formally plaited beard. Pieces of the Sphinx’s massive beard found by excavation adorn the British Museum in London and the Cairo Museum. However, it seems to possibly, if not probably be dated to the New Kingdom, and so was likely added at a later date. The rounded divine beard is an innovation of the New Kingdom, and according to Rainer Stadelmann, did not exist in the Old or Middle Kingdom. It may have been added to identify the god with Horemahket.

Figure 7. The Great Sphinx of Giza (Click to enlarge figure)

There is a hole in the top of the head, now filled in, that once provided support for additional head decoration. Depictions of the Sphinx from the latter days of ancient Egypt show a crown or plumes on the top of the head, but these were not necessarily part of the original design. The top of the head is flatter, however, than later Egyptian sphinxes.

The body is 72.55 meters in length and 20.22 meters tall. The face of the sphinx is four meters wide and its eyes are two meters high. The mouth is about two meters wide, while the nose would have been more than 1.5 meters long. The ears are well over one meter high. Part of the uraeus (sacred cobra), the nose, the lower ear and the ritual beard are now missing, while the eyes have been pecked out. The beard from the sphinx is on displayed in the British Museum.

Below the neck, the Great Sphinx has the body of a lion, with paws, claws and tail (curled round the right haunch), sitting on the bedrock of the rocky enclosure out of which the monument has been carved. The enclosure has taller walls to the west and south of the monument, in keeping with the present lie of the land.

When viewed close-up, the head and body of the Sphinx look relatively well proportioned, but seen from further away and side-on the head looks small in relation to the long body (itself proportionally much longer than is seen in later sphinxes). In its undamaged state, the body is likely to have appeared still larger all around in relation to the head, which has not been reduced as much by erosion. The human head is on a scale of about 30:1, while the lion body is on the smaller scale of 22:1. There could be a number of explanations for this discrepancy.

This was, as far as we know, one of the very first of the Egyptian sphinxes, though there is at least one other, attributed to Djedefre, that predates it. The rules of proportion commonly employed on later and smaller examples may not yet have been formulated at the time of the carving of the Great Sphinx of Giza. In any case, the carving of sphinxes was always a flexible formula, to an unusual degree in the context of Egyptian artistic conservatism.

Figure 8. The Great Sphinx of Giza (Click to enlarge figure)

Then again, the Sphinx may have been sculpted to look its best when seen from fairly close by and more or less from the front. There is also the possibility that there was simply insufficient good rock to make the head, where fine detail was required, any bigger. Also, the fissure at the rear of the Great Sphinx may have dictated a longer body, rather than one much too short.

There remains the possibility that the head has been remodeled at some time and thereby reduced in size, but on stylistic grounds alone this is not likely to have been done after the Old Kingdom times in ancient Egypt.

There are three passages into or under the Sphinx, two of them of obscure origin. The one of known cause is a short dead-end shaft behind the head drilled in the nineteenth century. No other tunnels or chambers in or under the Sphinx are known to exist. A number of small holes in the Sphinx body may relate to scaffolding at the time of carving.

Figure 9. The Great Sphinx of Giza (Click to enlarge figure)

The figure was buried for most of its life in the sand. It was King Thutmose IV (1425 – 1417 BC) who placed a stela between the front paws of the figure. On it, Thutmose describes an event, while he was still a prince, when he had gone hunting and fell asleep in the shade of the sphinx. During a dream, the sphinx spoke to Thutmose and told him to clear away the sand. The sphinx told him that if he did this, he would be rewarded with the kingship of Egypt. Thutmose carried out this request and the sphinx held up his end of the bargain. Of course, over time, the great statue, the only single instance of a colossal sculpture carved in the round directly out of the natural rock, once again found itself buried beneath the sand.

