Atlantis and the Ten Plagues of Egypt: The Secret History Hidden in the Valley of the Kings (8 page)

This last condition presents a serious objection to attributing such a disorder to Akhenaten. Far from being sterile, he seems to have sired at least six daughters, three of whom specifically bear the title: 'The daughter of the king, of his loins, born of the Chief Wife Nefertiti'. Although it has been suggested that the onset of Frohlich's Syndrome may not have occurred until after Akhenaten children were conceived, this seems highly unlikely, if not impossible. Firstly, there is the nature of the disease itself:
cranial enlargement from the condition would need to have occurred early in life, before the bones of the skull could harden and close, and hydrocephalus (fluid on the brain) would invariably result in mental retardation leaving Akhenaten incapable of functioning as the dynamic ruler he appears to have been. Secondly, he was fathering children years after he is depicted as if suffering from the disorder: towards the end of his reign he had three more daughters from Nefertiti, and possibly another by a second wife Kiya. It is quite impossible for someone with such apparent vigour, libido and sexual virility to have suffered from Frohlich's Syndrome to the extent that his representations imply.

There is, in fact, persuasive evidence to suggest that Akhenaten did not have the curious physiognomy the reliefs and statues would have us believe. Although in the official representations of the king he is shown with the peculiar anatomical features, in a number of private representations he is depicted looking quite different. Two statuettes in the Louvre in Paris, dating from well into Akhenaten's reign, are excellent examples. The painted limestone pair statuette of Akhenaten and Nefertiti, and the yellow steatite statue of a seated Akhenaten, both show him looking as normal and healthy as anyone else. There is no enlarged cranium, no extended jaw and no womanly curves. These and similar figurines were made for the household shrines of the nobles, who would have been all too familiar with Akhenaten's true appearance. Such representations would obviously have had sentimental value, showing the Akhenaten they personally knew, rather than the divine son and prophet of the Aten.

It seems almost certain that Akhenaten's semblance was deliberately distorted in a manner which was seen to symbolize significant religious attributes. Not only is Akhenaten depicted
in such a way, but to a lesser extent so are his family and high officials. With Nefertiti it is most pronounced. In some of the later Amarna reliefs it is difficult to tell her and her husband apart. She is shown with an absurdly long neck, massive cranium, a huge mouth and protruding jaw. In her case, we know for certain that her true appearance was very different, thanks to a number of far more flattering representations, particularly the famous bust found by the German archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt in 1911. While excavating what had been the studio of the royal sculptor Djhutmose at the Great Palace at Amarna, Borchardt found a number of plaster casts, sculptor's studies, half finished statues, and heads and busts, which threw entirely new light on the methods of portrait sculpture in ancient Egypt. The most astounding piece in this collection was a life-size painted limestone bust of Nefertiti which is thought to have been a master study for lesser sculptors to copy. Now in the Berlin Egyptian Museum, this renowned bust shows a beautiful woman with none of the exaggerated facial features shown in the reliefs. Also, a similar, but unfinished plaster mask of Akhenaten was found. Although he does have a long face and a full mouth there are none of the distorted features we usually find.

Others also emulated the 'royal deformities', but the lower the rank, the less pronounced. The young princesses are often endowed with enlarged skulls, serpentine necks and excessive bodily curves, but not the exaggerated facial features of their parents; while the lesser courtiers only have one or two such peculiarities, like the excessive cranium of the courtier Parennefer and the pendulous breasts of the chief sculptor Bek and the chicken-legs of his wife.

It would seem that the depiction of these curious physical characteristics was connected in some way to Akhenaten's
personification as the son of the Aten. Before he assumed the role, a year or two into his reign, he is shown looking quite normal, even in official representations such as those at the temple of Luxor. Reliefs in the tomb of the royal vizier Ramose at Thebes actually chronicles the apparent metamorphosis of the king. He changes from normal appearance in scenes concerning his advent to the grossly distorted appearance by the time the Aten has assumed prominence within a couple of years. This transformation surely indicates that artists had been directed to depict him in this way once he had undergone his religious conversion. Indeed, inscriptions made by the chief sculpture Bek actually suggest that they were Akhenaten's personal instructions. On a quartzite stela in the Berlin Museum, found at Heliopolis in the 1880s, and reliefs carved on rocks at Aswan, Bek describes himself as 'the apprentice whom His Majesty taught'. It would seem that, as master of works, Bek was responsible for implementing and regulating these new artistic conventions.

