Atlantis and the Ten Plagues of Egypt: The Secret History Hidden in the Valley of the Kings

by Phillips, Graham

  Perhaps the firmest indication that Amonhotep was alive and living in Amarna for many years after Akhenaten's reign began are the Amarna Letters, as a number are addressed to him personally. With one or two exceptions, only the kings of Mitanni, Babylon and Assyria name the pharaoh with whom they are corresponding. Others simply use, 'My Lord', 'My God', 'Great King' and so forth. Of the nearly 350 letters, in less than a couple of dozen do we know to whom they were sent. However, ten of them were sent to Amonhotep, which appears to evidence that he was not only acting as co-regent but was actually present in the city to receive them. It seems most unlikely that these letters had been sent to Amonhotep before the Amarna period and had been brought from Thebes. The reason is that official records were kept on papyrus – which have sadly disintegrated with time – but the clay tablets on which the Amarna letters were written were sturdier items meant only for messengers to carry with less risk of damage. Once they were received they would have been copied onto papyrus for the record and then discarded. Indeed, they were ultimately considered of no value and left behind when the city was abandoned. Accordingly, they were not an official archive, of which there would have been papyrus copies, and so there was no reason for them to have been brought to Amarna when the move was made from Thebes. Accordingly, those addressed to Amonhotep must have been sent to him while he was in Amarna.

  We can further gather from the letters that Amonhotep must have been in Amarna for much of Akhenaten's reign. We know, from correspondences sent by Kadashman-Enlil I of Babylonia, that some of the letters were received in the early Amarna period, as Kadashman-Enlil I was succeeded by Burnaburiash II by the later period. We also know that the letters were being received until the very end of Akhenaten's reign, as one of them is addressed to Tutankhamun. Consequently, they are a good cross-section, if not a complete dossier, of the dispatches received. As the letters identifying the pharaoh to whom they are written include ten addressing Akhenaten, exactly the same number as address Amonhotep, it would statistically suggest that the unaddressed letters could equally be divided between them, from which we can infer that Amonhotep was in the city for many years.

  With the balance of evidence on the side of a long co-regency, the remaining question is how long did Amonhotep live? Evidence for this was actually found at Amarna as early as the 1920s, when Pendlebury uncovered two fragments of pottery wine jars with dockets dated as the years 28 and 30. The dockets, he reasoned, must have been written in the reign of Amonhotep III who is the only king of the period to have enjoyed such a long rule. He concluded that, as wine is presumed not to keep much longer than around four years in permeable pottery in such a hot climate, the earliest that the year 28 could have been was the year 2 of Akhenaten's reign, four years before Amarna began to be occupied by the official classes. As the highest known dating of Amonhotep's reign, found on inscribed clay dockets from Amonhotep's Malakata palace at Thebes, is the year 38, it is generally accepted that he died in this his thirty-eighth year as king. If Pendlebury is right, and the year 28 of Amonhotep's reign corresponds within the year 2 of Akhenaten's reign, then the year 38 – the year Amonhotep died – is the year 12 of Akhenaten's reign.

  Cyril Aldred sees evidence of Amonhotep's death around the year 12 of Akhenaten's reign in scenes in the tombs of Huya and the harem overseer Meryre. In both these tombs there are scenes which appear nowhere else during the reign, and so evidently depict a one-off event. Dated as the year 12, they show a large concourse of representatives from vassal states and the great powers in Asia and Africa coming to Amarna bearing gifts for the pharaoh and receiving his blessing. The uniqueness of the episode suggests more than a simple jubilee, rather, Aldred suggests, a ceremonial event to mark Akhenaten's sole accession to the throne after the recent death of his father.

  As Amonhotep would seem to have been alive when Tutankhamun was born, around the year 9 or 10 of Akhenaten's reign, Amonhotep could well have been his father as the young king claimed. Amonhotep certainly seems to have been young enough. When he came to power Akhenaten must have been of adult age, as he was almost immediately capable of establishing his new religion. Going by a number of colossal statues of him excavated from the site of the Aten temple at East Karnak between 1926 and 1932 (now in the Cairo Museum), which were made in the earliest years of his reign, he seems to have been about twenty at the time. If Amonhotep sired Akhenaten when he was in his teens (as is generally thought), then he would have been somewhere between thirty-five and forty when Akhenaten came to the throne, and so between forty-five and fifty in the year 12 when he may have died. Accordingly, he was still capable of fathering Tutankhamun a couple of years earlier.