In the more modern era, when Napoleon arrived in Egypt in 1798, the Sphinx was buried once more with sand up to its neck, at by this point, we believe the nose had been missing for at least 400 years. Between 1816 and 1817, the Genoese merchant, Caviglia tried to clear away the sand, but he only managed to dig a trench down the chest of the statue and along the length of the forepaws. Auguste Mariette, the founder of the Egyptian Antiquities Service, also attempted to excavate the Sphinx, but gave up in frustration over the enormous amount of sand. He went on to explore the Khafre Valley Temple, but returned to the Great Sphinx to excavate in 1858. This time, he managed to clear the sand down to the rock floor of the ditch around the Sphinx, discovering in the process several sections of the protective walls around the ditch, as well as odd masonry boxes along the body of the monument which might have served as small shrines. However, he apparently still did not clear all the sand.

Figure 10. The Great Sphinx of Giza (Click to enlarge figure)

In 1885, Gaston Maspero, then Director of the Antiquities Service, once again tried to clear the Sphinx, but after exposing the earlier work of Caviglia and Mariette, he also was forced to abandon the project due to logistical problems.

Between 1925 and 1936, French engineer Emile Baraize excavated the Sphinx on behalf of the Antiquities Service, and apparently for the first time since antiquity, the great beast once again became exposed to the elements.

Figure 11. The Great Sphinx of Giza (Click to enlarge figure)

In fact, the sand has been its savior, since, being built of soft sandstone, it would have disappeared long ago had it not been buried for much of its existence.

Nevertheless, the statue is crumbling today because of the wind, humidity and the smog from Cairo. The rock was of poor quality here from the start, already fissured along joint lines that went back to the formation of the limestone millions of years ago. There is a particularly large fissure across the haunches, nowadays filled with cement, that also shows up in the walls of the enclosure in which the Sphinx sits.

Below the head, serious natural erosion begins. The neck is badly weathered, evidently by wind-blown sand during those long periods when only the head was sticking up out of the desert and the wind could catapult the sand along the surface and scour the neck and the extensions of the headdress that are missing altogether now. The stone here is not quite of such good quality as that of the head above.

Figure 12. The Great Sphinx of Giza (Click to enlarge figure)

Erosion below the neck does not look like scouring by wind-blown sand. In fact, so poor is the rock of the bulk of the body that it must have been deteriorating since the day it was carved out of the stone. We know that it needed repairs on more than one occasion in antiquity. It continues to erode before our very eyes, with spalls of limestone falling off the body during the heat of the day.

So, today, much of the work on the Great Sphinx at Giza is not directed at further explorations or excavations, but rather the preservation of this great wonder of Egypt. This is the focus, and while some might even today have the antiquity authorities digging about the monument looking for hidden chambers holding the secrets of Atlantis, that is not likely to happen any time soon.

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References

Title	Author	Date	Publisher	Reference Number
Atlas of Ancient Egypt	Baines, John; Malek, Jaromir	1980	Les Livres De France	None Stated
Complete Pyramids, The (Solving the Ancient Mysteries)	Lehner, Mark	1997	Thames and Hudson, Ltd	ISBN 0-500-05084-8
Complete Temples of Ancient Egypt, The	Wilkinson, Richard H.	2000	Thames and Hudson, Ltd	ISBN 0-500-05100-3
Dictionary of Ancient Egypt, The	Shaw, Ian; Nicholson, Paul	1995	Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers	ISBN 0-8109-3225-3
Discovery of Egypt, The (Artists, Travellers and Scientists)	Beaucour, Fernand; Laissus, Yves; Orgogozo, Chantal	1990	Flammarion	ISBN 2-08-013506-6
Encyclopedia of Ancient Egyptian Architecture, The	Arnold, Dieter	2003	Princeton University Press	ISBN 0-691-11488-9
Excavating in Egypt: The Egypt Exploration Society 1882-1982	James, T. G. H.	1982	University of Chicago Press, The	ISBN 0-226-39192-2
Giza The Truth	Lawton, Ian; Ogilvie-Herald, Chris	2000	Virgin Publishing Ltd.	ISBN 0-7535-0412-x
Great Pyramids, The: Man’s Monument to Man	Valentine, Tom	1975	Pinnacle Books	ISBN 0-523-00517-2
Illustrated Guide to the Pyramids, The	Hawass, Zahi;  Siliotti, Alberto	2003	American University in Cairo Press, The	ISBN 977 424 825 2
Monuments of Civilization Egypt	Barcocas, Claudio	1972	Madison Square Press; Grosset & Dunlap	ISBN 0-448-02018-1
Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt, The	Redford, Donald B. (Editor)	2001	American University in Cairo Press, The	ISBN 977 424 581 4
Pyramids, The (The Mystery, Culture, and Science of Egypt’s Great Monuments)	Verner, Miroslav	2001	Grove Press	ISBN 0-8021-1703-1
Pyramids and Sphinx, The (Egypt Under the Pharaohs)	Steward, Desmond	1979	Newsweek	ISBN 0-88225-271-2
Pyramids of Ancient Egypt, The	Hawass, Zahi A.	1990	Carnegie Museum of Natural History, The	ISBN 0-911239-21-9
Sacred Sites of Ancient Egypt	Oakes, Lorna	2001	Lorenz Books	ISBN (non stated)
Treasures of the Pyramids, The	Hawass, Zahi	2003	American University in Cairo Press, The	ISBN 977 424 798 1