The bodies of two members of the Amarna royal family still available for medical examination are Smenkhkare and Tutankhamun, and both have an unusual platycephalic skull. Although not pronounced enough to have been the result of Frohlich's Syndrome, this might suggest that a cranium slightly larger than the norm was a family trait. The artisans may therefore have been instructed to exaggerate this feature to emphasize royal infallibility. When Professor Harrison examined the Smenkhkare mummy in 1963, he also found evidence in certain parts of the skeleton of a trend towards femininity. Although not sufficiently marked to result in sterility, or anywhere near the extremes of the Amarna reliefs, this may suggest that the males of Akhenaten's family did appear somewhat effeminate. If so, it would
certainly have been convenient for Akhenaten's religious stratagem, as it seems that his god was considered an androgynous being.

The most likely explanation for the feminine aspects of Akhenaten's strange physiognomy is that he was being portrayed with attributes of his god. If we examine Atenism a little more closely it becomes apparent why the king may have wished to have himself depicted in a bisexual fashion. The pharaohs had always been seen as the personification of an exclusively male god, whether Re, Re-Herakhte, or Amun-Re. The god whom Akhenaten personified, however, had taken over from all the gods, both male and female.

Just as there had been a chief god, there had always been a chief goddess. In the Old Kingdom it had been Hathor, in the Middle Kingdom it had been Isis, and in the New Kingdom, by the time Akhenaten came to the throne, it was Amun-Re's consort Mut. Mut was the mother, nurse and nurturer of all living things, and the so-called 'Hymn to the Aten' makes it very clear that Akhenaten's god had specifically appropriated this feminine role. Something of a 'Lord's Prayer' in Akhenaten's religion, the most fully preserved text of the hymn is found in the tomb prepared for Ay at Amarna. In praising the works of the Aten, it endows the god with maternal aspects previously attributed to Mut:

Thou it is who causest women to conceive and makest seed into man who givest life to the child in the womb of its mother, who comfortest him so that he cries not therein, nurse that thou art, even in the womb, who givest breath to quicken all that he hath made. When the child comes forth from the body on the day of his birth, then thou
openest his mouth completely and thou furnishest his sustenance . . . The people of the world are in your hand just as you have created them . . .

The reason why the Aten had to be seen specifically usurping the role of the goddess Mut was that she had become as essential to Egyptian religion as Amun-Re himself. The most important celebration of the year was the annual rebirth of Amun-Re, in which Mut played a vital role. Around mid-July, when the Nile sank to its lowest level, it would mysteriously well up and spill over the valley floor, leaving behind a rich black soil that would support crops to feed the nation for another year. Known as the inundation, no one knew that this life-giving phenomenon was due to monsoon rains far to the south in tropical Africa. The event was thus attributed to divine intervention and the annual rebirth of the predominant god was deemed necessary for its continuance.

As chief divinity, Amun-Re had to be the means of his own regeneration. One of Mut's titles was 'Mother of the sun in whom he rises', meaning that, as sun-god, Amun-Re was considered both her spouse and her son. Mut was therefore the means by which the god could annually re-father himself. Temple reliefs depicting the
Opet
ceremony to mark this occasion show the god being carried to the Temple of Luxor to unite with the goddess and take the form of the fertility god Min. As the details of this event are gleaned only from reliefs, it is difficult to tell from the illustrations alone if the god was represented by a statue, a priest or the king himself. However, logic dictates that it must have been the latter, as the ceremony was an occasion for oracular pronouncements by the god. Someone obviously had to speak for Amun-Re, which rules out
a statue, and it is doubtful that any priest could talk as the god who was imagined to inhabit only the king.

This entire episode was central to contemporary Egyptian religion and, to have any chance of success, Akhenaten's new religion needed an appropriate equivalent. We can seen from the initial proclamations on the Amarna boundary stelae that the Aten is, 'he who fashions himself with his own two hands'. From this statement alone we can gather that the god was not fashioned just once, at some point in the past, but, like Amun-Re, continued to regenerate himself. Also, as the god procreates himself unaided, he had adopted the roles of both Amun-Re
and
Mut. Although often described in the masculine, the Aten is clearly imbued with both male and female characteristics. In addressing the Aten, the 'Hymn to the Aten' refers to Akhenaten as, 'your son who came forth from your body': the god is envisaged as not only siring its child, as would a man, but actually giving birth, as would a woman. The Aten has replaced all the gods, but in particular the familiar state god Amun-Re and the state goddess Mut – it is an androgynous deity.

Surely, as the personification of this hermaphrodite god, Akhenaten must himself have been considered bisexual, and as previous kings had been depicted as the masculine Amun-Re, Akhenaten would need to be depicted with both the male and female attributes of the Aten. Even the bird-like legs, the serpentine neck and the excessively long face may have been to reinforce the notion that the Aten had assumed the role of the divine mother. Mut's sacred animal and familiar image had been the vulture, a bird with a particularly long neck and an extended face.

