In 1390 BC , a year full of grand state ceremonies, a royal funeral and a coronation were followed by a royal wedding when the boy king took a young girl as his Great Royal Wife. After listing the new king’s names and titles, the public announcement sent out across the empire stated that ‘the Great Royal Wife is Tiy. Her father’s name is Yuya, her mother’s name is Tuya, and she is the wife of a mighty king.’ Mighty or not, he was still only a boy and it was unlikely to have been love at first sight. The choice of bride may well have been made by the regent, Mutemwia, who ‘put oil on the head of the girl’ to signify the choice.
Although Tiy is usually dismissed as a commoner, it seems unlikely that an unknown quantity would have been plucked from obscurity to perform the vital role of Great Royal Wife. Maybe Mutemwia looked within her own family, and some have suggested that Yuya was Mutemwia’s brother, which would make Tiy her niece. It would certainly explain how Tiy immediately attained great influence. It has even been suggested that Tiy was descended from the illustrious Ahmose-Nefertari, since it has been suggested that her name is a shortened form of Nefertari and its variant Nefertiti, sometimes spelled Nefertitiy.
Whatever the reasons for the choice, Tiy’s family is certainly a fascinating one. As the marriage announcement stated, she was the daughter of Yuya and Tuya, or, as it is occasionally written, Tuya and Yuya, with her mother’s name given precedence. Early Egyptologists believed the couple to have been Syrian, but in fact the family came from Akhmim, a town between Amarna and Thebes. Akhmim was cult centre of the potent fertility god Min: Tiy’s father was one of his priests and her mother also worked for the god as Chief of Entertainers. Following their daughter’s nuptials, the family moved to Thebes and were promoted by their new son-in-law. Yuya was made Master of the Horse and His Majesty’s Lieutenant-commander of Chariotry, whilst his additional priestly title of God’s Father is often interpreted as ‘father-in-law’. As for Tuya, Royal Mother of the Great Royal Wife, she became Chief of the Entertainers of Amen and was a singer to both Amen and Hathor. Even Tiy’s brother Anen was elevated to high office when he was made ‘second prophet’, or deputy high priest of Amen at Karnak Temple, presumably to keep tabs on what was going on there. To symbolise his role as temple astronomer, his priestly panther skin robe was spangled with gold stars. Tiy’s other brother is believed to have been Ay, who later held much the same titles as Yuya including that of God’s Father.
Supported by an increasingly influential family, and with her name twinned with that of her husband, she appears alongside Amenhotep throughout his entire reign. Although she never ruled in her own right she certainly took an active role in politics, corresponding with foreign dignitaries who clearly respected her wise counsel and sent precious gifts in an attempt to win her favour. There is a strong suggestion of her determined, tenacious character in the pouting features and concentrated expression found in her sculpture, and she seems to have achieved greater prominence than any other royal wife before her.
Tiy is regularly depicted with all the attributes needed to protect and sustain the king, and wore crowns incorporating the goddesses’ horns, sun disc, feathers and vulture head. She is also shown wearing a superb robe of feathers as homage to the vulture goddess Nekhbet, the one who helped the sun god through the sky in the same way that the queen helped the sun king through his reign. As goddess queen to his god king Tiy was the incarnation of the sun god’s female relatives, and as Hathor, goddess of beauty and sexual love, she was known as ‘the one who fills the palace with love, the one who fills the palace with beauty’. Yet Hathor’s alter ego was of course Sekhmet, known as Great of Fearsomeness, and so the queen appears as a sphinx, guarding her husband’s names and trampling the enemy, the defender of king and country in the same way that the goddess defended the god.
As Great Royal Wife Tiy was not alone, since the king had also awarded the title to his mother, Mutemwia, and later in his reign would do so to his two eldest daughters, Sitamen and Isis. And then of course there were all the king’s minor wives, from home-grown talent to the mail-order brides who arrived throughout the reign as tribute from across the empire.
At this time Egypt was without question the most powerful nation in the ancient world, with a vast empire reaching from the Euphrates (in modern Iraq) down into the Sudan. Nubia and the Sudan were controlled by the king’s viceroy, who also kept a firm grip on the region’s goldmines. To the north, the vassal states of Syria-Palestine were divided into three areas. Each of these was ruled by an Egyptian governor supported by a military garrison, and it was their job to keep an eye on the local leaders, who remained in place provided they were loyal and sent annual tribute. This could include their own women and children, and, as one vassal wrote, ‘Say to the king, my lord, my god, my Sun! Message from Satiya, the ruler of Enisasi, I am your servant, the dirt beneath your feet! I send my daughter to the palace, to you the king, my lord, my god, my Sun.’
Pharaoh also laid claim to the Aegean, and the bases of some of his statues were carved with the names of sites such as Knossos, Rhodes and Mycenae. Hailed as the ‘Star of Egypt’, Amenhotep III and ‘King’s Wife Tiy’ were names well known in the region, and appear on imported Egyptian objects such as vases, plaques and scarab seals. Some of these were found within the citadel of Mycenae in the House of Idols cult centre, revealing something of the esteem in which Egypt’s king and queen were held. And since Aegean pottery has been found at the Egyptian palaces of Malkata and Gurob, it seems likely that Greek women may also have been sent along as gifts.
The empire also enjoyed good relations with the major powers of Babylonia, Assyria, Arzawa (Western Anatolia), Cyprus and Mitanni in Syria. The diplomatic correspondence which flowed between them would become known as the Amarna Letters, although they actually began in the reign of Amenhotep III. Revealing a wealth of detail about royal life in the fourteenth century BC, their contents give glimpses of actual characters, from the opportunism of the king of Babylon to the warmth of Tushratta of Mitanni and even the hard-headed diplomacy and unexpected humour of pharaoh himself.
Friendly relations between Egypt and Mitanni had already been sealed when the king’s father, Tuthmosis IV, married a Mitannian princess, a policy his son Amenhotep III enthusiastically pursued every time a new king succeeded in the allied countries. So when Shuttarna II became king of Mitanni, his daughter Kiluhepa was despatched to Egypt and pharaoh sent out a proclamation dated to his tenth year as king. His names and titles, together with those of Tiy and her parents Yuya and Tuya, are followed by the announcement that there was ‘brought to his majesty the daughter of the ruler of Mitanni, Kiluhepa, and the chief women of her household – a total of 317 women.’ The king’s eyes must have lit up at the arrival of hundreds of women all at once, an event which he describes as ‘a wonder’.
Twenty years later, when Tushratta took over as king of Mitanni, he wanted to continue the alliance and told pharaoh that ‘My father loved you, and you in turn loved my father. In keeping with this love my father gave you my sister. And who else stood with my father as you did? So I send you six chariots and horse-teams, and as a greeting gift to my sister Kiluhepa I send her a set of gold brooches, a pair of gold earrings, a gold ring and a bottle of sweet perfume.’ He also offered his daughter Tadukhepa in marriage, and when the Egyptian delegation went to Mitanni to collect her Tushratta reported back,
Your messenger came to take her to become the mistress of Egypt. I read and reread the tablet which was brought before me and I listened to its words. Your words were very pleasing my brother, and I rejoiced on that day as if I had seen you in person. I made the day and night a festive occasion. I will now deliver her as your wife, mistress of Egypt, and on that day we shall be as one. May Ishtar my goddess, mistress of all lands and of my brother, and Amen, the god of my brother, make her [Tadukhepa] the image of my brother’s desire. You will note that she has become very mature, and is surely built according to my brother’s desires.
For their wedding ceremony Tushratta supplied his personal statue of the Syrian goddess Ishtar to legitimise the cross-cultural union, as had also occurred at the time of Amenhotep’s previous Mitannian marriage. Together with the blessing ‘May Ishtar grant you great blessings and exquisite joy and may you live forever’, Tushratta gave pharaoh a wonderful necklace of chunky gold and lapis lazuli beads, with the wish ‘May it rest on the neck of my brother for 100,000 years.’ He also sent him more horses and chariots, weaponry and exotic foreign clothing which the king seems to have appreciated, whilst Tadukhepa was sent jewellery worth around £150,000 or a quarter of a million dollars in today’s terms. Such generous gifts from her family must have been a comfort to the new bride in a foreign country. Her father also wrote a stream of letters to pharaoh and Tiy, one of which ends, ‘Tushratta is the Mitannian King, Amenhotep the Egyptian King and they love one another exceedingly’.