Queen Nefertiti

The author: Professor Yasser Metwally

http://yassermetwally.com

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Arguably, to those who are not very involved in the study of ancient Egypt, Queen Nefertiti is perhaps better known than her husband, the heretic king Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV). It is said that even in the ancient world, her beauty was famous, and her famous statue, found in a sculptor’s workshop, is not only one of the most recognizable icons of ancient Egypt, but also the topic of some modern controversy. She was more than a pretty face however, for she seems to have taken a hitherto unprecedented level of importance in the Amarna period of Egypt’s 18th Dynasty. In artwork, her status is evident and indicates that she had almost as much influence as her husband. For example, she is depicted nearly twice as often in reliefs as her husband, at least during the first five years of his reign. Indeed, she is once even shown in the conventional pose of a pharaoh smiting his (or in this case, her) enemy.

• Family Line

Nefertiti may or may not have been of royal blood. She was probably a daughter of the army officer, and later pharaoh, Ay, who may in turn have been a brother of Queen Tiye. Ay sometimes referred to himself as “the God’s father”, suggesting that he may have been Akhenaten’s father-in-law, though there is no specific references for this claim. However, Nefertiti’s sister, Mutnojme, is featured prominently in the decorations of Ay’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings on the West Bank at Thebes (modern Luxor). However, while we know that Mutnojme was certainly the sister of Nefertiti, her prominence in Ay’s tomb clearly does not guarantee her relationship to him. Others have suggested that Nefertiti may have been a daughter of Tiye, or that she was Akhenaten’s cousin. Nevertheless, as “heiress”, she may have also been a descendant of Ahmose-Nefertari, though she was never described as God’s wife of Amun. However, she never lays claim to King’s Daughter, so we certainly know that she cannot have been an heiress in the direct line of descent.

If she was indeed the daughter of Ay, it was probably not by his chief wife, Tey, who was not referred to as a “Royal mother of the chief wife of the king”, but rather ‘nurse’ and ‘governess’ of the king’s chief wife. It could be that Nefertiti’s actual mother died early on, and it was left to Tey to raise the young girl. However, many other explanations have also been suggested.

Figure 1. Queen Nefertiti (Click to enlarge figure)

• Personal Life and the Relationship of King and Queen

Together, we know that Akhenaten and Nefertiti has six daughters, though it was probably with another royal wife called Kiya that the king sired his successors, Smenkhkare and Tutankhamun. Nefertiti also shared her husband with two other royal wives named Mekytaten and Ankhesenpaaten, as well as later with her probable daughter, Merytaten.

Video 1. Queen Nefertiti

Undoubtedly, Akenaten seems to have had a great love for his Chief Royal wife. They were inseparable in early reliefs, many of which showed their family in loving, almost utopian compositions. At times, the king is shown riding with her in a chariot, kissing her in public and with her sitting on his knee. One eulogy proclaims her:

“And the Heiress, Great in the Palace, Fair of Face, Adorned with the Double Plumes, Mistress of Happiness, Endowed with Favors, at hearing whose voice the King rejoices, the Chief Wife of the King, his beloved, the Lady of the Two Lands, Neferneferuaten-Nefertiti, May she live for Ever and Always”

Crucially important to Akhenaten was Femininity which was not only basic to his personal life, but also to his thinking and his faith. In fact, it is indeed difficult to find another founder of a religion for whom women played a comparable role. Akhenaten had a number of different women about him, and they are depicted in virtually every representation of a cult-ritual or state ceremony conducted by the king at his new capital honoring the sun god. Nefertiti was not the only queen to be treated well.

