We know quite a lot about Nefertiti, Akhenaten, and the age in which
they lived, considering the effort made by their successors to obliterate
all signs of their existence. Unfortunately,
there is even more that we don’t know, and the fact that Akhenaten was a
revolutionary who made many changes makes it difficult to draw definite
conclusions unless the evidence is substantial.
So far no one has
suggested that Nefertiti arrived in a polka-dotted spaceship from Venus, but
it is possible to find respected and qualified Egyptologists arguing just
about everything else. Hopefully
some day we will find the evidence to prove or disprove these suggestions,
but for the time being we just don’t know.
The following presents some of the ideas that have been put forth
along with the arguments for and against.
The reader should note that, despite the vigor with which some
scholars argue their opinions, there is no proof one way or the other for
any of them
The first question is
whether or not Nefertiti was thought to be a goddess.
This is a little more complicated than it might appear at first
glance. We are all familiar
with the joke about the young woman who admitted to being “a little bit”
pregnant, but according to the world view of the ancient Egyptians it may
well have been possible to be partly divine. The pharaoh was definitely a god but he was seldom worshipped
as such until after his death; divinity simply enabled the pharaoh to understand and communicate
with the other gods and explain to them the needs of his people.
Tradition dictated that
it was the king, as chief priest of all the religious cults, who made
offerings to the gods. Women
participated in worship and the Queen was an important part of any service,
but it was the King who offered the sacrifices.
What then do we make of the scene painted in Karnak early in the
reign showing Nefertiti making an offering to Aten?
At
the four corners of Akhenaten’s sarcophagus are representations of
Nefertiti. Since other pharaohs
placed various goddesses there to provide protection some scholars have
argued that this must mean that Nefertiti was divine.
Others, however, argue that since Akhenaten was a strict monotheist
it would have been reasonable for him to replace the divinities in which he
did not believe with a mortal but much loved wife.
The Egyptians worshipped
many gods and goddesses and it made sense to group them together in worship.
A very common combination involved three divinities; there were many
such triads involving different sets of gods.
While Akhenaten worshipped only the one god Aten, he wanted to retain
as many traditions as he could and seems to have set up a triad involving
himself, Aten and Nefertiti. Does
that mean he thought of Nefertiti as a goddess or merely a suitable human to
complete the much-needed threesome.
Records
of Nefertiti disappear some time between Year 12 and Year 14 of
Akhenaten’s reign. For a
while it was assumed she had retired in disgrace to the Northern Palace, but
that idea has been discarded. The
simplest explanation would be that she died, but it is surprising that no
record of such an important event has survived.
Nefertiti’s shawabti (a small doll made after a person’s death
and buried with the mummy to do any labor required of the deceased in the
afterlife) shows her with the scepters of a king but with the titles of a
King’s Great Wife and not the titles of a ruling monarch.
Was she a pharaoh as the scepters suggest or was she merely the wife
of a king as the inscription suggests?
The “smiting scene”
is a very common portrayal of a pharaoh killing the enemies of Egypt.
It was a standard way to proclaim a pharaoh’s power and his kingly
qualities and did not necessarily refer to any real event.
Nefertiti is unique among kings' wives in being pictured in such a way. Since she is shown in a king’s clothing some argue this is
proof she was a king; others point out that the crown in this scene was the
usual feminine one and maintain that the picture is simply a reflection of
the growing prestige of Eighteenth Dynasty queens and not a sign of kingship.
Nefertiti is also portrayed as a sphinx; again one must decide if this
reflects her kingly state or simply the increased prestige of a queen.
A favorite piece of evidence for the Nefertiti was a king side is a
scene in the Amarna tomb of Panehesy showing Nefertiti and Akhenaten both
wearing the Atef crown of kingship, but her crown is smaller and less
elaborate, so the question remains: is this a sign she was a pharaoh or is
this a sign of her importance.
All
of the above would be cheerfully accepted as signs of a queen’s growing
prestige if it weren’t for the “Smenkhkare question”.
Nefertiti began life with a fairly simple name which later in the
reign she changed to Neferneferuaten-Nefertiti.
There is also, however, a record of Ankhkheperure-Neferneferuaten and
Ankhkheperure-Smenkhkare. The
latter ruled Egypt in the brief interval between Akhenaten and Tutankhamun.
Do these names represent three different people, two people, or just
one? It is possible that the
switch in role from Great Wife to Pharaoh required a change to a more regal
sounding name. If all three
names are the same person it would fully explain the regal nature of some of
the pictures of Nefertiti and how she disappeared so completely.
Manetho,
a third century BCE. historian, referred to a female named Akenhkeres ruling
Egypt at the end of the Eighteenth Dynasty.
Manetho regularly transcribed Egyptian names into something that
would sound better to his Greek audience and it is possible that Akenkheres
is his rendering of Ankhkheprua. Nefertiti
is certainly the only possible candidate for a female ruler at the end of
the Eighteenth Dynasty.
A
mummy found in KV55 (King’s Valley Tomb 55) is that of a king from this
period. Specialists in 1963
identified it as a male who died at about the age of 20, just about
destroying the Nefertiti is Smenkhkare theory, for a king’s mummy that
young could belong to no one but Smenkhkare.
Although
there is yet no written report documenting the medical evidence, a number of
Egyptologists are arguing that the mummy in KV55 is actually that of someone
in his mid thirties. If the
theory should be vindicated then the mummy could very well be that of
Akhenaten, eliminating the biggest objection to the idea that Nefertiti and
Smenkhkare are one and the same.
A third possibility, of
course, is that Nefertiti shared the throne with her husband using the name
Ankhkheperure and that there really was a young man who followed her on the
throne adopting as a form of honor and respect the same name.
This would explain why Ankhkheperure is sometimes written in the
feminine form and sometimes in the masculine and why Akhenaten’s eldest
daughter, Meretaten, is attested as the Great Wife of both Akhenaten and
Ankhkheperure. It seems improbable that Akhenaten would allow another man to
share a wife but quite reasonable to accept that if Akhenaten and Nefertiti
were both pharaohs and in need of a “wife” for ceremonial purposes they
might both use the services of their daughter.
This is an issue of great interest to professional Egyptologists and
of very little importance to anyone else.
The general reader should note the status attached to women who could
call themselves a king’s mother, king’s wife, king’s sister, or
king’s daughter, and should also note the growth in power and prestige of
the pharaoh’s Great Wife throughout the Eighteenth Dynasty and especially
in the reign of Akhenaten. Whether
Nefertiti was officially a pharaoh and took the name of Smenkhkare is not as
important as the fact she was accorded a degree of prominence that no other
major civilization in the ancient world was willing to concede to a woman.