Pharaoh also opened negotiations with the king of Anatolia, sending his messenger to vet another prospective bride and ‘pour oil on her head’ to mark their betrothal. The accompanying sacks of gold and precious gifts apparently did the trick, since the Anatolian king wrote back, ‘If you really desire my daughter, why should I not give her to you? I give her to you.’
Yet things were rather more protracted when it came to dealing with the splendidly named Kadashman-Enlil of Babylon. Having already married the king’s sister, pharaoh requested another alliance. But the Babylonian king wrote back: ‘Now you are asking to marry my daughter, but my sister whom my father gave you is already there with you, but no one has seen her to know if she is alive or dead. You received my messengers when all your wives were there, saying ‘‘Here is your mistress who stands before you.’’ But my messengers did not recognise her and didn’t know if it was my sister who was at your side.’
Clearly Amenhotep read the rest of the long letter carefully, since he replied point by point:
I have just heard what you wrote to me about. But have you ever sent one of your officials who actually knows your sister, who could speak with her and identify her? No. The men whom you sent here do not count. One was a nobody, the other a donkey herder . . . As Amen is my witness, your sister is alive. I have made her a Mistress of the Household. And as for you writing to me to make yourself wealthy, you only sent me a single present. Are we to laugh?
Sensing that pharaoh was none too pleased, Kadashman-Enlil finally agreed to his request, conceding that since ‘my daughter about whom you wrote me in view of marriage is now a woman, you can send a delegation to fetch her’. Yet the arrangement was strictly one-way, and when the Babylonian king asked for one of Amenhotep’s daughters he was turned down flat. When he then asked why not, since ‘You are King, You can do as you please,’ pharaoh remained adamant and told him straight, ‘From of old a daughter of a king of Egypt has never been given to anyone.’ And that was the end of it.
Whilst Amenhotep was building up international relations, his allies’ prime objective was gold, since it was widely believed that ‘gold is like sand in Egypt, you simply pick it up’. The king of Babylon was especially keen, and had written:
Now as to the gold I wrote to you about, send me whatever is available so I can finish the work I am doing this summer. If you send the gold I will give you my daughter, so please send it. If you do not, and I cannot finish the work, what would be the point sending it later? Then you could send me 100 tons of the stuff and I wouldn’t accept it. I would sent it back, and wouldn’t give you my daughter in marriage.
None too impressed by this attitude, pharaoh had told him, ‘It’s a fine thing when you give your daughters simply to acquire a nugget of gold from your neighbour.’
One of the letters, written in Babylonian script, even preserves the words of one of these women; although sadly anonymous, she said, ‘Tell my lord so speaks the princess: may the gods accompany you. In the presence of my lord I prostrate myself. My messenger brings you a gift of coloured cloth. May all go well with your cities and your household, and do not worry or you will have made me sad. I would give my life for you.’
The five or more foreign wives from Mitanni, Babylonia and Anatolia were accompanied by hundreds of female attendants and ladies-in-waiting. There were more than 600 Mitannian women alone, 317 accompanying Kiluhepa and another 270 sent later with her niece Tadukhepa. And Amenhotep III was always on the look-out for those little extras. In the days when ‘beautiful female cup-bearers without defect’ could be bought for the bargain price of around forty shekels each, the king wrote to one of his Palestinian vassals saying, ‘I am sending you my official to fetch beautiful women, in whom there is no defect. Then the king your lord will say ‘‘this is excellent’’.’
A great many children were also sent to Egypt to be raised at court, no doubt acting as convenient bargaining counters in the diplomatic game. Referring to the large numbers of foreign women and children he housed on the West Bank of Thebes, the king described buildings filled with servants and ‘the children of every foreign country . . . It is princes surrounded by Syrian settlements inhabited by the children of princes’. Although incredibly cosmopolitan it must also have been a pretty noisy environment, fillled with the chatter of voices from across the ancient world.
Music-making was one of the main occupations of the women surrounding the king. Performed for their own amusement as well as that of the court, song and dance also played a vital part in state ritual, led by the royal women and the wives and daughters of his high officials. At investitures, award ceremonies and festivals to replenish royal powers, voices were accompanied by hand-clapping, finger-clicking and the playing of small harps, lutes, drums and the newly invented tambourine. There were also small clappers of wood or ivory; one surviving delicate pair in ivory carved into a pair of tiny hands is inscribed with the name ‘Great Royal Wife Tiy’.
Then there were the cult symbols of the goddess Hathor carried by her priestesses as a badge of office. The menat was a heavy necklace made up of thick rows of beads, and, though not strictly speaking a musical instrument, it was held by its metal counterpoise and shaken to produce a percussive rattling sound. A superb example, found in Queen Tiy’s royal apartments, was made of thousands of tiny blue beads customised with semi-precious stones and amulets, and clear signs of wear and tear show that it had seen long service. The menat was generally accompanied by the sistrum, the sacred rattle. The goddess’s devotees sang, shook their tinkly sistrums and rattled their menats to summon up her powers for the king’s benefit, telling him in song to ‘Reach out to the beautiful one, to the ornament of Hathor, lady of heaven.’
The hymns also convey something of the festive atmosphere of wine, women and song which carried on late into the night as the drink helped her devotees commune with the Lady of Drunkenness. ‘Come, Golden Goddess,’ ran the words of one hymn, ‘the singers are chanting and it is good for the heart to dance! Shine on our feast at the hour of retiring, and enjoy the dance at night. The procession begins at the site of the drunkenness, the women rejoice and the drunkards play tambourines for you in the cool night, and those they waken bless you.’
Since the women were the earthly representatives of the beautiful goddess their appearance was vital, and, headed by Tiy, ‘splendid of ornaments’, they would have spent a great deal of time beautifying themselves and each other. Their robes were made of the very highest-quality linen, its degree of fineness – gauze-like almost to the point of transparency – indicating the status of the wearer. Garments could also be embellished with dyes, embroidery, feather effects, gold sequins and elaborate beadwork, and some were made entirely of precious materials. Other costumes featured flexible pieces of cloisonné work in gold, carnelian, turquoise and lapis lazuli, whilst some net-like dresses were made entirely of beads, their modern equivalents worn by some of the big-name belly dancers and still sold in Egypt’s tourist markets.
Like their men, royal women wore huge quantities of jewel-lery, although the difference between ornament and amulet was often indistinct. Much Egyptian jewellery was made of brightly coloured glazed pottery or coloured glass, but the most elite wore gold and precious or semi-precious stones such as carnelian and amethyst, lapis lazuli from Afghanistan and turquoise from the mines of Sinai. Much of this jewellery would be presented to them by the king as a sign of favour, the large gold beads known as ‘gold of honour’ given to officials of both sexes, as were the Gold Flies of Valour which at least one of Tiy’s predecessors was awarded. Although many of the king’s foreign wives brought their own jewellery with them, it was sent to the Egyptian court by foreign potentates as keen to demonstrate their country’s wealth and sophistication as the recipients were to set new trends with foreign fashions.
Necklaces were almost de rigueur; they included gold chains suspending large cloisonné-style ornaments, and broad collars made up of multiple rows of beads and amulets. Narrow waists and desirably wide hips could be accentuated with jewelled and beaded belts, whilst arms glittered with gold and silver bangles and bead bracelets set with large plaques of semi-precious stones; several carnelian examples show the king, queen and their daughters, and an open-work example in purple-brown sard stone features Tiy as a winged sphinx guarding the king’s name. Rings were also very popular, from great gold signet rings to seal stones carved with the name of the owner or those of the royal family; in fact, a century after his death Theban women were still being buried in rings carved with the name of Amenhotep III. With the increasing cosmopolitan nature of Egyptian society, earrings were catching on. Amenhotep III’s father had set the trend for pierced ears, and the large holes found in the ears of mummies were needed to support the elaborate designs worn by men and women, the royal women in particular favouring huge gold hoops or discs.