Figure 2. Queen Nefertiti (Click to enlarge figure)

Each of the royal women had her own sanctuary, which was frequently called a sunshade temple. They were usually situated in a parkland environment of vegetation and water pools, emphasizing the importance of female royalty in the daily renewal of creation affected by the god Aten.

However, it was the figure of Nefertiti that Akhenaten had carved onto the four corners of his granite sarcophagus and it was she who provided the protection to his mummy, a role traditionally played by the female deities Isis, Nephthys, Selket and Neith.

Figure 3. Queen Nefertiti (Click to enlarge figure)

One influence within the personal lives of Nefertiti and Akhenaten must have been the presence of Akhenaten’s mother, Tiye. Tiye would have held a special position as a wise woman in his court, and we can only surmise that this must have had some affect on the younger couple’s relationship.

Queen Tiye as the “wise woman” of El Amarna was often depicted with facial features that not only signaled old age, but life experience and wisdom calling for respect and even veneration.

When Nefertiti’s face is represented with the first signs of old age, this may well signify that she has assumed the position of “wise woman” following the death of Tiye, at which point her court status would have been even further elevated.

• The Religion

Nefertiti and her King lived during a highly unusual period in Egyptian history. It was a time of religious controversy when the traditional gods of Egypt were more or less abandoned at least by the royal family in favor of a single god, the sun disk named Aten. However, it should be noted that the Egyptian religion did not actually become monotheistic, for cults related to the other gods did persist and they were never really erased from the Egyptian theology.

It is believed that Nefertiti was active in the religious and cultural changes initiated by her husband (some even maintain that it was she who initiated the new religion). She also had the position as a priest, and she was a devoted worshipper of the god Aten. In the royal religion, the King and Queen were viewed as “a primeval first pair”. It was they who worshipped the sun disk named Aten and it was only through them that this god was accessed. Indeed, the remainder of the population was expected to worship the royal family, as the rays of the sun fell and gave life to, it would seem, only the royal pair.

Figure 4. Queen Nefertiti (Click to enlarge figure)

However, many scholars presume that the Mutnodjme who later married King Haremhab is none other than the younger sister of Nefertiti. In Akhenaten: King of Egypt by Cyril Aldred, the author explains that a fragmentary statue of Mutnodjme discovered at Dendera describes her not only as “Chief Queen”, but also “God’s Wife [of Amun]“, which he explains puts her in the line of those other great consorts who traced their descent from Ahmose-Nefertari. This links both sisters to the cult of Amun, which he tells us could obviously not have been openly proclaimed at Amarna.

Yet we must be very careful with this link between Nefertiti and Amun by way of her sister’s later attachment to the cult. Haremhab considered himself to be an adamant restorer of the old religion after the Amarna period, and so just because his Chief Queen took the title of God’s Wife does not necessarily mean that Nefertiti held any real interest in that cult.

Doubtless though, Nefertiti may very well, and probably did participate in a similar manner as God’s Wife in the cult of Re-Atum. Unlike other chief queens, she is shown taking part in the daily worship, repeating the same gestures and making similar offerings as the king. Where traditionally a relationship existed between God and King, now that relationship is expanded to include the royal pair.

She in fact exhibits the same fashion as God’s Wife. From her first appearance at Karnak, she wears the same clinging robe tied with a red sash with the ends hanging in front. She also wears the short rounded hairstyle. In her case, this was exemplified by a Nubian wig, the coiffure of her earlier years, alternating with a queens tripartite wig, both secured by a diadem bearing a double uraei. Sometimes this was replaced by a a crown with double plumes and a disk, like Tiye and her later Kushite counterparts.

She dressed for appeal, and if she fulfilled a similar function as God’s wife of Amun in the Amarna religion, part of this responsibility would have been to maintain a state of perpetual arousal. However, since the Aten was intangible and abstract, this appeal must be to his son the king. Ay praises her for “joining with her beauty in propitiating the Aten with her sweet voice and her fair hands holding the sistrums”.

