Murder, mystery and mayhem!

I am fascinated by all things ancient Egyptian, but my favourite era has to be around the time of Akhenaten and his son, Tutankhamen. I have read a couple of really good books on this subject: "The Murder of Tutankhamen - A 3000-Year-Old Murder Mystery" by Bob Brier and "Tutankhamen - The Life & Death of a Boy King" by Christine El Mahdy.

Bob Brier suggests that King Tut was murdered by his scheming uncle, Aye. When I read this book, I must admit he presents a very good case for this. However, I then read Christine El Mahdy's book and was persuaded by her arguments and evidence that this was not the case. She suggests that Tut was killed by a blow to the head that happened during a hunting trip. Death was not immediate, but resulted from this injury several weeks or months later.

In either case, the period of this era in Egyptian history is spell-binding, and I would recommend both books to anyone interested in this subject.

Tutankhamen's father, Akhenaten, was regarded as a radical pharoah. He began a new religion, worshipping the one god - the Aten. This replaced the previous multi-deity religion that had existed for centuries before. You can imagine the chaos and turmoil that the Egyptian people must have gone through during this upheaval. Needless to say, the former priests of the various gods were not pleased about suddenly having their incomes of gifts and treasures removed, and Egypt's military were disgruntled at Akhenaten's pacifistic outlook. Under his reign, the army was left idle, resulting in the loss of many overseas strongholds and payments from Egyptian-held areas.

Akhenaten was married to Nefertiti and they had a new city built at Amarna, in which they lived throughout their reign. They had a total of six daughters, many of whom died in infancy. In fact, at the time of Akhenaten's death, only the eldest, Meritaten, and their third daughter, Ankhesenpaaten were still living. (Ankhesenpaaten later changed her name to Ankhesenaten after she married Tutankhamen.)

The appearance of the name Smenkhkare as successor to Akhenaten caused much confusion and speculation for many years. Who was he? No previous mention of him was made prior to Akhenaten's twelfth year of rule when he was suddenly named as co-regent, so where had he come from? Around this time, the name of Nefertiti also disappeared and gave rise to various rumours. It was initially assumed that he was a son of Akhenaten (from a lesser wife, or concubine) and that he and his father had an incestuous homosexual affair (hence his elevation to the high status of co-regent). It was also assumed that this resulted in the disappearance of Nefertiti (murdered, perhaps?) and that Akhenaten's daughter Meritaten was given her role of "Great Royal Wife" and married off to Smenkhkare to cover up her fathers indiscretions.

In 1976, a palimpsest was found naming a previously unknown wife of Akhenaten called Kiya as the mother of Tutankhamen. Kiya died shortly after his birth, and it was her that was depicted as disappearing around the twelfth year, not Nefertiti.

Nefertiti would have seen Tutankhamen as a threat to her own daughter's succession to the throne, so she had Akhenaten elevate her to the powerful status of co-regent and Meritaten to "Great Royal Wife" to ensure these succession rights. At the time of this elevation, Nefertiti changed her named to Smenkhkare - hence no further reference to Nefertiti after this date. By calling herself by a man's name (Smenkhkare), she was following in the footsteps of a previous Pharoah, Hatshepsut, who was female, but depicted as a male ruler.

After her husband's death, Smenkhkare ruled in her own right with her "Great Royal Wife" - daughter Meritaten. This rule did not last very long (about 2 years) and soon it came down to Akhenaten's third daughter, Ankhesenpaaten, and Tutankhamen to vie for rulership. As both were mere children, it was decided that they should marry, to try and unify power and help settle the unrest that their father's reign had caused amonst his subjects. They ruled Egypt under the regency of Ankhesenpaaten's maternal grandfather, Aye, and army general Horemheb.

After Tutankhamen's death, Christine El Mahdy theorises that Aye feared that Horemheb would try to seize power from the young widow. He conconcted a plan to ensure he had enough time to bury the dead king and instate himself as Pharoah by marrying Ankhesehpaaten (now called Ankhesenaten). He sent word to Horemheb by means of falsified letters from the young Queen saying that she had requested the hand in marriage of a Hittite prince. The Hittites were hated enemies of the Egyptians and Aye knew that Horemheb would intercept the Hittite party to prevent such a marriage. With Horemheb safely preoccupied in the north, Aye was able to buy time to bury Tutankhamen in a secret location and marry his widow.

Unfortunately, neither Ankhesenaten nor Aye ruled for very much time after. Horemheb was able to seize the throne after Aye's death and began systematically destroying all evidence of Akhenaten and Tutankhamen's rule, thus venting over 30 years of anger and frustration at the treatment of his army during this period. Luckily, he was unsuccessful in removing all traces of the Amarna kings and in 1922 Howard Carter found Tutankhamen's lost tomb and with it a whole new and exciting chapter of Egyptian history.