  If Tutankhamun was Amonhotep's son – and there now seems little reason to doubt it – the next question concerns his mother. We have already seen how forensic analysis has revealed that Tutankhamun was almost certainly Smenkhkare's brother. If Tutankhamun was Amonhotep's son, it would follow that Smenkhkare was too, or he would presumably not have been made pharaoh ahead of Tutankhamun. It is possible, therefore, that Tutankhamun was a younger son of Nefertiti's sister Mutnodjme, the suggested mother of Smenkhkare. Amonhotep had a large, and ever increasing number of women in his harem, including two of his own daughters – Isis and Sitamun – and a number of foreign princesses, one of whom could have been Mutnodjme. As we have seen, she certainly had at least one child, and the identity of the father is unknown. However, the most likely candidate for Tutankhamun's mother is Amonhotep's chief wife, Queen Tiye.

  Like his predecessor Akhenaten, Tutankhamun seems to have been an emotional young man with strong affections for his family. His tomb is filled with keepsakes and heirlooms to 'remind' him of his relations, including such items as shawls, fans, trinket boxes, sequins and scarabs. There are a number belonging to Akhenaten and Amonhotep III, and on the female side, to Meritaten, Nefernefruaten and Meketaten. Items belonging to Nefertiti, Kiya and Mutnodjme, however, are almost completely absent, except where they have been re-inscribed with someone else's name, such as Meritaten. This would seem very strange if one of them was his mother. In fact, the most personal of all the heirlooms belonged to Queen Tiye: a miniature coffin-shaped box, inscribed with her name and containing a plaited lock of her auburn hair. As Meritaten, Meketaten and Nefernefruaten were all seemingly too young to have been his mother, and from the contents of the tomb alone, this only leaves Tiye as a possible contender. We know she lived until after his birth; but was she too old for Tutankhamun to have been her son?

  The mummy thought to be Queen Tiye was found in the tomb of Amonhotep II in 1898, as part of the cache stored there for safety around 1000 BC (see Chapter One). When Elliot Smith (the professor of anatomy who examined the Tomb 55 mummy) was called in to examine the remains he dubbed her 'the elder woman', to distinguish her from a younger woman found in the same tomb. She appeared to be middle aged, although she had long, lustrous brown hair with no traces of grey. She was tentatively identified as Queen Tiye because of cranial similarities with the mummy of Tiye's mother Tuya, after her tomb was discovered in 1905 by the English Egyptologist James Quibell. The identification was apparently verified in the 1980s by a team of specialists from the Universities of Alexandria and Michigan employing modern scientific techniques. An electron probe was used to compare a clipping of the mummy's hair with a sample of Tiye's hair from Tutankhamun's tomb, the results indicating that the mummy was indeed Queen Tiye. Such probes are said to provide an exact analysis of the chemical constituents in hair which are as unique as fingerprints. However, the accuracy of these findings has more recently been questioned, and at present the case remains open. The Alexandria-Michigan team assign an age of around thirty-five to the mummy, which would seem to have been too young for a woman who had a son – Akhenaten – who was around thirty-four when she died. The identity of the 'elder woman' aside, however, Tiye may have been as young as forty-eight when she died, which would mean that she could have conceived Tutankhamun five or six years earlier.


  What, therefore, was Tutankhamun's precise relationship to Smenkhkare? Who was Smenkhkare's mother? Was it Mutnodjme, as we have theorized? Of one thing we can be fairly sure: it was not Queen Tiye. As we have seen, the royal children do not seem to accompany their parents at official functions until the age of around five. As Tiye appears to have been dead by the year 14 of Akhenaten's reign, we should not expect to see Tutankhamun pictured with her as he would only just have reached that age. However, the same cannot be said of Smenkhkare. Unlike Mutnodjme, who is not pictured officially attending important celebrations, Tiye does appear in the tomb reliefs at important events which take place between the years 9 and 12. For example, we see her at the induction to her personal Maru temple (shown in Huya's tomb) and in the great festival of the year 12 (shown in the tombs of Huya and Meryre). Here she is shown accompanied by her daughter Beketaten, so if she had a son of Smenkhkare's age – around fifteen – he would surely also have been in attendance. For this reason we must find another mother for Smenkhkare. As Kiya is also only shown with a daughter, but Mutnodjme appears to be accompanied by sons – and at the right time for one of them to have been Smenkhkare (see Chapter Four) – Mutnodjme is still by far the best bet.