In fact, as the wife of the sun god’s offspring, she took on the role of Tefnut, who was the daughter and wife of Atum. After the fourth regal year, she began to wear a mortar-shaped cap that was the headgear of Tefnut in her leonine aspect of a sphinx. She was then referred to as “Tefnut herself”, at once the daughter and the wife of the sun-god. Therefore, Nefertiti played an equal role with the king who was the image of Re.

Figure 5. Queen Nefertiti (Click to enlarge figure)

Of course, as a god, no mortal could claim to be her mother, which may be the reason why Tey must content herself with the titles of “Wet-nurse” and “Governess” In fact, it may have been that she hid her parentage to conceal the fact that the progenitors of this high and mighty princess were not also equally divine.

• Nefertiti’s Disappearance

Towards the end of Akhenaten’s reign, Nefertiti disappeared from historical Egyptian records. For a number of years, scholars though that she had fallen from grace with the king, but this was actually a case of mistaken identity. It was Kiya’s name and images that were removed from monuments, and replaced by those of Meryetaten, one of Akhenaten’s daughters. It has been suggested, though there is no hard supporting evidence, that by year twelve of Akhenaten’s reign, and after bearing him a son and possibly a further daughter, Kiya became too much of a rival to Nefertiti and that it was she who caused Kiya’s disgrace.

Figure 6. Queen Nefertiti (Click to enlarge figure)

It is possible that Nefertiti disappearance a number of years after that of Kiya’s simply meant that she died around the age of thirty, though there are controversies on this matter as well. It may not be simple coincidence that, shortly after Nefertiti’s disappearance from the archaeological record, Akhenaten took on a co-regent with whom he shared the throne of Egypt. This co-regent has been a matter of considerable speculation and controversy, with a whole range of theories. One such theory puts forward the idea that the co-regent was none other than Nefertiti herself in a new guise as a female king following the lead of women such as Sobkneferu and Hatshepsut. Another theory is that there were actually two co-regents, consisting of a male son named Smenkhkare, and Nefertiti under the name Neferneferuaten, both of whom adopted the prenomen, Ankhkheperure. Undoubtedly, like her husband who was originally named Amenhotep, she too took the new name, Neferneferuaten to honor the Aten (Neferneferuaten can be translated as “The Aten is radiant of radiance [because] the beautiful one is come” or “Perfect One of the Aten’s Perfection”). Indeed, she may have even changed her name prior to her husband doing so, but rather this means she also served as co-regent is questionable.

Some scholars are considerably adamant about Nefertiti assuming the role of co-regent, and even serving as king for a short time after the death of Akhenaten. One such individual is Jacobus Van Dijk, responsible for the Amarna section of the Oxford History of Ancient Egypt. He believes that Nefertiti indeed became co-regent with her husband, and that her role as queen consort was taken over by her eldest daughter, Meryetaten (Meritaten). If this is true, then Nefertiti may have even taken up residence in Thebes, as evidenced by a graffito dated to year three in the reign of Neferneferuaten mentioning a “Mansion of Ankhkheperure”. If so, there could have been an attempt made at reconciliation with the old cults. He also suggests that Smenkhkare might have also been Nefertiti, ruling after the death of her husband, with her own daughter acting in a ceremonial role of “Great Royal Wife”.

Figure 7. Queen Nefertiti (Click to enlarge figure)

However, other scholars are equally adamant against Nefertiti ever having been a co-regent or ruling after her husband’s death. In his book, Akhenaten: King of Egypt, Cyril Aldred references a funerary objected called a shawabti. On it was inscribed:

“The Heiress, high and mighty in the palace, one trusted [of the King of Upper and Lower Egypt (Neferkheperure, Wa'enre), the son of Re (Akhenaten), Great in] his Lifetime, the Chief Wife of the King (Neferneferuaten-Nefertiti), Living for Ever and Ever.”

