Tutankhamen by Joyce Tyldesley Read Free Book Online
Authors: Joyce Tyldesley
Within the Burial Chamber he found the king himself, stripped of all valuables and re-wrapped, but lying in his original quartzite sarcophagus. A sealed side chamber yielded three unwrapped, unconfined and unlabelled New Kingdom mummies lying side by side, each with a hole in the head and a damaged abdomen, while a second side chamber held nine plain coffins bearing royal names including those of the 18th Dynasty Tuthmosis IV and Amenhotep III.
Within just seventeen years, almost all the 18th Dynasty kings had
been rediscovered. Still missing were Hatshepsut, Akhenaten, Smenkhkare, Tutankhamen, Ay and Horemheb. Ay, however, had an open tomb in the Western Valley, while Akhenaten had an open tomb at Amarna. Hatshepsutâs pillaged tomb would be identified in 1903 (KV 20); Horemhebâs equally pillaged tomb in 1908 (KV 57). By 1910 only Smenkhkare and Tutankhamen lacked both a mummy and a tomb. Excavators searching for an intact 18th Dynasty royal tomb were effectively looking for these two relatively unknown characters.
The 19th Dynasty Ramesside kings were arrivistes, a military family from the north who, in order to justify their right to rule, consistently emphasised their links with Egyptâs earlier kings. The temples that the commoner-born kings Seti I and Ramesses II built at Abydos therefore included King Lists: lines of âancestorâ pharaohs inscribed in chronological order. These lists omitted Akhenaten, Smenkhkare, Tutankhamen and Ay, passing directly from the well-respected Amenhotep III to the equally well-respected Horemheb. Excluded from Egyptâs official history, Akhenaten and his immediate successors became non-kings: their reigns, totalling maybe thirty years, had never officially happened. Modern observers find this blatant falsification of history difficult to accept. To a people who accepted that the written word might have magical properties, however, it made perfect sense. History could and indeed must be corrected to reflect events as they should have been.
Fortunately, the missing kings had left enough textual and archaeological evidence to confirm the existence of the âAmarna Periodâ â the period when Egypt was ruled from the city of Amarna â and Egyptologists were in general agreement that the omitted reigns slotted into the late 18th Dynasty as follows:
⢠Amenhotep III: ruling from Thebes and Memphis
⢠Akhenaten (initially known as Amenhotep IV): ruling first from Thebes, then from Amarna
⢠Akhenaten with Smenkhkare as co-regent: ruling from Amarna
⢠Smenkhkare: ruling from Amarna
⢠Tutankhamen: ruling initially from Amarna, then from Thebes and Memphis
⢠Ay: ruling from Thebes and Memphis
⢠Horemheb: ruling from Thebes and Memphis
⢠Ramesses I: first king of the 19th Dynasty
The exact sequence of events surrounding the death of Akhenaten was, however, hazy, and the relationship between Akhenaten, Smenkhkare and Tutankhamen was uncertain, although the succession following the death of Tutankhamen was clear. As his immediate successor, Smenkhkare was generally assumed to have been Akhenatenâs son. Egyptologist Percy Newberry, influenced by the florid Amarna art-style, felt able to draw a very different conclusion. Here he describes a round-topped limestone stela, a votive dedicated by the soldier Pasi, carved with an image of two kings, seated side by side on a couch. One king wears the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt, the other wears the blue crown:
The two royal personages here are undoubtedly Akhenaten and his co-regent Semenekhkare [sic]. The intimate relations between the Pharaoh and the boy as shown by the scene on this stela recall the relationship between the Emperor Hadrian and the youth Antinous. 4
In fact Newberry was letting his imagination run away with him. It is not possible to determine who the two âkingsâ are, as the
cartouches which would have recorded their names are
Within just seventeen years, almost all the 18th Dynasty kings had
been rediscovered. Still missing were Hatshepsut, Akhenaten, Smenkhkare, Tutankhamen, Ay and Horemheb. Ay, however, had an open tomb in the Western Valley, while Akhenaten had an open tomb at Amarna. Hatshepsutâs pillaged tomb would be identified in 1903 (KV 20); Horemhebâs equally pillaged tomb in 1908 (KV 57). By 1910 only Smenkhkare and Tutankhamen lacked both a mummy and a tomb. Excavators searching for an intact 18th Dynasty royal tomb were effectively looking for these two relatively unknown characters.
The 19th Dynasty Ramesside kings were arrivistes, a military family from the north who, in order to justify their right to rule, consistently emphasised their links with Egyptâs earlier kings. The temples that the commoner-born kings Seti I and Ramesses II built at Abydos therefore included King Lists: lines of âancestorâ pharaohs inscribed in chronological order. These lists omitted Akhenaten, Smenkhkare, Tutankhamen and Ay, passing directly from the well-respected Amenhotep III to the equally well-respected Horemheb. Excluded from Egyptâs official history, Akhenaten and his immediate successors became non-kings: their reigns, totalling maybe thirty years, had never officially happened. Modern observers find this blatant falsification of history difficult to accept. To a people who accepted that the written word might have magical properties, however, it made perfect sense. History could and indeed must be corrected to reflect events as they should have been.
Fortunately, the missing kings had left enough textual and archaeological evidence to confirm the existence of the âAmarna Periodâ â the period when Egypt was ruled from the city of Amarna â and Egyptologists were in general agreement that the omitted reigns slotted into the late 18th Dynasty as follows:
⢠Amenhotep III: ruling from Thebes and Memphis
⢠Akhenaten (initially known as Amenhotep IV): ruling first from Thebes, then from Amarna
⢠Akhenaten with Smenkhkare as co-regent: ruling from Amarna
⢠Smenkhkare: ruling from Amarna
⢠Tutankhamen: ruling initially from Amarna, then from Thebes and Memphis
⢠Ay: ruling from Thebes and Memphis
⢠Horemheb: ruling from Thebes and Memphis
⢠Ramesses I: first king of the 19th Dynasty
The exact sequence of events surrounding the death of Akhenaten was, however, hazy, and the relationship between Akhenaten, Smenkhkare and Tutankhamen was uncertain, although the succession following the death of Tutankhamen was clear. As his immediate successor, Smenkhkare was generally assumed to have been Akhenatenâs son. Egyptologist Percy Newberry, influenced by the florid Amarna art-style, felt able to draw a very different conclusion. Here he describes a round-topped limestone stela, a votive dedicated by the soldier Pasi, carved with an image of two kings, seated side by side on a couch. One king wears the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt, the other wears the blue crown:
The two royal personages here are undoubtedly Akhenaten and his co-regent Semenekhkare [sic]. The intimate relations between the Pharaoh and the boy as shown by the scene on this stela recall the relationship between the Emperor Hadrian and the youth Antinous. 4
In fact Newberry was letting his imagination run away with him. It is not possible to determine who the two âkingsâ are, as the
cartouches which would have recorded their names are
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