Akhenaten being seen as the personification of an androgynous deity would certainly explain why the coffin and Canopic
jars prepared for him in Tomb 55 had been adapted from female effects. The ferocity of anti-Atenist reprisals following the Amarna period clearly show that the religion was not simply dismissed as a fallacy, but was considered a heresy. Likewise, the Aten was not merely considered non-existent, but an evil entity which had possessed the king. The bizarre entombment may not simply have been designed as a punishment to imprison the king's soul; rather than destroying it, it may been an attempt to keep the evil, but nevertheless immortal, god trapped inside its human host. Only by employing both male and female paraphernalia would the interment meet the criteria for a bisexual being.

Even so, it is not Akhenaten who ended up occupying the coffin specifically adapted for him, but his successor Smenkhkare. Why? Everything discovered at Amarna has shown conclusively that it was Akhenaten who was primarily responsible for the heresy. He was firmly in control, he personally instigated the religion, and he acted as sole spokesman for the god. To resolve this enigma we must first attempt to identify whoever was responsible for the first phase of the proceedings: adapting the female burial effects to accommodate Akhenaten. A vital clue in this direction may lie with the identity of the woman for whom the coffin and Canopic jars were originally intended. She obviously played a crucial part in the strange affair. As she is clearly someone of high status, our investigation now turns to the Amarna queens, and the extraordinary influence of Nefertiti, the royal princesses and the king's secondary wife, Kiya.

CHAPTER FOUR

The Amarna Queens

Around the year 15 of Akhenaten's reign, the halcyon days of Amarna seem to come to an abrupt end. Gone is the ambience of euphoria and camaraderie, and in its place there is an overwhelming sense of oppression and paranoia. Within three or four years, the would-be Utopia is abandoned to the desert and most of the royal family ominously disappear. Precisely what happened is unclear, but from what we can tell it seems to begin with the death of Nefertiti.

Although, like all pharaohs, Akhenaten had a harem of secondary queens, the royal consort and heiress was the 'Chief Wife' or 'Chief Queen' Nefertiti. From her depictions, it is quite apparent that Nefertiti enjoyed far more influence than did almost any other Egyptian queen. Often she seems to have pharaonic authority equal to her husband's, and in some areas she appears to exceed him. Although, at Amarna, Nefertiti is represented as a loving mother in scenes of everyday family life, early reliefs from Thebes depict her as an authoritarian figure. One particular relief shows her grasping foreign captives by the hair and smiting them with a mace, while another shows her clubbing an enemy to death. Such militaristic postures are commonplace for Egyptian kings, but most unusual for Egyptian queens. Certain women who reigned as pharaohs in their own right, such as the eighteenth-dynasty queen Hatshepsut and twelfth-dynasty queen Sobeknefru, did involve themselves in military matters, but as a pharaoh's wife, Nefertiti stands virtually alone is being portrayed in such a warlike manner.

Genealogy of Amarna Royal Family

Nefertiti seems to have mellowed by the time she moved to Amarna. The title she adopted in the year 5, Neferneferuaten – 'Fair like the beauty of the Aten' – was presumably intended to demonstrate that, like her husband, she had renounced nefarious ways. Certainly her official profile is one of sweetness and light. In the tombs of Huya and the chamberlain Tutu she is described as a 'lady of graciousness', and the royal scribe Apy tells us that 'the Aten rises to multiply her love'. All the same, she is still involved in state affairs, and is even depicted wearing a king's paraphernalia. Although she usually wears her distinctive blue cap, she is often seen at official occasions wearing the double-plumed
Atef
crown, one of the sovereign crowns of a pharaoh.

However, any image of a muscle-bound macho-woman can certainly be dismissed. Her name Nefertiti, meaning 'A Beautiful Woman Comes', seems to have been aptly chosen. Together with Cleopatra and Helen of Troy, she has come to be regarded as one of history's most beautiful women, thanks to her famous head-statue discovered by Borchardt in 1911. Now on public display at the Egyptian Museum in Berlin, the bust is painted in natural colours and is so lifelike one almost expects it to move. The queen wears her unique blue crown, decorated by the cobra worn by the 'Great Royal Wife', and a typically wide Amarna necklace made of coloured beads. Around thirty years of age, Nefertiti appears both lovely and regal, gazing ahead with a serene countenance, a slight, knowing smile hovering on her lips.