The right to wear the cobra or vulture over their brow was restricted to great royal wives, so minor wives and court ladies contented themselves with gazelle heads on their diadems. Magnificent golden head-dresses made up of lengths of cloisonné rosettes were found in the tomb of Tuthmosis III’s three Syrian wives and, although their weight would have caused some serious headaches if worn for too long, they must have looked amazing in the sunshine. Their form resembled the queenly vulture crown with extended wings which Tiy wore, together with her head-dress of tall ostrich plumes which incorporated a gold sun disc to emphasise Tiy’s divine connections. For more lightweight informal wear, gold rosettes, beads or tubes were threaded directly on to the hair to form a kind of chequerboard pattern, or small amulets, beads or discs could be attached to the ends of braids to cause them, thus weighted, to swing artfully. Otherwise a simple headband of gold or coloured linen, or even just a circlet of fresh flowers, kept the hair in place.
Hairdressers and wigmakers were depicted at work with their hairpins, combs and dextrous fingers. The most fashionable hairstyle of the day was the long, voluminous coiffure or ‘enveloping wig’, incorporating as many crimped braids as possible in order to pay homage to Hathor as Lady of the Locks. The women of Amenhotep III’s court are shown with so much hair that it spills down over their shoulders and even hangs seductively over their eyes. Extensions were used to create this ‘big hair’, and could also of course be used to conceal thinning hair on older ladies keen to keep up the appearance of youthful vigour. Others resorted to various types of hair restorer, rubbing lion fat into the scalp in the hope of inheriting the animal’s splendid mane, or, following the same logic but referring to the creature’s fine collection of bristles, used hedgehog fat. Castor oil was another ingredient long prized in hair treatments, prescribed ‘to cause a woman’s hair to grow if she rubs her head with it’ while also keeping it in good condition in the hot climate. Grey hairs could be concealed using henna-based dyes, and there were even recipes to prevent dandruff and head lice. Alternatively, the hair could be cropped or shaved off altogether, keeping the lady louse-free and cool beneath a wig usually stored overnight on a wooden mount. Carved in the form of a woman’s head, many of these ancient wig stands are just like the polystyrene examples still found in the windows of old-fashioned ladies’ hairdressers.
As the court women peered out from behind curtains of usually false hair, their faces really were their fortune and so needed to be well cared for in the hot, dry climate. Vegetables oils were used to cleanse and moisturise the skin and, mixed with lime or natron soda, made the type of ‘cold cream’ that was found in over thirty large jars buried with the three foreign wives of Tuthmosis III. The ancient texts also list numerous preparations ‘for beautifying the face’, one rejuvenating oil entitled ‘Instructions to make the old young again’. Daily bathing was standard practice at court and the Egyptians were the first people to use deodorants: as ‘a remedy to prevent odour in summer’, pellets made of incense and dough were applied ‘to the places where the limbs join’.
Nature could always be given a helping hand with cosmetics, which the Egyptians used by the sackload. Eye paint is, of course, the best known, and although it was used principally to make the eyes appear larger its application around the delicate eye area also acted like sunglasses, reducing the glare of the sun off the desert. The antiseptic qualities of certain blends also provided relief from eye complaints aggravated by sandstorms and disease-bearing flies, so it was something of an all-round product.
The most popular eye paint was black kohl, made from the crushed lead ore. This was mixed with water or, as our recent analysis has shown, date palm oil, and then stored in pots or tubes. Some of these list their contents as ‘eye paint for every day’ or give specific dates by which the product should be used, rather like modern medicine bottles. Many even carry the owners’ names or those of the royal family, and would have been handed out as gifts at festivals and court functions. Applied with the same thin bronze applicator sticks that Egyptian women still use today, eye paint was worn by both sexes; however, only women seem to have coloured their lips and cheeks, using crushed red ochre or plant juice.
The cosmetics themselves were prepared in dishes of polished alabaster and wood, with leaping felines or swimming girls a favourite motif for handles. All were stored away in elaborate make-up chests, with pull-out drawers and separate sections for the kohl pots, silver compacts, jars of setting lotion, tweezers and razors, combs adorned with kneeling ibex, decorative hairpins and mirrors with blue-and green-glazed handles so popular amongst the king’s women.
Those not wanting to make up their own faces could call on the skills of professional make-up artists, whilst the royal manicurist was on hand to file finger-and toenails and stain the nails, hands and feet an attractive red-orange using henna dye. More permanent forms of adornment could be achieved using small bronze pins to prick the skin in whatever pattern was desired and then rubbing in soot or pigment to create the finished design. Tattoos seem to have been worn only by women, and, arranged in patterns of dots or featuring small images of the household god Bes, were usually concentrated on the breasts, abdomen and thighs. They are usually interpreted as charms against sexual diseases or as the marks of prostitutes, although it seems far more likely that they were permanent forms of the amulets needed during the dangers of pregnancy and birth.
The ancient Egyptians were also fully aware of the hidden powers of perfume – the stronger, heavier and sweeter the better – and it was stored in some of the most beautiful scent containers ever devised. Blue-glass bottles feature tiny duck heads with inlaid yellow bills, and hollow alabaster cats represent the cat goddess Bastet, whose name means ‘She of the Perfume Jar’. The luscious scent of the native lotus was used to create a happy disposition, and, as a favourite fragrance of both priestesses and, it would seem, Amenhotep III himself, it was also offered to the gods during worship. The heavy, sweet scent of the lily was associated with female spirituality and used in remedies to treat ‘female complaints’.
Perfumes also incorporated some of the costly resins and spices imported from abroad, with only tiny amounts needed to create impact. Cinnamon was also used alone as an aphrodisiac, the oil sprinkled over beds and the wood burnt as an incense to scent clothes and surroundings. Myrrh was used in perfumes and as a breath freshener, as was frankincense, which was also used in ancient wrinkle creams just as modern aromatherapists still recommend frankincense oil for the ‘more mature’ skin.
Often used as aphrodisiacs, perfumes are mentioned regularly in love poems. In one example, a woman reclines with her lover, both drunk on pomegranate wine and sprinkled with perfumed oils. Another woman parading herself before her lover uses every trick in the book: ‘I love to go and bathe before you. I allow you to see my beauty in a dress of the finest linen drenched with fragrant unguent. I go down into the water to be with you . . . Come! Look at me!’ It is an invitation followed by the wistful lover’s riposte ‘I wish I were her laundryman . . . and would wash away the unguent from her clothes.’ The same idea is also used in ancient Egypt’s version of Cinderella, in which pharaoh’s heart was captured by a lock of perfumed hair which fell into his laundry and scented all his clothing. And to underline the importance of perfume in their lives, the wealthy were depicted in paintings and occasionally statues with a cone-shaped lump of semi-solid perfume on their heads, whilst the perfumed oils rubbed directly into the skin were shown seeping through their fine linen garments, which explains the need for regular laundering.
Radiating sensuality on as many levels as possible, the women at the royal court worked hard to look good, smell good, sound good and feel good. The ancient Egyptian ideal of beauty was described as
the Morning Star, shining bright, fair of skin, lovely the look of her eyes and sweet the speech of her lips. With upright neck, shining breast, hair of true lapis lazuli, arms surpassing gold, fingers like lotus buds, heavy thighs yet narrow waist, her legs parade her beauty. With graceful steps she walks, capturing all hearts with her movements, causing all men’s heads to turn when they see her. There is joy for him who embraces her, and when she steps out she competes with the sun.
The image would have perfectly characterised each member of pharaoh’s hand-picked female entourage, the king being surrounded by such women at formal events and in the more informal surroundings of his private apartments. A cartoon of a lion playing board games with a small gazelle is believed to allude to the Egyptian king in the company of one of these graceful figures, whilst the later pharaoh Ramses III is shown playfully tickling his female companions under their chins.
But this is about as explicit as it gets. By no means a prudish society, to judge from the erections waved around by many a male deity and the number of small sketches and figurines portraying all kinds of sexual activity, the ancient Egyptians were nevertheless reticent about showing the act itself in formal art. Sex was a potentially volatile form of behaviour in which the emotions could not always be controlled, and so, with their great fondness of imposing order on their surroundings, they substituted euphemisms and wordplay to suggest this most intimate of activities.