Aldred claims that this shawabti, according to the above inscription, can only belong to Nefertiti, and not, as some scholars argue, a donation by her to Akhenaten’s burial. Presumably, this object was made after the queen’s death as it was the custom during this period to make such objects during the embalming process.

Aldred also maintains that is was the custom in orthodox funerary benedictions to follow the name of the deceased with maet kheru (justified). Akhenaten rejected this practice as part of his new religion, but even so, two of his own shawabti were nevertheless inscribed with phrase after his own death. However, even though the phrase returns to favor immediately after Akhenaten’s death, it is absent from Nefertiti’s shawabti, evidencing her death during his reign.

He also notes that the shawabti represents her as a queen regnant, and not as a co-regent in male attire. Though this single piece of evidence seems somewhat scanty, he believes that Nefertiti died during year 14 of Akhenanten’s reign.

If he is indeed correct that Nefertiti died during the reign of her husband, his dating is probably correct. Nefertiti is depicted on a number of reliefs including that of her second daughter’s burial, who is believed to have died during the thirteenth year of Akhenanten’s reign. However, that is the last that we see of the queen. This is also about the time (year 14) that dockets for delivery of wine from the estate of Nefertiti also cease, so the presumption by Aldred is that Nefertiti must have died sometime very near Akhenaten’s 14th year as king.

• Recent Controversy

Nefertiti is perhaps best remembered for the painted limestone bust depicting her. Many consider it one of the greatest works of art of the pre-modern world.

Sometimes known as the Berlin bust, it was found in the workshop of the famed sculptor Thutmose. This bust depicts her with full lips enhanced by a bold red. Although the crystal inlay is missing from her left eye, both eyelids and brows are outlined in black. Her graceful elongated neck balances the tall, flat-top crown which adorns her sleek head. The vibrant colors of the her necklace and crown contrast the yellow-brown of her smooth skin. While everything is sculpted to perfection, the one flaw of the piece is a broken left ear. Because this remarkable sculpture is still in existence, it is no wonder why Nefertiti remains ‘The Most Beautiful Woman in the World.’

Figure 8. Queen Nefertiti (Click to enlarge figure)

However, the bust plays a part in one recent controversy. For more than eight decades, the serenely beautiful likeness of Queen Nefertiti’s head has been the most celebrated exhibit in Berlin’s Egyptian Museum, attracting thousands of visitors and resisting all attempts at repatriation.

But a conceptual artwork involving the 3,300-year-old limestone bust and the body of a scantily clad woman has provoked outrage in the queen’s homeland and the accusation that Nefertiti is no longer safe in Germany.

The artwork is the brainchild of a Hungarian duo called Little Warsaw, and involved lowering the head of Nefertiti on to the headless bronze statue of a woman wearing a tight-fitting transparent robe.

This angered a number of officials in Egypt for several reasons. First of all, it must be remembered that Egypt is a rather conservative society and the attachment of Nefertiti’s head to an almost nude statue was seen as an affront to Egyptian sensibilities. However, it was also pointed out by some Egyptian Egyptologists that such a display might give rise to some damage to the bust.

Irregardless, this controversy is probably short lived. The display apparently only lasted for a few hours and so the controversy has largely been mitigated at this point.

A recent, more enduring controversy surrounding Nefertiti is the possible discovery of her mummy, or at least the new identification of a previously known mummy. Soon after the incident involving Nefertiti’s bust, Joanne Fletcher, a noted mummification expert from the University of York in England, announced that she and her team may have identified the actual mummy of the queen.

Back in 1898, the French Egyptologist Victor Loret excavated the tomb of Amenhotep II on the Theban necropolis and came upon a remarkable find. This was the first tomb ever opened in which the Pharaoh was still in his original resting place, and, moreover, eleven other mummies were also discovered in a sealed chamber in the tomb. All but three of these mummies, due to their critical state of preservation, were transferred to the Egyptian Antiquities Museum in Cairo.