Repeatedly, Akhenaten proclaims her beauty, and declares
for her his undying love. On one of the boundary stelae we read: 'The heiress, great in the palace, fair of face, adorned with the double plumes, mistress of happiness, endowed with favours, at hearing whose voice the king rejoices, the Chief Wife of the King, his beloved, the Lady of Two Lands – Nefertiti. May she live for ever and always.'

From the religious perspective, Nefertiti shares her husband's celestial role. As Akhenaten has usurped Osiris as lord of the dead, Nefertiti has taken over from the funerary goddesses as guardian of the dead. On a sarcophagus from the royal tomb at Amarna, four images of Nefertiti decorate the corners, instead of the four tutelary goddesses, Isis, Nephthys, Selkis and Neith, that usually protect the deceased. Moreover, an examination of the hieroglyphics in Nefertiti's title reveals that she may have held some special religious status all her own.

Hieroglyphics can be written to be read either from the left or right, the direction indicated by the way the characters face. If the human and animal figures, for instance, face the left, then the script is read from the left, and vice versa. In Nefertiti's title, however, we find an unusual exception. In her name, Neferneferuaten, a reed symbol at the top of her cartouche, which should uniformly point to the earlier text, is always made to face her image, even when it needs to be reversed. No one else, not even the king, enjoys such a distinction.

Akhenaten, though, is always seen to be in command. In processions Nefertiti is depicted behind him and in smaller scale, the conventional way of denoting inferior status. She may have enjoyed considerable influence, but in the end the king's word is final. In the boundary stelae proclamations concerning the location of the new city, we gather that Nefertiti is not exactly keen to set up home in the middle of nowhere. Akhenaten, however, makes it very clear that no one – not even
the queen – will persuade him to build it anywhere else: only he speaks for the god.

Nefertiti's background is as enigmatic as her smile. Although we have more pictures of her in regal, religious and family life than any other queen of ancient Egypt, we have absolutely no details of her youth, birth or childhood. Her earliest representation is in the tomb of the vizier Ramose at Thebes, where she is already depicted as queen. It has been suggested that she was the daughter of the chief minister Ay, because he held the title 'Father of the God'. Queen Tiye's father, Amonhotep III's vizier Yuya, is sometimes described on commemorative scarabs as 'Father of the God', suggesting that it may have been a title meaning 'father-in-law' to the king. However, the term usually refers to a priestly office and, as chief minister, it is more likely that it alluded in some way to Ay's religious standing. In an illustration on the north wall of Tutankhamun's burial chamber Ay is actually shown acting as the
Sem
priest officiating at the last rites of the king. (Indeed, another of Akhenaten's ministers, Aper-el, also bore the title 'Father of the God' [see Chapter Eleven].) Moreover, Yuya's wife, Tuya, was described as 'Royal Mother of the King's Chief Wife', whereas the Ay's wife, Tey, is simply described as 'Governess to the King's Chief Wife'.

Nefertiti's name, 'A Beautiful Woman Comes', does not contain the noble designations normally found in the birth names of high-ranking Egyptians, such as god-names and allusions to virtues or social standing. Indeed, it seems more like a name she had acquired once she had grown up. This unconventional designation, coupled with the complete absence of family history, suggests that Nefertiti may not have been a native Egyptian. Perhaps she was a foreign princess, sent to Egypt as a child-bride to cement an alliance between Egypt and her country. Just such an arrangement seems to have been made
for Akhenaten's grandfather, Tuthmosis IV, who was married to princess Mutemwiya, the daughter of the Mitannian king Artatama. Her foreign extraction did not prevent Mutemwiya from becoming the 'Chief Wife' and the mother of the next pharaoh, Amonhotep III and grandmother of Akhenaten himself.

An important indication that Nefertiti's was indeed of foreign extraction is the bust in the Berlin Museum. The fairskinned woman it depicts is clearly not of North African origin, but markedly European. In fact, the narrow nose which follows the straight, so-called Grecian line from her brow, is a typical Aegean feature. As this was centuries before the existence of classical Greece, it may well be that she was a princess from the Minoan empire based on the Aegean island of Crete.

In the early 1900s excavations at Crete, led by the British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans, unearthed the ruins of the ancient Minoan capital at Knossos. Dating from around 2000
BC
, the heart of this remarkable city was a vast complex of royal buildings and courtyards, estimated to have housed around 40,000 people. Although not built to the enormous scale of contemporary Egyptian architecture, the city was in many ways more sophisticated. Staircases, for instance, doubled as an ingenious form of air conditioning, complex stone conduits carried running water beneath the floors, and some palace chambers even had an
en-suite
bathroom.

