Tutankhamen (28 page)

A stronger contender for the role of mother to Tutankhamen must be the prominent harem queen Kiya, whom we last encountered in KV 55.
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We have no confirmed Kiya sculpture, but her two-dimensional image has survived on blocks from Amarna, enabling us to recognise her face, which appears both softer and rounder than Nefertiti's more angular face. Kiya favours a bobbed wig and large, round earrings, so that there is a temptation to classify any Amarna woman sporting large earrings as Kiya (Plate xx).

Kiya, like Nefertiti, is a woman of obscure origins. This is entirely understandable, if frustrating: if neither was of royal birth, both would have been entirely defined by their relationship to the king and nothing else would have been worth recording. If either was of royal birth, a king's daughter, we would expect them to tell us, as this important title would have never lapsed. Kiya is a slightly unusual name; it is perhaps a contraction of a longer Egyptian name, or it may be an Egyptianised version of an unpronounceable foreign name. That Tadukhepa might have become Kiya, Akhenaten's beloved, is an attractive and popular theory – it is the stuff of romantic fiction – but it is completely unproven.

Kiya never bore the consort's title of ‘king's wife' (nor the family title ‘king's daughter') and never wore the royal uraeus on her brow, yet she was allowed to play a unique role in the rituals of Aten worship, which had, until now, been confined to Akhenaten and Nefertiti. Not
only did Kiya have her own sunshade temple – a female-based temple or chapel associated with the cult of the Aten – which would have come with its own endowment of land and therefore its own income, she was allowed to officiate both alongside Akhenaten and, most surprisingly, alone.
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This should have been impossible: traditional theology taught that kings were the only mortals capable of communicating with the gods. Yet images recovered from Thebes show that Nefertiti, too, was able to make offerings to the Aten. In Nefertiti's case she was accompanied by her eldest daughter, Meritaten (or, more rarely, by Meketaten or Ankhesenpaaten), who played the vital role of her consort.

There is good circumstantial evidence to suggest that Kiya bore Akhenaten at least one daughter: two badly damaged blocks, recovered from Hermopolis Magna, name a king's daughter (whose name is now lost) in association with Kiya's name and title, while images of Kiya with a daughter are later altered to show Meritaten with a daughter.
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The Amarna royal tomb offers more circumstantial evidence that she gave Akhenaten at least one child: either the same anonymous daughter, or someone else.

Akhenaten's tomb was carved in the Royal Wadi – a dried riverbed cutting through the cliffs that formed the eastern boundary of his capital city. This, like his father's Theban tomb, was a large structure designed for multiple occupancy. Archaeological evidence – fragments of funerary goods, and wall paintings – suggests that, although it was never finished, it was used for some burials. Unfortunately, by the time it was rediscovered in the 1880s the tomb had been robbed both in antiquity and in recent times, and there were no intact burials. Again, Rider Haggard was inspired to write to
The Times
:

Haggard tells us that Loftie ultimately returned to purchase the rings, and that Lang bought the ‘Thi' ring (which bore a representation of Bes) while Haggard purchased the Nefertiti ring (inscribed with the words ‘the living Bes, Bes the living'). The remainder of the collection was sold by the Reverend Loftie, and eventually entered the collections of Edinburgh Museum.

The plastered and decorated tomb walls have suffered extensive damage, but most of the surviving scenes show the king and his family being blessed by the rays of the Aten. In Room Alpha, Wall F, however, we see images that would be extraordinary in any ancient Egyptian context.
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Two registers, one above the other, may be presumed to tell a continuous story. In the first scene, which is set at the palace, we see Akhenaten and Nefertiti with their right arms raised to their heads in grief. They are standing before something or someone who has unfortunately vanished. Outside the room a woman is holding a baby in her arms, while an attendant holds a fan, the symbol of royalty, over the baby. In front of them female attendants grieve, and a group of male dignitaries raise their arms in sorrow. In the second scene we see the stiff body of a woman lying on a bier. Akhenaten and Nefertiti are again shown in an attitude of mourning, and Akhenaten reaches out to grasp his wife's arm in a poignant gesture that speaks to us over the centuries. There is no sign of any baby, but female attendants again
weep and one, overcome by sorrow, is supported by two men.

It seems that a mother has died giving birth to a child; an all too common tragedy in ancient Egypt, but a scene rarely depicted in a Burial Chamber, which was a place of rebirth. It may actually be that the baby is the deceased herself, being re-born after death. Alternatively, if we separate the baby from the death scene, it may be that we are witnessing the death of one or two of the younger princesses.
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However, if we read the scene at its most literal level we see a mother dying in childbirth in the presence of the king and queen. As Nefertiti can be identified by her unique flat-topped crown, we know that she is not the deceased. It is possible that the dead mother is one of the royal daughters but this seems unlikely, as Meketaten's death is depicted elsewhere in the same tomb while Meritaten and Ankhesenpaaten, the only other daughters old enough to bear children during their father's reign, apparently outlived their parents. It is far more likely that the lady on the bed is Kiya, dying as she gave birth to one of Akhenaten's children.

Kiya vanishes – and has presumably died – by the end of Akhenaten's Year 12, although a solitary wine label hints that she may have been alive as late as Year 16.
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Her mummy has never been identified but, as we have seen, some of her funerary goods were included amongst the artefacts in KV 55, where they were mingled with those of Akhenaten and Tiy. This, surely, is confirmation that she was accorded a burial befitting a woman of highest status. And, in ancient Egypt, the highest status that a commoner-born woman could achieve was that of king's mother. Did she bear Akhenaten's male heir or heirs? Again, there is a stumbling block. No one could have known that Kiya was to become a king's mother until Akhenaten had died and her son(s) actually succeeded to the throne. Until that point she, like Mutemwia before her, should have been just one of (we assume, many) fertile harem queens. So, is Kiya a red herring?