Looking at the names of Amenhotep III’s women in an endeavour to understand something of the nature of his relationship with them, some sound most intriguing: for instance ‘She of numerous nights in the city of the brilliant Aten’ and ‘She who strikes with fury for the brilliant Aten’. Although the latter would seem to reflect the way in which beautiful Hathor was perceived to transform herself instantly into terrifying Sekhmet in order to protect the king, several male Egyptologists have interpreted it as evidence for pharaoh’s apparent sadomasochistic tendencies!
Although he used existing royal palaces, such as those at Gurob and Memphis, Amenhotep III decided to build a new one at Thebes, presumably to accommodate his growing entourage. Previous rulers had been based at the traditional capital, Memphis, and usually only came south to Thebes for the big religious festivals, setting up temporary court in palace buildings attached to Karnak Temple. But Amenhotep III wanted an independent palace complex, well away from the watchful eye of Amen’s clergy, so began work on the opposite bank of the Nile at the other end of the city. Opposite the king’s own temple of Luxor, the site was close to the foothills of the western mountains where the sun sank each evening into Hathor’s embrace. Although it is known today by its Arabic name of Malkata, the king himself called it the Palace of the Dazzling Aten. The new palace was his Theban base throughout most of his reign, and he moved the whole court there permanently around year 29.
It was a rambling site sprawling over more than eighty acres, the main areas centred on the king’s own apartments in the south-east section, with its audience chambers, large hall for festivals, offices, kitchens and store rooms, its own temple of Amen, desert altars and royal hunting lodge. Then there was Tiy’s independent palace complex to the south, and that of their eldest daughter, Sitamen, to the north, together with quarters for the rest of the royal family, the hundreds of court women and of course the retinue of servants that each would require. Large villas housed the king’s high officials, and as well as administrative quarters Malkata had its own royal workshop and workers’ settlement.
Fronting the palace itself was the mother of all water features, an enormous T-shaped harbour a mile and a half wide, which linked the royal residence to the Nile. Built to handle the heavy flow of waterborne traffic, the harbour allowed the king to reach the temples on the opposite bank of the river, or indeed anywhere else in his kingdom, without ever needing to set foot on land. And he did it in some style in a brand-new, state-of-the-art vessel, the good ship Dazzling Aten, on which he and Tiy sailed forth during religious and state festivals.
Pharaoh also had an impressive collection of chariots sent to him from across the empire; as a standard part of royal burial equipment, a complete gold chariot was found in the tomb of his father-in-law Yuya, lieutenant-commander in the king’s elite chariot corps. In a world largely at peace, Amenhotep III demonstrated his prowess off the battlefield through high-profile big-game hunting expeditions, including a spectacular wild bull hunt when ‘his majesty appeared in his chariot’ and captured 96 wild bulls and 102 lions which ‘his majesty shot with his own arrows’. His chariots also enabled him to indulge his passion for speed in a great quarter of a mile long stadium laid out just south of the palace harbour.
Like almost every other domestic building in ancient Egypt, the palace complex was built largely from the standard mud-bricks, here stamped with the names of the king. The walls were then plastered over, and the exteriors painted white to reflect the heat. Door and window frames were made of wood or stone, and stone was also used for column bases, steps, drainage systems, en suite bathroom facilities and garden pools with small steps leading down to the water.
Interiors were painted in vivid, even loud, colours enhanced with glazed tiles and bright inlays, and from the thousands of fragments of painted plaster which still litter the site, it is possible to reconstruct much of Malkata’s original decor. The royal women’s private suites were painted with calves and birds, the floors decorated to resemble the banks of the Nile filled with fish and surrounded by wildfowl. The most imposing part of the palace consisted of a series of rooms incorporating an audience chamber almost 100 feet long. Its high ceilings were painted with repeated images of the protective vulture goddess Nekhbet, supported by columns decorated with wooden lotus flowers, whilst the walls were adorned with figures of the king and his women wearing elaborate head-dresses.
The top end of the hall opened out into the throne room, its floors painted with figures of Egypt’s enemies who also covered the throne dais and the footstool placed before the canopied throne. And here sat pharaoh, flanked by fan-bearers and bodyguards, to receive reports, diplomatic correspondence and tribute from around his empire. Supervised by the Overseer of the Audience Chamber, foreign dignitaries allowed into the royal presence would have been surrounded by images of their bound countrymen, the same figures on the soles of the king’s golden sandals demonstrating that they were indeed ‘as dirt beneath his feet’. Even his robes were embroidered with power symbols and hieroglyphs proclaiming him Protector of His Country and Vanquisher of All the Foes of Egypt. It has to be said, however, that it is difficult to imagine him cutting quite such an imposing figure in the ‘robe and matching cap of purple wool and shaggy wool leggings’ sent as a gift from Mitanni!
The lavish robes of office, crowns and sceptres were stored in the connecting robing room or House of Morning, in which pharaoh was helped to put on his mantles of state in a daily ritual as old as the pyramids. And in the same way that the priests adorned the gods in their shrines, the divine pharaoh was served by his key officials – even his bathing, shaving and anointing were subject to ceremony in an en suite bathroom just behind the throne room.
At the very heart of the palace lay the brightly coloured royal bedroom, whose ceiling was adorned with the repeated names and titles of the king set between the outstretched wings of the protective vulture goddess designed to watch over the king at night when he was at his most vulnerable. Repeated ankh signs bestowing life and protection decorated the walls and above them danced rows of images of Bes, the household god who carried knives and tambourines for protection and pleasure. Bes would also have adorned the royal bed, an ebony and gold structure with lions’ paw feet set on a platform at one end of the room.
The whole place would have been filled with this type of superbly crafted furniture, which was often referred to in diplomatic letters. Amenhotep III wrote to the king of Babylon, for example, ‘I have just heard that you have built a new palace, and so I am sending you some furnishings as greeting gifts for your new house: 4 beds of ebony overlaid with ivory and gold and 10 chairs of ebony overlaid with gold, the weight of gold on these things 7 minas, 9 shekels and the weight of the silver 1 mina, 8 and a half shekels. PS: 10 footrests of ebony, overlaid with gold.’
Similarly lavish tableware of gold and silver would have been used to serve food and drink, and amongst the gourmet items consumed by the king and his court were choice cuts of beef, roast duck and geese, dates, beans, honey, milk and oils. Many of them were stored in large pots with a quantity and quality description, the oils termed ‘sweet’, honey ‘clear’ and beans ‘shelled’, whilst items like ‘potted meat’ and ‘fresh lard’ were wisely given a ‘best before’ date. Wine, known as ‘irup’ as a pun on over-indulgence, was classified on a scale between plain and excellent, using descriptions such as ‘sweet’, ‘blended’ and ‘wine of becoming’, or that still fermenting. There were even instructions about when and where to drink it, from ‘offering wine’ and ‘wine for taxes’ to ‘wine for a happy return’ and ‘wine for merry-making’. Although ancient Egyptian wine was made largely from grapes, some kinds incorporated figs, pomegranates and dates, with honey and spices added for sweetness; the resins used as preservatives also produced a Malkata version of retsina, and a type of sweet barley beer, known as ‘sermet’, also seems to have been drunk in large quantities at the palace.
The building’s original interiors, complete with their ornaments, linens and similarly decorated inhabitants, can only be imagined, although the huge variety of small personal items found at the site does help bring its ancient inhabitants back to life. Fully deserving of its Arabic name, which means ‘the place where things are picked up’, the site of Malkata was covered with fragments of rings, bracelets and necklaces, favourite amulets, cosmetics spoons, kohl tubes, mirror handles, tweezers, perfume bottles and gaming pieces. There were also small faience book plates bearing the names of the king and queen, suggesting that the palace had its own library, literally a ‘house of books’ such as those found in the temples. Attached to the boxes containing the papyrus roll ‘books’, the book plates also suggest that horticulture was a subject of some interest, one being inscribed ‘the book of the moringa tree’ and another ‘the book of the pomegranate tree’. And since Amenhotep refers to ornamental flowers and plants as an important feature in his numerous building projects, it seems that the sun king was something of a gardener himself.