It soon became evident that the Minoans were a race of master shipbuilders who had dominated the Aegean for centuries, and through trade, rather than conquest, had become one of the wealthiest powers in the Mediterranean. From at least the Hyksos period they were in close commercial contact with Egypt. A circular alabaster jar, found at the palace at Knossos, was inscribed with the cartouche of the third Hyksos king, Khyan, around 1660
BC
, and at the Hyksos capital Avaris
(modern Tell-el-Daba), in the north-eastern Delta, archaeologists have unearthed numerous fragments of Minoan-style wall paintings. Minoan pottery, with its distinctive geometric patterns and naturalistic wildlife, turns up frequently in Egypt over the next three centuries, and by the eighteenth dynasty the two countries had strong diplomatic ties. In the tomb of Hatshepsut's chief minister Senenmut, around 1480
BC
, we see scenes of foreign envoys, each in their national costume. Some are called
Keftiu
and from the goods they bear it is clear that they are Minoans. During the next fifty years or so they appear regularly as emissaries to the Egyptian court, and by the reign of Akhenaten's father, Amonhotep III, relations between the two empires have reached an all-time high. By this time the Minoans have adopted Egyptian building techniques for their new temples on Crete, while Amonhotep's new place of Malkata at Thebes is lavishly decorated with Minoan frescoes.

A special alliance between the Egyptian and the Minoan empires during Akhenaten's father's reign is very probable. By then the Egyptians had control of an empire which dominated the mainland of the eastern Mediterranean, right up to what is now northern Syria. Here, they came into contact with two neighbouring empires, the Mitanni in northern Syria and part of Iraq, and the more powerful Hittites in what is now Turkey. Treaties had been made with one side or other over the previous century, as Egypt contrived to retain its valuable province in Lebanon, from where came the hard cedar wood, essential to the Egyptian war machine. From the marriage of Amonhotep's predecessor to the Mitannian princess, it seems that a treaty of some kind already existed with the Mitanni, but the much larger Hittite empire still posed a threat. Egypt was without doubt the superior military power on land, but at sea the advantage lay with the Hittites whose major ports lay closer to Lebanon. From
their seizure of the eastern seaboard around 1450
BC
, the Egyptians had been relying on the swifter, more efficient Minoan ships to carry their timber supplies across the Mediterranean, and with the growing threat of the Hittites during Amonhotep's reign, a more binding pact with the Minoans would have been highly advantageous for both nations. As such, it would have been expedient to seal the treaty with the marriage of a member of the Egyptian royal family to the Minoan successor, and a Minoan princess to the Egyptian successor, Akhenaten.

Nefertiti certainly behaves like a Minoan princess. From frescoes and statues at Knossos it is clear that in cultic activities women played a far more important role than men. Priestesses, rather than priests, officiated at ceremonial events, and some scholars even believe that the throne itself was occupied by a priestess. Unlike in any other contemporary civilization, women completely dominated religious life. In Egypt, however, women, no matter how exalted, always played a subsidiary role in religion. They did not worship at the temple altar or make offerings to the principal god. Rather, they accompanied the proceedings by ringing a sistrum, a hand-held musical rattle. The moment Nefertiti appears on the scene, she immediately breaks these ancient taboos. In one of her first representations, on the pillars of the Temple of the Aten, built at Karnak early in Akhenaten's reign, Nefertiti is shown at the altar with her hands raised in worship, making an offering to Maat, the goddess of truth. Nefertiti is not merely assuming the religious role of a man, but by making an offering to Maat she is appropriating what had always been the prerogative of the king himself.

The clearest indicator to suggest that Nefertiti was of Minoan origin is the one concession Akhenaten seems to have made to
the old gods – the continued veneration of the sacred bull. In the initial proclamations at Amarna, even after Akhenaten has abandoned all the traditional deities and everything associated with them, he makes specific instructions for the Mnevis bull, an animal sacred to Re, to be bought to the new city and buried in a special tomb in the eastern mountains. The Mnevis Bull, or Nemur, was a living animal worshipped at the temple of Heliopolis which, when dead, was buried with great ceremony and replaced by a new one located in the wild according to prescribed portents. Not only does Akhenaten continue to revere the sacred beast, but he even associates himself with the bull. One of the epithets used by the pharaohs of the New Kingdom was 'Mighty Bull of Horus', one which Akhenaten continues to employ: in the initial proclamations he actually refers to himself as the 'strong bull beloved of the Aten'. Even when he has abandoned wearing many of the customary pharaonic adornments, he continues to wear the bull's tail appendage, while Nefertiti is often seen wearing the stylized bull horns on her headdress. Indeed this continues even after Akhenaten has outlawed the use of the Horus falcon-glyph in the full title of the Aten (see below).