  Until there is positive evidence one way or the other, therefore, the most likely identity of Tutankhamun is that he was Smenkhkare's half-brother, both being sons of Amonhotep III, and that his mother was Queen Tiye, making him the full brother of Akhenaten.

  Tutankhamun's death in the ninth year of his reign is yet another of the mysteries surrounding the young king. Forensic analysis of the mummy has shown there to have been a small sliver of bone within the upper cranial cavity, suggesting that he died as a result of a blow to the head, but whether this was due to a fall, perhaps from a chariot, or evidence of assassination, is difficult to say. There is certainly evidence that the clouds were gathering for the followers of the Aten religion.

  Tutankhamun died without an heir, leaving the country in a precarious situation. How his queen tried to remedy the predicament is unprecedented in the history of Egypt. What happened is known not from Egyptian sources but from Hittite records excavated from their capital city at Hattusas – modern Boghazkoy – in Turkey. Here we are told of a remarkable incident. Evidently, once Tutankhamun was dead, a queen, presumably Ankhesenpaaten, wrote to the Hittite king, Suppiluliumas I, asking him to send one of his sons to Egypt so that she could marry him and make him the next pharaoh. This was an extraordinary request and aroused the suspicion of the Hittite king. He dispatched a chamberlain to the court at Memphis, and when he returned, satisfied that the request was genuine, the king sent his son Prince Zannanza to marry the queen. However, on their way the party were ambushed and the prince was murdered. In revenge, Suppiluliumas attacked the Egyptians in the Lebanon, and hostilities continued between the two empires for some years.

  What prompted the queen to side with Egypt's long-standing enemy is a complete mystery, but clearly shows that she was more afraid of opposition within her own country than she was of foreign aggression. The Hittites were probably her only hope, for Egypt's old allies the Mittani had been invaded by the Hittites during Akhenaten's reign, while the Minoan empire had seemingly collapsed in circumstances we shall investigate later. Was Ankhesenpaaten acting alone, or was she acting under the guidance of Ay? Was he or someone else responsible for Zannanza's murder?

  We know, from Tutankhamun's tomb, that by the time of the young king's burial Ay had appointed himself heir apparent. He is depicted wearing the blue crown of a king and, officiating at the funeral, had adopted the traditional role of the heir. We also know that Ay married Ankhesenpaaten to legitimate his rule, as evidenced by the bezel of a blue glass finger-ring, now in the Berlin Museum, which carried the cartouches of Ankhesenpaaten and Ay side by side: the usual way of indicating wedlock. (His previous wife Tey was seemingly dead by this time.)

  As we have a period of seventy days, the prescribed time for the funerary arrangements to have been completed, for Ay to have been appointed as the next pharaoh, then Ankhesenpaaten must have written to the Hittite king almost immediately. Perhaps by the time the prince was sent, Ay had seized the throne and ordered the assassination. However, this would seem unlikely. Firstly, Ay was an old man who had been loyal to Akhenaten's family for years. It seems unthinkable that he would have turned against Akhenaten's daughter. Secondly, he had been Tutankhamun's right-hand man, virtually running the county, and so would almost certainly have been aware of a visit from the Hittite delegation to investigate the queen's story. The fact that they returned happy that everything was in order would suggest that it was Ay himself who had sanctioned the arrangement. The decision to make himself king, therefore, would seemingly have been made after the Hittite prince had been murdered. If this was the true scenario then it shows that by this time, to have been desperate enough to try to forge an alliance with the Hittites, the Atenist faction was living in fear of a coup d'état. Ay only lived for a further four years and when he died the general Horemheb seized power. His authority having grown steadily for a decade, it is far more likely that it was on Horemheb's orders that the young prince was killed. Judging by his conduct when he became king, it was Horemheb that Ankhesenpaaten feared. The only other possibility to account for the Zannanza murder is that it was part of a clever scheme to occupy Horemheb and the army. Perhaps Ay set the whole thing up to provoke a war to keep Horemheb out of the way fighting the Hittites in the Asiatic provinces. This was certainly the outcome of the affair, which left Ay free to rule Egypt for another four years.