Writing equipment included a palette with six oval blocks of coloured paints bearing Amenhotep III’s name, and hundreds of clay sealings from rolls of official papyrus documents, some bearing the names of previous rulers, including the great Hatshepsut. Amenhotep’s interest in all matters antiquarian was confirmed by the discovery of a predynastic palette which was already a great antique at almost two thousand years old when the king had it reinscribed with a figure of Tiy.
Possessing a keen sense of tradition, the king also ordered research into the way things were done in the good old days of the Pyramid Age.
Amenhotep III’s most trusted official, another Amenhotep, son of Hapu, was remembered for centuries as the one who knew the power ‘to be found in the words of the past which date to the time of the ancestors’. With ‘his majesty doing things in accordance with the ancient writings’, the temple archives were checked and officials such as the royal scribe May were sent to Medum to ‘examine this very great pyramid of Sneferu’ together with the temples and tombs of Abusir, Giza, Sakkara and Abydos. Quite possibly Egypt’s first archaeological conservator, Amenhotep III ordered many of these ancient sites to be restored, and where buildings were enlarged or enhanced he was keen to stress that he did so ‘without damaging what had been done before’. Particularly inspired by the reign and achievements of his illustrious predecessor Hatshepsut, he adapted her legend of divine conception, adding to her foundations to create Luxor Temple and carrying out her plans to link Luxor to Karnak with a sphinx-lined road.
Right at the start of the reign he had reopened the ancient limestone quarries near Giza, and now began quarrying at sites throughout the country to obtain the necessary quantities of building stone needed to achieve his architectural ambitions. New temples to deities associated with sun worship in both Egypt and Nubia included the first temple to the Aten built at the sun god’s traditional cult centre, Heliopolis, and much of Thebes was also re-modelled according to the king’s instructions. Living close to the palace in their own village to the south, his craftsmen in the royal workshops produced exquisite items both for home consumption and for export as far afield as Babylon and Mycenae. Malkata also housed Egypt’s oldest-known glass factory. Since 70 per cent of the glass and glazed faience ware found at the palace was deep purple-blue one leading expert has calculated that this was the king’s favourite colour, often combined with a tasteful copper sulphate-blue trim.
Following custom, Tiy had her own independent complex in the southern part of Malkata, built with bricks stamped with her name. The interior was decorated and furnished in the same lavish way as her husband’s quarters, and something of her original surroundings is reflected in a scene showing her seated on a gilded ebony chair with lions’ paw feet, decorated with rows of inlaid cobras. Her feet rest on a plump red cushioned footstool, her pet monkey leaps around, and her stripy cat appears beneath her chair. Tiy had a large household of attendants and servants, including a steward, chef, head weaver and costume designer. A small army of servants and workers produced luxury goods such as jewellery, perfumes and textiles, and many of the provisions she would need came from her own estates dotted throughout the country.
Tiy’s appreciative husband embellished one of these properties in his eleventh year as king, the main event of which was ‘the making of a lake for the great royal wife in her town of Akhmim. Its length is 3,700 cubits and its width is 600 cubits, and his majesty celebrated the festival of opening the lake when his majesty was rowed across it in the royal barge.’ For many years this was imagined as little more than a glorified boating lake, presumably as a diversion for the queen while her husband was otherwise engaged with his latest foreign bride. Yet the suggestion that it was an elaborate irrigation scheme designed to increase revenue on the queen’s lands seems far more likely – a public way for the king to honour his chief wife.
Tiy’s main role was to perpetuate the royal line. This she certainly did, giving Amenhotep III five daughters and two sons. Although there are hardly any ancient Egyptians whose dates of birth are known, their eldest daughter seems to have been born fairly early in the reign – meaning the royal couple would have been expected to start reproducing as soon as possible. Named Sitamen, ‘daughter of Amen’, she seems to have been a chip off the old block, as formidable as her mother and also close to her maternal grandparents, Yuya and Tuya. Her youthful figure decorates two of their gilded chairs, on the first as a young girl in a short linen kilt who is named as king’s daughter and a Singer of the King, holding out a lotus bouquet to her mother Tiy who sits with the family cat beneath her throne. The second of her grandparents’ chairs shows Sitamen described as ‘the great one, his beloved daughter’, and although her hair is still in the sidelock of a princess and she still wears the gazelle crown, she sits enthroned to receive trays laden with golden tribute. When she was eventually made a Great Royal Wife around 1360 BC, as part of her father’s first jubilee rites, held according to tradition after 30 years’ rule, the king was surrounded by three generations of royal women, reflecting the way Hathor was mother, wife and daughter of the sun god. Occupying her own palace complex at Malkata, Queen Sitamen was also given generous estates and the services of the king’s favourite official Amenhotep, son of Hapu, as her overseer.
Amenhotep and Tiy’s second daughter, Isis, was also made a Great Royal Wife a few years later. One figurine shows her dressed in a robe of finest linen, wearing a broad golden collar and with her hair set in the fashionable long, thick sidelock of the time. She also appears large-scale to the left of her parents’ colossal figure in the Cairo Museum, in the centre of which stands their third daughter, Henuttaneb, wearing the queen’s vulture crown over her long, full wig and clutching her sacred menat necklace to her chest. Although not an official Great Royal Wife, Henuttaneb clearly held high office and is the only princess to have been given the queenly title ‘Consort of Horus [the king] in His Heart’. The couple’s fourth daughter, Nebetah, is rather more shadowy, and only seems to appear on the right side of the Cairo colossus, whilst their final girl, Beketaten, is only shown after her father’s death in the company of her mother Tiy.
Following tradition, the couple’s two boys were named Tuthmosis and Amenhotep. But, again in accordance with tradition, these royal sons were hardly mentioned during their father’s reign. As the elder of the two, Prince Tuthmosis had been groomed for the succession since birth by a father who himself had become king at around the age of twelve, and was given a series of high-ranking official positions to prepare him for his future duties. The title ‘King’s Son, Troop Commander Tuthmosis’ on a whip handle demonstrates that the king was keen to make a man of him, no doubt remembering his own experiences hunting wild bulls as a young teenager to prove that he had what it took to be king despite his youth.
Prince Tuthmosis seems to have spent much of his time in the northern capital, Memphis, where he was appointed Overseer of All the Priests of Egypt and high priest of Ptah, the great creator god of the city. Heavily involved with the cult of the Apis bull, the animal thought to contain Ptah’s spirit, it was Prince Tuthmosis as high priest who accompanied his father in the elaborate ceremonies of the first Apis burial at Sakkara. With its mummy buried in an enormous granite sarcophagus and its entrails packed in canopic jars the size of dustbins, the young prince was shown reading aloud the ritual texts, dressed in his pantherskin robes of office and with his hair in the sidelock of youth. Apart from being symbolic of children, and royal children in particular, it was also the badge of office of Ptah’s priests, and as the prince’s signature hairstyle it appears on all of his known statuettes.
Very much a cat-lover, like his mother, Prince Tuthmosis is best known for the small limestone sarcophagus in which he buried his pet cat Ta-miu, ‘Lady-Cat’. Her name features the ancient Egyptian word for cat ‘miu’, based on the noise made by the animal. Ta-Miu herself appears on her sarcophagus in an ornamental collar, seated on a plump cushion before a large roast duck, and then is shown in mummified form protected by the gods.
As for Tuthmosis’ younger brother, named after his father, the only reference to him during his father’s reign seems to be a single jar inscription referring to ‘the estate of the king’s son Amenhotep’. He was believed to have lived in the Middle Palace at Malkata, and it is interesting that here was found the only weapon from the entire site – a javelin head made of highly prized iron, suggesting that it may perhaps have belonged to the prince himself.
Some time prior to the king’s first jubilee in 1360 BC everything changed when Crown Prince Tuthmosis died suddenly of unknown causes. The king and queen must have been distraught, and with their private world turned upside down chaos temporarily replaced the natural order of things as son predeceased father. The entire nation would have joined with the royal family to mourn the death of the heir to the throne as his body underwent the standard seventy-day mummification process.
