The Mummy of Nefertiti- or the Daughter?

Nefertiti was the queen-consort to the radical pharaoh Amenhoep IV. Amenhotep abolished Egypt's the age-old polytheism, replacing it with worship of of a single god, Aten, represented by the sun. He rechristened himself Akhenaten, meaning 'living image of the Aten'. After his death this pharaoh was cared as a heretic by the resurgent old order. His name was erased from history, as were the names and portraits of those associated with his aberrant regime. Nefertiti became famous again only three thousand years later, when German archaeologists uncovered the queen's portrait bust from the sands amid the ruins of Akhenaten's long lost capital Akhetaten (tell-el-Amarna). The artifact lay still in the workshop of its sculptor Thutmose. Akhenaten's revolutionary reign had seen the abandonment not only of the old gods but also of conventional artistic stylization. The painted bust thus portrayed the queen with an uncanny naturalism previously little known in Egypt, graceful but majestically aloof. Aknenaten saw himself as the earthly channel for his god's power, and in his time images of himself and his family engaged in solar worship replaced images of the multifarious deities whose cults he had abolished. Sometimes in these images his consort seemed scarcely subordinate, indicating her central role in the new state religion.Nefertiti's name meant 'the beautiful-one has come'. It seems it was fitting.

Three mummies that have lain half forgotten in a sealed chamber in tomb KV 35, for manny centuries. Egyptologist Dr Joann Fletcher has recently made the case for one of them being that of the famous Nefertiti. While one must agree that it is the mummy of a royal woman of the late 18th dynasty, there may be room to doubt whether Fletcher's identification. The mummy has suffered from seemingly deliberate and systematic damage, with the chest and lower face smashed in. Enough survives to provide clues to the individual's identity, however.

The partially erupted wisdom teeth seem compelling evidence that the mummy is that of a much younger woman (Nefertiti died aged 30-40, whereas the teeth put the age of this mummy at death at 16-20). The fused and slightly bowed spine was taken as possible evidence of an older woman, true. However, I find it easier to believe that this was not Nefertiti herself, but one of her daughters, possibly Meritaten, or Ankhesenamun (originally called Ankhesenpaaten). Spinal anomalies (fused vertebrae) were found in the body of Tutankhamun (half brother and husband of Ankhesenamun. I think it is likely that Tutankhamen and Ankhesenamun both inherited mild skeletal abnormalities from their common father Aknenaten, who was commonly portrayed with very peculiar bodily features. (Incestuous marriage was customary for the Pharaohs, so it seems hardly surprising inbreeding led to certain deformities). Akhenaten's deformities seems to have included an elongated skull. This head shape is a feature of Tutankhamun’s corpse too, as well as that of the female mummy from KV 35.

The mummy

A long skull is also a feature of the young man's mummified body that was found in the (likewise much defaced) female sarcophagus in tomb KV 55. I subscribe to the view that this latter was Akhenaten’s short-lived and mysterious successor Semkhare (and don’t feel that Fletcher is right to have Semkhare and Nefertiti being one and the same, she having decided to adopt a masculine persona!) It seems more likely that Semkhare was Tutankhamun’s older brother (the son of Akhenaten by a secondary wife perhaps- only Akhenaten and Nefertiti's six daughters featured in the official images of the Amarna royal family).

There is evidence that the young woman whose body ended up in KV 35 (Fletcher’s Nefertiti candidate) suffered a violent death, and that subsequent to her burial her corpse was ritually mutilated. This seems to represent a revenge attack on the part of the old Theban priesthood on the family of Akhenaten, tainted as they all were by his blasphemy. The arm placed across the chest- the sign of a princess or queen- meanwhile, is not in itself evidence that the corpse was Nefertiti’s.


The KV35 body could be that of the oldest princess, Meritaten who probably succeeded her mother Nefertiti as Akhenaten’s great royal wife, and may also have been the wife of Semkhare. The mummy could clearly also be that of Ankhesenamun, who was queen-consort to Tutankhamun. (It could also be one of their four sisters who probably died in a plague that ravaged Armana/Akhetaten- possibly even the same plague mentioned in Exodus.

Bust of Nefertiti, found at el-Amarna,Altes Museum, Berlin.
Dr Fletcher may also have been wrong also to cast Nefertiti as the ruler who presided over the abandonment of Atenism, and the return of the court to Thebes. Nefertiti was far too central to the solar cult for that to seem remotely likely. In actuality the religious counter-revolution was organized during the reign of Tutankhamun, when real power lay with the vizier Ay. Ay was apparently the father of Nefertiti, and had served his son–in-law Akenaten’s whim loyally. (Ay originally planned to be buried in Amarna, and his original tomb was carved with hymns to the Aten). However, as the power behind the boy-king Tut’s throne, Ay quickly had the solar cult officially ditched. Many suspect that Ay was behind Tutankhamun’s premature death, which came just as the young pharaoh was coming of age. The young widow Ankhesenamun then appealed to the Hittite king, writing: ‘My husband has died and I have no son. They say about you that you have many sons, You might give me one of your sons to become my husband. I would not wish to take one of my subjects as a husband’ (By this it is presumed she meant so that she did not have to marry her own grandfather, Ay!) In the event, the Hittite prince who set off for Egypt was murdered en-route, and the aged Ay succeeded in establising himself as pharaoh. He seems to have compelled Ankhesenamun to marry him, for a ring survives bearing their combined name cartouches. As Ay had another queen by the end of his reign, it is possible that he had Ankhesenamun murdered too. (Power corrupts…) If this is so, then it explains much about the body in KV35. Finally, there is the evidence of the facial reconstruction. The woman looks similar to the Nefertiti portrait bust, but different. They are clearly different women, but conceivably could be mother and daughter. The computer reconstruction may also be compared to the image of Ankhesenamun as portrayed on the back of a throne found in Tutankhamun's tomb, and to a statue of one of the Amarna princesses.
Computer regeneration from the mummy's skull. Sculpture of a daughter of Akhenaten (Meritaten?) Ankhesenamun, from Tutankhamun's throne.