  Apart from the return to Memphis and the re-establishment of the old religion, few events in Tutankhamun's reign have been found documented. The military situation is fairly clear from foreign sources, however. During the nine years of Tutankhamun's rule, the imperial army had been rejuvenated. It had apparently been restructured and enlarged and dispatched to restore control over the territories that Egypt still retained. A painting in the tomb of the viceroy Huy shows that raids were mounted in his province of Nubia, while Palestine and Syria probably suffered similar incursions from the northern army. Two scenes from a brightly painted gesso box from Tutankhamun's tomb shows the young king personally leading his troops, but this would seem unlikely for someone so young, and scenes from Horemheb's own tomb in Saqqara show him as commander-in-chief of the northern army.

  By the time Ay died Horemheb had further established his credentials for power with a series of victories over the Hittites, and, as the old king died without an heir, Horemheb was able to seize the throne for himself. To legitimate his claim he married Nefertiti's sister, Mutnodjme, and we hear no more of Ankhesenpaaten. The last of Akhenaten's daughters, it seems, was dead.

  Horemheb's background is virtually unknown, except that he came from Heracleopolis, about half way between Heliopolis and Amarna, in Middle Egypt, and was obviously a career officer whose abilities were recognized early. Immediately on becoming pharaoh, he allied himself with the cult of Amun-Re, outlawed Atenism and re-established the Amun priesthood, appointing as priests loyal officers from his army. This was no nominal reversion to the old ways, as had been the policy of Ay, but a complete revival of the old gods. Whatever unique set of circumstances had brought about the rise of Atenism and led every element in the country to play along, if not actually embrace it, was now three decades in the past. Horemheb wanted to eradicate all evidence of Atenism and all those who had sanctioned it. Throughout the country, images of the Aten were defaced, Amarna was ransacked, and the temple of the Aten in Karnak was taken apart brick by brick. Although there is no textual reference to it, we can assume that the populace were subjected to a similar purge and thousands must have been persecuted and killed.

  The Amarna kings became non-persons: the names of Akhenaten, Smenkhkare, Tutankhamun and Ay were struck off all monuments, save a few that were overlooked or out of the way. Horemheb even erased their names from the list of kings, beginning his own reign at
the end of the reign of Amonhotep III. Consequently, none of them appeared in the king lists at Abydos and Karnak. Within a generation or two, the general population seem unaware that the Amarna kings ever existed: just half a century later, in the tomb of a certain Amenmosi at Thebes, for example, a number of New Kingdom pharaohs are depicted in their order of succession. Here, Horemheb is placed between Amonhotep III and his successor Ramesses I, as if the owner had never heard of Akhenaten, Smenkhkare, Tutankhamun and Ay.

  The wrath vented against Ay's monuments knew no bounds. Statues in his mortuary temple at Medinet Habu, near Thebes, were defaced and his tomb in the Valley of the Kings was ransacked. Ay's tomb was found by Giovanni Belzoni (working for the British Museum) as early as 1816, but it was not until 1972 that a proper excavation took place. Not only was the sarcophagus found to have been smashed in antiquity, but Ay's figure was hacked out of wall paintings and his name excised from texts; there was even evidence that the mummy had been torn to sheds. This act of furious desecration was judged to have occurred during the reign of Horemheb and was almost certainly carried out on his orders. The same fate probably befell the mummies of Akhenaten, Ankhesenpaaten, Nefertiti, Meritaten and many more. The fascinating question, however, is how Tutankhamun's tomb managed to escape the carnage. It is, perhaps, understandable that Horemheb left Smenkhkare as he was, his remains desecrated and unnamed, but for Tutankhamun – a king whose statues he was toppling all over Egypt – to have been left alone surrounded by his fabulous treasures and kilogram upon kilogram of gold, is bewildering.