His body decked out in the sumptuous finery befitting his role, a small steatite stone figurine shows the prince’s mummy laid in state on a bier with lions’ paw feet, his hair dressed in his characteristic sidelock style and his chest covered by a jewelled collar and human-headed bird amulet. With its wings spread protectively over his chest, it represents his soul fluttering above him as the funeral priests recite the words of Spell 89 from the collection of funerary spells known as the Book of the Dead: ‘Let my soul come to me from wherever it is! Come for my soul, O you guardians of the heavens! May my soul see my corpse, may it rest on my mummified body which will never be destroyed or perish.’ The spell was ‘to be spoken over a human-headed bird of gold inlaid with precious stones and laid on the breast of the mummy’, and Amenhotep III would surely have provided his beloved child with the finest example his craftsmen were able to produce.
Although it is uncertain where the prince was initially buried, it was almost certainly somewhere within the royal cemetery at Thebes. It may even have been in the Valley of the Queens a few miles north-west of Malkata – a smaller version of the Valley of the Kings, where princes and queens were both buried. The great chasm at its head was sacred to Hathor, identified as her womb from which the dead were reborn each dawn, so it was also an eminently suitable site in which to inter the king’s mother, Mutemwia, following her death some time in the last decade of the reign. After their own tombs were looted a group of Amenhotep III’s minor wives, princesses and noblewomen were reburied around 1000 BC in a rock-cut tomb somewhere close to the Qurna foothills. Although this too was ransacked in ancient times, surviving canopic jars and mummy labels mention one of the king’s sisters, a minor wife and a daughter amongst those once buried there.
When the king’s closest advisor, Amenhotep, son of Hapu, died around 1356 BC, aged about eighty, pharaoh honoured him with a rock-cut tomb in the Theban hills and even his own funerary temple, a singular honour otherwise reserved for royalty. Tiy’s parents, Yuya and Tuya, had died earlier in the reign and were buried with great honour in a small tomb in the Valley of the Kings, and their son Anen also died around the time of the king’s first jubilee in 1360 BC. And having already buried his eldest son, his mother, at least two of his sisters, his wife’s parents, his brother-in-law and his great confidant and adviser, Amenhotep III must then have turned his thoughts to the matter of his own mortality, god or not. Work on his vast tomb in the western branch of the Valley of the Kings had been underway since the start of his reign, and it seems that goods now began to be stockpiled for his own eventual burial.
Inevitably he then had to deal with the question of the succession and what would happen to Egypt after his death. His remaining son Prince Amenhotep had not been prepared for the role which now lay ahead – indeed, he seems not to have been up to the job during his father’s first jubilee celebrations and the elderly Amenhotep, son of Hapu, had been brought on as last-minute stand-in. This may, of course, have been due to the prince’s young age, although he would now have to grow up fast if he was to rule as pharaoh. As crown prince he presumably inherited his late brother’s titles and his roles in the north. There is evidence for a palace belonging to him in the sun god’s cult centre at Heliopolis, and some scholars think his father may have sent the prince to study with the city’s priests. Just as his brother Tuthmosis had been involved with the cult of the Apis bull at Memphis, Prince Amenhotep would have been instructed in the cult of the sun god’s sacred bull at Heliopolis.
But of course what the prince needed most was a crash course in how to rule the world’s greatest superpower, and it has been suggested by one eminent Egyptologist that his capable elder sister, Sitamen, may have acted as his mentor after being made a Great Royal Wife at the king’s jubilee in 1360 BC. This jubilee was also the occasion when the king declared that he was ‘the sun god’s living image on earth’ and, styling himself ‘Dazzling Aten’, decked his person in gold necklaces, collars, armlets and bracelets to reflect his new solar persona.
Spending the final eight years of his life as a living god, Amenhotep III was still doing whatever it took to make Egypt ever richer and to consolidate the empire. And even now he was keen to take possession of more wives. As he enjoyed newly married bliss with the young Tadukhepa of Mitanni, the king’s statuary showed him wearing decorative fringed robes, possibly influenced by garments sent to him by his father-in-law. Tribute continued to pour in, and Egypt basked in the golden reflection of its pharaoh in an era of peace and prosperity which it seemed would last for ever.
Plans to extend the already sprawling palace at Malkata were well underway, no doubt to accommodate Tadukhepa’s entourage of 270 women and 30 men and an ever-increasing household of women and children. In addition to his seven children by Tiy, Amenhotep presumably had many more born to his numerous minor wives and court ladies, and young women simply named as ‘daughter of the king’ were portrayed in tomb and temple scenes throughout the reign.
Since the king’s powers needed regular replenishment it seemed timely to top them up with another jubilee festival, his third and final one, in 1353 BC. Following frantic preparations, when huge amounts of food, drink and perfumes were sent as gifts to the palace, everyone learned their lines and finalised their costumes. With the high officials decked out in their finest robes and specially decorated headbands, the king put on the knee-length jubilee robe, decorated with a blue and red diamond pattern skilfully executed in beadwork. Decked out in full regalia, Queen Tiy presided over the proceedings followed by a line of sixteen unnamed princesses – ‘children of the king’ and presumably some of her husband’s daughters from his numerous minor wives. Each beautifully dressed in the finest of transparent linen robes and gold collars, their hair set in thick, crimped sidelocks, they poured out pure water from golden vessels, shaking their sistrums to encourage the pharaoh as he undertook the traditional rites to prove his ability to rule.
As the king raised the maypole-like ceremonial pillar and ran the ceremonial race ‘according to ancient tradition’, his efforts were encouraged by the female performers’ ritualised gestures and carefully choreographed dance steps. One group, dressed in short skirts based on fashions worn a thousand years before, raised their arms above their heads as a second troupe in long gowns, brought in specially from the distant oases, clapped and played tambourines. Like the male performers these had cropped hair, whereas a further group of women wore long wigs which they swished around to great effect as they gyrated to the rhythm of the music.
Then, to reinvigorate the king with Hathor’s great powers, the women sang songs ‘to the Golden One, so she will cause the king to endure! Appear in your glory, Lady, come and protect the king! Make him healthy in the eastern sky, so he is happy, prosperous and healthy in the horizon. If you desire then make him live for millions of years without end.’ Following this, the king was rowed across the waters in his golden boat, infused with the goddess’s vitality and reborn as the living image of the sun god on earth, the dazzling Aten, eternally young.
Yet his onerous duties as living god inevitably took their toll, and Amenhotep III died seven months into his thirty-eighth year as king, probably some time in January 1352 BC, aged almost fifty. It had been a good innings when the average lifespan was around thirty-five. According to official protocol, it was announced that ‘the god has ascended to his horizon’ and, as the palace fell silent ‘the great portals were closed as courtiers sat with their heads on their knees and people groaned, their hearts grieved’. As his subjects mourned the death of their king and the loss of their god, the news spread abroad like wildfire. Tushratta of Mitanni was moved to write to the widowed Tiy: ‘When I heard that my brother had gone to his fate, on that day I sat down and wept. On that day I took neither food nor water and simply grieved.’
As soon as possible after death, the king’s body was taken in state along the causeway to his massive funerary temple to enable the mummification process to begin. At this period the techniques were at their most effective and could produce a very life-like mummy; but the king seems to have left orders for something quite different, and, using vast quantities of resins, his body was transformed into a statue-like figure. No doubt decked out in staggering quantities of gold from head to toe, and wrapped in the finest of linens woven by the women of his court, his mummy would have been placed inside a nest of gold coffins inlaid with a feathered design which was then put into its golden shrine to await the funeral.
Early one March morning in 1352 BC the highest officials, dressed in plain white robes and headbands, gathered to take the king to his final resting place. Accompanied by his eldest son and heir, Prince Amenhotep, dressed in priestly leopardskin robes, his wife Tiy and daughters Sitamen and Isis would have acted as chief mourners. On their arrival at the king’s isolated tomb the heir performed the Opening of the Mouth ceremony to reawaken his father’s soul prior to burial. Surrounded by scenes of the dead king greeted into the Afterlife by the gods and embraced by Hathor, his coffins were placed inside a massive red granite sarcophagus carved with the image of the sky goddess Nut and the welcoming words of Osiris.
Although thoroughly looted in ancient times, this most splendid of tombs once contained all the usual paraphernalia, from large gilded shrines, ritual couches and funerary figurines to chariots and archery equipment, furniture, food and wine, and staggering amounts of jewellery. The robbers took almost everything of value, even his great stone sarcophagus. When the broken body was salvaged and rewrapped the king was reburied in one of the side chambers of KV.35 in the main part of the Valley of the Kings.
