HISTORY:
FOUR KINGS AND TWO QUEENS

No one knows the final resting place of Pharaoh Akhu En Aten and his wife Nefert Iti. He, with his wife, raised the god of the rising sun, Ra Heru Akhuti, to prominence, building a magnificent temple to this god at Karnak. They did so that they could make his father a Living Great God.   The Temple served as a Jubilee Temple for that purpose.  Then they founded a new royal city near modern Asyut and made a whole constellation of temples and residences [1].

The focus of that city was the worship of  Ra Heru Akhuti , the Living Rising Sun, in the person of  Neb Maat Ra who had been raised to full godhead in the magnificent Jubilee Temple east of the Great Temple of Amen at Karnak.[2]

After his father died, and when his near co-regent wife died, Akhu En Aten raised his younger brother to be co-regent. He then began to erase the name of the paramount god "Amen" and destroy his images. Finally, in the last two years of his life, he closed all temples save those to his new sole god, the Aten, the sun's disk. In effect, he established the first documented system of monotheistic worship prior to the advent of Judaism.

The remains of Akhu En Aten and his Queen have never been found. By 1977, Arnold Blackman was still quoting Sir Alan Gardiner's comment, "Conceivably Akhenaten's body had been torn to pieces and thrown to the dogs." This view however, though common, is most unlikely, considering the reverence Ancient Egyptians had for their kings. Furthermore, the survival of the remains of the younger co-regent, Smenkh Ka Ra, effectively ends that argument. The desecration of his furnishings may have taken place in the reign of Ra Meses II, if the flood debris evidence from that reign means anything.

This proposal offers an answer to the puzzle of where they may lie and a methodology to solve it.

Post-mortems done on the remains of the latter two brothers and tests on Queen Tiye's remains show that the so-called Amarna Kings, Akhu En Aten, Smenkh Ka Ra and Tut Ankh Aten/Amen, were brothers. (A lock of Tiye's hair found in Tut Ankh Amen's tomb and hair from the Elder Lady Mummy of Amen Hetep II's tomb proved identical by spectrographic analysis. Also, Smenkh Ka Ra and Tut Ankh Amen proved to have had the same blood type. Furthermore, reconstruction of Smenkh Ka Ra's face from the skeletal remains showed them resembling twins.[3]) Scholars did not commonly know that. Ignorance of that fact has led many serious scholars to reading mistakenly the facts of that era. Only the last several decades have seen the chronology of the end of the Amarna era become clear.

The poor health of the four brothers (the first born, Djehuti Meses, died before his father, Amen Hetep III, could make him co-regent at 16), and their inability to sire sons, made them uncertain of holding office for long. Co- regencies thus became a matter of urgent political need.  The reasons for that poor health is argued in the Article “The Amarna Kings, Anaemias and Parasitic Liver Disease” seen elsewhere on this site.

After twelve years of co-rule with his father, Akhu En Aten began his sole rule of six years (circa 1347-41 B.C.) Soon he made his younger brother, Smenkh Ka Ra co-regent. However, his younger brother's physical condition must have deteriorated. Our one certain wall carving of him, now in the Egyptian Museum in Berlin, shows him supporting himself, most unpharaoh-like, on a staff.

The older king prepared a lavish suite of funeral gear for the younger. But, when the younger king died, the older king had not enough time to install that special and lavish equipment before he also died. Thus it fell to the youngest brother, Tut Ankh Aten, and his advisors to bury the two. They did so in the Royal Wadi at Akhuet Aten, the new Royal city across the river from modern Asyut. Astutely, though, the advisors put the lavish gear in reserve. Later, these same advisors used it for him.

The Great Royal Woman, Queen Tiye, the mother of the brothers, was still living, and Akhu En Aten had prepared a suite of funeral equipment for her too. She died about two years into the new reign. Then the new king and his advisors decided to "return to Thebes" and abandoned the new city, Akhuet Aten. They removed the burials in the Royal Wadi there and installed them in the Valley of Kings at Western Thebes. Studies, beginning with Flinders Petrie, had begun to document the clearances before the turn of this century. These continued with the Germans under Borchardt up to the First Great War. The Egypt Exploration Society continued under -notably - Leonard Wooley, Henri Frankfort and John Pendlebury. However, just who were interred in the Royal Tomb only Geoffrey Martin's recent work has made common knowledge[4].

1. Aldred, Cyril. Akhenaten, King of Egypt. London: Thames & Hudson, 1988. pp. 269-78.
2. Johnson, W. Raymond. “The Deified Amenhotep III as the Living Re-Horakhty: Stylistic and Inconographic Considerations.”  Acts 6th International Congress of Egyptologists Turin 1991, vol. 2231-6, pp. 231-236.
3. Harrison, R. G. `An Anatomical Examination of the Pharaonic Remains Purported to be Akhenaten', Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 52 (1966), pp.113-116.
   Harrison, R. G. Personal Communication, 1982.
4. Martin, G. T. The Royal Tomb at Tel el Amarna, I - The Objects. London 1974.
   Martin, G. T. `Expedition to the Royal Tomb of Akhenaten', Illustrated London News, No. 6998, Sept. 1981, pp.66-7.

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