Figure 9. Queen Nefertiti (Click to enlarge figure)

One of the three mummies that were left behind became known among Egyptologists as the “Younger Lady” and since then Egyptologists have swayed between believing this corpse to be either Nefertiti or Princess Sitamun, a daughter of Amenhotep III. Fletcher was drawn to the tomb during an expedition in June 2002 after identifying a Nubian style wig worn by royal women during Akhenaten’s reign. She also pointed to other clues that suggest that this mummy might indeed be Nefertiti, such as a doubled- pierced ear lobe, which she claims was a rare fashion statement in Ancient Egypt; a shaven head; and the clear impression of the tight-fitting brow-band worn by royalty. “Think of the tight-fitting, tall blue crown worn by Nefertiti, something that would have required a shaven head to fit properly,” said Fletcher.

“There is a puzzle,” she conceded, and explained that in 1907, when Egyptologist Grafton Elliot Smith first examined the three mummies, he reported that the Younger Lady was lacking a right arm. Nearby, however, he had found a detached right forearm, bent at the elbow and with clenched fingers. She said that the mummy had deteriorated badly; that the skull was pierced with a large hole, and the chest hacked away. Worse still, the face, which would otherwise have been excellently preserved, had been cruelly mutilated, the mouth and cheek no more than a gaping hole. Further examination using cutting- edge Canon digital X-ray machinery, the team spotted jewelry within the smashed chest cavity of the mummy. They also noticed a woman’s severed arm beneath the remaining wrappings. The arm was bent at the elbow in Pharaonic style with its fingers still clutching a long-vanished royal scepter.

Figure 10. Queen Nefertiti (Click to enlarge figure)

Following Discovery Channel’s coverage of the events, the identification of the Younger Lady’s mummy as Nefertiti immediately attracted an eager audience and made headlines around the world. But Egyptologists are not so convinced. In fact, they are divided into two schools of thought. Salima Ikram, author of The Mummy in Ancient Egypt: Equipping the Dead for Eternity, sees the identification as “interesting” and one that will doubtless cause endless speculation.

Figure 11. ? The mummy of Queen Nefertiti (Click to enlarge figure)

Others express doubt that the remains are those of the legendary queen of beauty. Egyptologist Susan James, who trained at Cambridge University and who spent a long time studying the three mummies, told Discovery Channel, who financed the expedition, ” What we know about mummy 61072 would indicate that it is one of the young females of the late 18th dynasty, very probably a member of the royal family. However, physical evidence known and published prior to this expedition indicates the unlikelihood of this being the mummy of Nefertiti. Without any comparative DNA studies, statements of certainty are wishful thinking.”

For his part, Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) Zahi Hawass totally refutes the idea, and describes it as “pure fiction”. He accuses Fletcher of lacking in experience, as “a new PhD recipient”, and that Fletcher’s theory was not based on facts or solid evidence, “only on facial resemblance between the mummy and Nefertiti’s bust, and on artistic representations of the Amarna period in which the queen lived”.

Figure 12. ? The mummy of Queen Nefertiti (Click to enlarge figure)

Hawass asserted, moreover, that the physical resemblance is not significant, “because all the statues of the Amarna era have the same characteristics. Amarna art was idealistic and not realistic,” he said, and pointed out that in the Egyptian Museum, there were five of six mummies with the same characteristics. Mamdouh El-Damati, director of the Egyptian Museum, mentioned that this theory was not new, this being the second time that a claim to have discovered Nefertiti’s mummy within this group of mummies had been made.

So controversy swirls around Nefertiti as surely as it always has, and probably always might. At best, perhaps someday we may know more about this intriguing queen, but until then we can only make guesses about her life, as well as her remains.

Video 2. ? The mummy of Queen Nefertiti

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References

Title	Author	Date	Publisher	Reference Number
Akhenaten: King of Egypt	Aldred, Cyril	1988	Thames and Hudson Ltd	ISBN 0-500-27621-8
Chronicle of the Pharaohs (The Reign-By-Reign Record of the Rulers and Dynasties of Ancient Egypt)	Clayton, Peter A.	1994	Thames and Hudson Ltd	ISBN 0-500-05074-0
History of Ancient Egypt, A	Grimal, Nicolas	1988	Blackwell	None Stated
Monarchs of the Nile	Dodson, Aidan	1995	Rubicon Press	ISBN 0-948695-20-x
Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, The	Shaw, Ian	2000	Oxford University Press	ISBN 0-19-815034-2