Having completed all the necessary rituals as legitimate heir, the fourth Amenhotep ascended the throne to become the most powerful king on earth. All Egypt hoped the Golden Age would continue, and foreign powers held their breath whilst the world’s greatest nation passed through a period of transition. The Mitannians could only hope that their special relationship would continue. Tushratta wrote: ‘When they told me that the eldest son of Amenhotep and Tiy is king in his place, I said ‘‘my brother is not dead! His eldest son is now in his place, and nothing whatsoever will ever be changed from the way it was before.’’ ’ But although the son closely copied the dazzling father in just about everything he did, Amenhotep IV was merely a pale imitation of the man he tried so hard to emulate.
Things got off to a bad start when the new king greatly offended his Mitannian allies by substituting gold-plated statues for the solid gold ones promised by his father before he died. After this inauspicious beginning it was clear that young Amenhotep was going to need guidance every step of the way. Tiy was obliged to act as effective regent, and as Mistress of Egypt worked hard on behalf of a son who had little grasp of political reality. She even took over some of the diplomatic correspondence, telling the king of Mitanni that ‘my husband always showed love to your father and maintained it for you, and so now you must not forget your love for my husband, and increase it for our son! You must keep on sending friendly delegations, one after the other. You mustn’t cut them off!’
Tushratta responded by reassuring her that he would show ‘ten times more love to your son’, closing with his best wishes and those of his own wife Queen Yuni, both of them sending Tiy gifts of ‘sweet perfume’ and jewellery. He also wrote directly to the new pharaoh and reminded him that his mother should be consulted on all matters of state, since she was the only one who knew his father’s policies in detail. Tushratta’s extraordinary comment ‘Tiy your mother knows all the words I spoke to your father. No one else knows them, so you must ask your mother so she can tell you’ reveals the extent of the dowager queen’s power and abilities.
With Tushratta also referring to ‘Tadukhepa my daughter, now your wife, and the rest of your wives’, it seems that Amenhotep IV had inherited his own stepmother Tadukhepa amongst the hundreds of other royal women in his father’s household. He also continued Amenhotep III’s policy of diplomatic marriage, and with a new king now in Babylon, too, it was time to form a new alliance. The king of Babylon confirmed that the Egyptian delegation had arrived and poured oil on the head of the princess to mark her betrothal, but it seems that Amenhotep IV was still cutting corners and the small escort he had sent to bring his Babylonian bride back to Egypt was quite unacceptable to them. ‘There are only five chariots,’ complained the king. Are they going to bring her to you in only five chariots? Am I supposed to allow her to leave my house in this way? What would the neighbouring kings say? ‘‘Look, they have taken the daughter of the Great King of Babylon to Egypt in only five chariots!’’ When my father sent his daughter to Egypt, there was an escort of three thousand soldiers with her!’ It all seems to have been sorted out in the end, however, and, together with his Mitannian and Babylonian wives, Amenhotep IV continued to receive women as tribute from his empire’s vassal states. Forty-six women were sent by the mayor of Gazru, twenty-one from the ruler of Jerusalem, and the mayor of Palestine threw in twenty girls with a shipment of oxen.
Malkata palace was now renamed the Castle of the Aten. The new pharaoh and his entourage resided here for much of the early part of the reign, and apparently spent time there intermittently later on. At first Tiy remained chief queen and played a key role alongside the new king in ceremonial events, carrying the queenly lily sceptre in her left hand and playing the sistrum as her son made offerings of wine and incense to the traditional gods Ra and Maat, Atum and Hathor.
Then, some time in his second year as king, around 1350 BC, and almost certainly with the guidance of his mother, it seems that Amenhotep IV took a wife. His bride made her first public appearance in the tomb scenes of Ramose, the vizier whom the king had inherited from his father. With Amenhotep IV portrayed alongside the goddess Maat, the final scene was carved in the new exaggerated art style and it featured the new royal wife. The couple were depicted standing together at a large Window of Appearances, framed by images of the king trampling his enemies, as the Aten disc shone down blessings on them (Fig. 7). And as the king leaned forward and threw gold collars to his staff, the female figure standing demurely behind him wearing the Nubian wig and clutching the queenly lily sceptre was named as ‘Great Royal Wife, his beloved, Mistress of Egypt’, Nefertiti.
Despite being one of ancient Egypt’s most famous faces, Nefertiti’s origins are unknown. A clue, such as it is, might be found in her name, which is almost always translated as ‘The Beautiful One Has Come’. Using the hieroglyph sign ‘nefer’, which actually symbolises a cow’s entrails, heart and windpipe, ‘nefer’ essentially means ‘good’ or ‘perfect’, ‘happy’ and ‘beautiful’. With the feminine ‘t’ sign added to make it a female name, this is followed by the curious-looking sign, a combination of the flowering reed and a pair of human legs to spell out the verb ‘to come’. Basing the argument on this part of her name, it was asserted that Nefertiti had come from a foreign land. Referring to ‘the evidently foreign queen Nefertiti’, Petrie believed there could ‘scarcely be a doubt’ that Nefertiti was the Egyptian name given to Tadukhepa, the Mitannian princess who had arrived in Egypt shortly before Amenhotep III’s death and had been inherited by his successor.
Others have suggested that she may have been a daughter of Amenhotep III. Given the numbers of women who lived within the royal court, together with the unnamed ‘royal daughters’ born to women other than Tiy, it is possible that Nefertiti was a daughter by one of his minor wives, either an Egyptian or a woman from overseas. Scenes from Karnak show Nefertiti as queen at the head of a row of women named as ‘king’s children’ and, although she herself is not, she is nevertheless named as ‘the Heiress’ amongst her titles. As a result, many scholars feel confident about placing Nefertiti within at least a minor branch of the ruling house. Some strongly believe that ‘she was descended from Queen Ahmose-Nefertari, the virtual female ancestress of the dynasty whose cult as a Theban divinity had been greatly expanded by one of her descendants Queen Tiy. Nefertiti was doubtless of the same family as Tiy, who was perhaps her aunt.’ This view is partly influenced by the women’s names, since Tiy has been identified as an abbreviated version of Nefertari and its variant Nefertiti, whilst Tuya is apparently a similarly shortened form of Ahhotep, one of the dynasty’s early queens.
Perhaps the most likely scenario is that Nefertiti was the daughter of Tiy’s brother Ay, whose title ‘God’s Father’ is often thought to mean ‘father-in-law of the king’. Another important clue is the fact that Ay’s wife Ty is named as Nefertiti’s wet nurse, suggesting that her own mother had perhaps died in childbirth and the infant was then raised by Ay’s presumably second wife Ty. Certainly the fact that Nefertiti had an Egyptian nurse must mean that she was raised from birth, or at least from a very young age, at the Egyptian court, and could not have been a foreign princess sent to Egypt at marriageable age.
Although it is not known how old she was at the time she became Great Royal Wife, it seems that her predecessor, Tiy, had been around ten to twelve when she married the similarly young Amenhotep III. Nefertiti’s own daughter would in time become Great Royal Wife to Tutankhamen when she was about ten or eleven, and, given the average life expectancy of around thirty-five, it is quite possible that Nefertiti would have been an equally youthful consort.
Another clue to her family connections is that the tomb of Ay and Ty at Amarna is one of the few places which mention Nefertiti’s only definitely known blood relative other than her future daughters, her younger sister Mutnodjmet. As a lady-in-waiting in Amarna, Mutnodjmet is usually shown in the company of her two dwarf attendants, Mutefpre and Hemetnisuweterneheh, and a unique alabaster statue recently discovered in a private collection near Bolton in northern England may possibly represent Nefertiti’s sister.
Nefertiti’s status as a member of a minor branch of the royal house would certainly help explain her selection as Great Royal Wife, a position unlikely to have been given to someone newly arrived from abroad and unfamiliar with Egyptian ways. It also seems highly unlikely that Tiy would have entrusted her wayward son to an unknown foreigner. That Nefertiti must have been regarded as a reliable choice is emphasised in the way she began to be portrayed, with growing powers that no Egyptian queen had yet enjoyed – very much building on the trail blazed by Queen Tiy. Known as the ‘High and mighty one in the palace and one trusted by the king’, she was certainly his confidante. Several influential courtiers even state the wish that ‘she be by his side’, presumably to make their job easier in their dealings with a king who seems not to have been the most straightforward of men.