After her death, the sculptors set to work chiselling out Kiya's
name and titles and, in many cases, replacing them with the name of the eldest princess, Meritaten. Kiya's three-dimensional image was altered, somewhat clumsily, so that her usually sleek bob was converted into a side lock of youth worn on an unnaturally elongated bald child's head. This rewriting of history may simply have been a practical response to a crisis: for example, an immediate replacement may have been necessary for the continuation of Kiya's female orientated cult, whatever that might have been – we have no real understanding of Kiya's religious role at Amarna. Alternatively, but less likely, it may be a sign that Kiya died in disgrace. Whatever its rationale, it caused a great deal of confusion when Egyptologists, recognising that Meritaten's name was superimposed over that of another royal woman, assumed that she had replaced her mother, Nefertiti. From this mistake grew a plethora of unsupported theories that Nefertiti herself had been banished or somehow disgraced.
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We have already considered the death scene in the Amarna Royal Tomb, Room Alpha. In a very similar scene in Room Gamma, Wall A, we again see Akhenaten and Nefertiti grieving at the foot of a bier, with two young women (Meritaten and Ankhesenamen perhaps, or servants?) mourning at its head.
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Again, there is an anonymous baby present. This time, however, we can name the deceased. The inscription above the bier, which is now badly eroded, originally read ‘King's Daughter of his body, his beloved Meketaten, born of the Great Royal Wife Nefertiti, may she live for ever and eternally.' A scene on the next wall (Wall C) shows Meketaten, or perhaps her statue, standing in a garden pavilion whose papyrus columns are entwined with convolvulus and lotus blossom. Meketaten wears a long robe, a short wig and a perfume cone. She faces her parents and three of her sisters who raise
their arms in mourning. Neferneferure and Setepenre are absent from the group, and may already be dead. Beneath the mourners are tables laden with food, drink and flowers. Meketaten's bower is reminiscent of the birth bowers used by women in labour, and adds weight to the suggestion that she has died in childbirth. However, booths holding food and drink were a part of the Memphite funerary ritual, and so the connection with childbirth may be a more subtle one, with Meketaten's symbolic bower signifying her own rebirth.

Our interpretation of the scene depends very much upon its dating. We know that Meketaten was born at Thebes, probably during her father's fourth regnal year, and certainly before Year 7, when Ankhesenpaaten was born. If the scene dates as early as Year 13 she would have been no more than nine years of age and unlikely to conceive a child; if it dates to the end of her father's seventeen-year reign (but how, then, do we explain the presence of the otherwise vanished Nefertiti in the scene?) she would have been thirteen years old, and probably old enough to die in childbirth. We have no knowledge of the average age of menarche during the 18th Dynasty, but there is no reason to suppose that it was substantially different to the average age of menarche in the mid-twentieth century, which is estimated as twelve to fourteen years.
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A parallel may perhaps be drawn with the English Lady Margaret Beaufort, who in AD 1457 gave birth to Henry VII as a thirteen-year-old widow. Complications, caused by the mother's small size and immature body, meant that both mother and baby nearly died at the birth, and Margaret was unable to have further children.

The Lady Maia, or Mayet, ‘wet nurse to the king, educator of the god's body and great one of the harem', was buried in an elaborately decorated rock-cut tomb in the Sakkara cemetery. Amid more
conventional scenes, her tomb walls show Tutankhamen sitting on Maia's lap, and Maia standing before Tutankhamen. This apparent closeness, combined with the lady's unusual name, has led Egyptologist Alain Zivie to suggest that Maia might be the eldest Amarna princess, Meritaten, and that she might actually be Tutankhamen's mother rather than his wet nurse or foster mother.
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This is an interesting theory, but it is not one that has gained wide acceptance. Its most obvious stumbling block is that Maia, if she was indeed a king's daughter, king's wife and king's mother, would surely have mentioned this on her tomb walls.

If the link between Maia and Meritaten is broken, could Meritaten still be Tutankhamen's mother? Meritaten is conspicuous throughout Akhenaten's reign as a precocious royal child, but in the Amarna tomb of Meryre II she appears as a mature woman.
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On the south wall of the main chamber we see Akhenaten, Nefertiti and five of the six princesses standing on the palace balcony known as the ‘Window of Appearance' to hand golden collars to the miniature Meryre. Setepenre is missing, presumably because she is too young to take part in the ceremony. On the east wall of the same chamber we see the royal couple, now with all six princesses, enjoying the international festival or ‘durbar' that we know occurred at Amarna in the second month of Akhenaten's Year 12. This is the last time that we see these seven women together: it may be argued that this is the last securely dated event preceding the accession of Tutankhamen.
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The north wall of Meryre's tomb is very different. The image is unfinished and damaged, but it clearly shows a king and queen standing beneath the rays of the Aten. The royal couple are depicted in typical Amarna style, and could easily be Akhenaten and Nefertiti. The cartouches which accompanied them were, when the tomb was recorded during the late nineteenth century, those of the ‘King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Ankhkeprure son of Re, Smenkhkare Dje-serkheperure' and the ‘King's Great Wife' Meritaten.

Meritaten, then, was both wife of Smenkhkare and queen of Egypt. She was at least sixteen years old when Akhenaten died, and could have borne one or more surviving children: two unexplained Amarna princesses, Meritaten-the-younger and Ankhesenpaaten-the-younger, may well be her daughters. We don't know when Smenkhkare died, but, if he died two years after Akhenaten, Meritaten could have had an eight-year-old son ready to succeed him. If that is the case we might have expected to see her guiding her infant son in the first years of his kingship. Could she, rather than Nefertiti, be the enigmatic, female Neferneferuaten?
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