Within a few years of her marriage to Amenhotep IV Nefertiti took a second additional name, Neferneferuaten, meaning ‘Exquisite Perfection of the Aten disc’. Demonstrating the way in which she seemed to lead whilst her husband followed, he did something similar by changing his name from Amenhotep to the more familiar Akhenaten, ‘One Beneficial to the Aten’.
Concentrating their attentions on the sun god, the couple began to dismantle much of the existing religious and political framework built around the state god Amen, replacing it with their own brand of Aten worship though still acknowledging many of the traditional gods. During the first five years of the reign, the royal steward Apy wrote to the king to tell him that ‘the offerings for all the gods and goddesses have been issued in full and nothing held back’ at the great temple of Ptah at Memphis. The couple also added a limestone Aten temple within the existing complex, adorned with finely carved wall scenes of Nefertiti in kingly dress and fine statues of red quartzite. Having created other Aten shrines up and down the country the king and queen were also active further south in Nubia, and after completing the wall scenes in Amenhotep III’s temple at Soleb a twenty-mile road was constructed to link it to a new Aten temple at Sesebi. Its tall columns were decorated with figures of Akhenaten and Nefertiti worshipping in the open air beneath the shining rays of the Aten disc, and it is intriguing to find them paying homage to the rest of Egypt’s pantheon inside the temple’s subterranean crypt, having literally taken the traditional gods underground.
The most ambitious ideas, however, were reserved for the empire’s religious heartland, Karnak Temple in Thebes. After the new king had carried on his father’s work by completing the decoration of two of the pylon gateways with fetching images of himself destroying the enemy and worshipping the falcon-headed sun god Ra, the couple turned their attentions to their own controversial plans for the site. Expeditions were sent to the quarries of Aswan to find granite for new altars and obelisks, though most of the building stone came from the quarries of Gebel Silsilah. The sandstone was cut into small, easy-to-handle blocks known as talatat, and then the builders began to assemble a series of temples the like of which Egypt had never seen: the largest would measure nearly 2000 feet by 650 feet. The royal couple would have been able to oversee the construction work from a palace they built adjacent to the vast building site, and must have proved demanding clients. Everything was built to precise royal specifications, and the chief sculptor, Bek, admitted he was simply ‘the apprentice whom his majesty himself taught’. This may of course just be standard flattery – or perhaps a subtle way of letting future generations know that the work had nothing to do with him and he was only ‘following orders’. Yet if Bek was following the orders of the king, it must have been Akhenaten’s wish that Nefertiti be shown on average twice as often as he was himself. Image after image shows the ever-present sun disc shining down on Nefertiti, or the royal couple performing endless acts of worship. Granite altars were inscribed with the offerings to be laid out beneath the sun each morning, with incense and music equally vital ingredients in the ritual mix.
Having apparently thrown away the official guide to royal protocol, the king decided to celebrate a jubilee after a mere three years as king instead of the thirty dictated by tradition. At the ‘First Jubilee of His Majesty given to him by the Aten’ Akhenaten wore the traditional knee-length jubilee robes and the red crown of the north or the white crown of the south on different days, suggesting the long drawn out nature of the grand ceremonials. With Nefertiti borne aloft in her elaborate golden carrying chair at the head of a procession of royal women, the king sat on his golden throne, surrounded by the major court officials and members of the armed forces, whilst foreign delegates literally kissed the earth at his feet in a gesture of complete submission.
A military theme also figured prominently on the walls of some of Karnak’s other Aten shrines: Akhenaten and Nefertiti were both shown as aggressive defenders of their country, executing foreign prisoners. And it may well have been more than posturing, since one of the few letters Akhenaten wrote to his vassals in Palestine declared that traitors would be punished and sent to Egypt in fetters, ‘and you and your entire family shall die by the axe of the king’.
Intimidating wall scenes weren’t the only innovation. The temple’s colonnade courts were adorned with at least twenty-eight huge painted sandstone statues, the so-called grotesque colossi. They portray Akhenaten and Nefertiti as the twin children of the great creator sun god, the three of them making up the divine triad, Akhenaten shown as Shu in his tall feather head-dress and Nefertiti playing the role of his sister, the great creator goddess Tefnut. Like her male counterpart she clutches the kingly sceptres of crook and flail in her crossed hands, and even wears the traditional false beard of kingship just as other female rulers had done before her. Yet, with their existence long suppressed or denied, it is little wonder that Nefertiti’s Karnak figures were for so long believed to be those of the king. And in quarters where this is still the case, their distinctly feminine appearance is still regarded as evidence that Akhenaten was a eunuch, hermaphrodite or victim of various medical conditions.
Finally, in the very heart of the new complex, the king himself was nowhere to be found but Nefertiti dominated every scene. However, she was no decorative accessory in male-dominated rituals. Blowing apart centuries of tradition, she was shown leading the daily worship of the Aten centred on the conical benben stone, the ancient cult fetish of the sun god. The benben stone was regarded as the very embodiment of the Aten, but it was Nefertiti who was responsible for invoking the god’s spirit down into the sacred stone and ‘satisfying him as he rises at dawn’ – it was she who kept the divine spark aroused and content through all manner of offerings.
Playing the sistrums, Nefertiti is repeatedly portrayed on immense columns over thirty feet high as she leads the lavish daily rites. She is accompanied by her first-born child, her daughter Meritaten, ‘The Aten’s Beloved’, making her earliest public appearances playing her own tiny sistrum as she stands behind her mother in an all-female line-up praising the Aten at Karnak.
All these innovations and building projects involved a great deal of expense, and with the royal coffers so over-extended more taxes had to be raised. A surviving fragment of a decree issued at Karnak hints at how this was done. Every existing temple in Egypt seems to have been expected to contribute by sending silver, incense, wine and cloth, whilst the mayor of every town was responsible for sending more precious metals together with food and wine.
Ever since the monarchy had started to strongly support the sun god back in the reign of Amenhotep II in the 1420s BC, the priests of Amen had seen their powers slowly eroded by successive kings, and this must have been the final straw. The highly conservative priests had been forced to stand by as their sacred precincts were hacked about and redesigned, and yet the woman who covered their walls and towered over them in sculpted form did not wish to serve Amen as his priestess, but instead served the Aten within parts of the temple that she very much controlled. And whereas previous monarchs had swelled Amen’s coffers with tribute, this king and queen were demanding that the flow be reversed! Although details are frustratingly shrouded in mystery, it seems that the Amen priests began to voice their objections openly. On a fragmentary inscription, Akhenaten refers tantalisingly to ‘evil words’ which had been overheard. He says that
it was worse that those I heard in regnal year 4, worse than those I heard in regnal year 3, or those I heard in regnal year 2 or during my first year as king. It was worse than those which Nebmaatra [Amenhotep III] heard; it was worse than those which Aakheperura [Tuthmosis] heard; it was worse than those which Mankheperra [Amenhotep II] heard; in fact worse than those heard by any king who had ever worn the crown.
In the face of such apparent plotting, the royal couple acted swiftly and began to remove all traces of Amen and his clergy. Beginning with the god’s name, Akhenaten had already changed his own name from Amenhotep, and now sent out his agents across the land to chisel out the god’s name, wherever it was found, from the tops of columns, statues, obelisks and even the capstones of certain pyramids. As the god was gradually rendered impotent, the royal couple turned their attentions on the many thousands who served him and presumably could not be trusted. After ‘a charge was given to May, High Priest of Amen’, he was sent off to the remote quarries of the Eastern Desert. Those left behind, from the holiest priest to the lowliest worker, were all made redundant when Egypt’s greatest temple was closed down.
As the dissolution of the temples continued throughout the land, settlements were deprived of their civic and religious heart, and thousands were thrown out of work. And as images and inscriptions were defaced, cult statues melted down and their treasuries ransacked, the incalculable wealth of centuries was now laid at the feet of the new gods: the Aten, Akhenaten and Nefertiti.