A fragment of a relief recovered from Amarna and now housed in the Louvre Museum, Paris, has been hailed as confirmation of Tey’s intimate relationship with the queen. The fragment appears to show a seated older woman wearing a distinctive golden necklace and holding a younger woman on her knee. Both women wear pleated linen dresses, and the older lady has one breast exposed. As Tey is the only woman known to have received gold as an official reward from the king, it has been assumed that the scene originally showed Tey holding her royal charge, or even offering her the breast. Such scenes were not considered in any way distasteful, and the wet-nurse, far from being a humble servant performing a rather basic task, was to be equated with the great mother goddesses. Earlier pharaohs had been depicted suckling from Hathor in her various guises, which included a woman, a cow and even a snake goddess, while references to nursing the king were made in several royal texts; we know, for example, that the Great Enchantress suckled the king in order to prepare him for his coronation. Unfortunately the Louvre relief is so badly damaged that the identification of the two figures as Tey and Nefertiti is by no means certain. It seems equally possible that the scene could represent Nefertiti’s eldest daughter Meritaten sitting on her mother’s knee, or even Nefertiti sitting on her husband’s knee.9
The role of wet-nurse to the royal family was one of the most important and influential positions that a non-royal woman could achieve, conferring great honour on her husband and great privileges upon her own baby, who became a ‘Child of the Kep [nursery]’, raised alongside the royal children. Consequently, the royal wet-nurses were invariably the wives of the highest-ranking court officials. As we know that Tey was married to a man of high status, and as her tomb shows her to have been a woman worthy of great respect, could Nefertiti have been a royal baby? We know that she was not a daughter of Queen Tiy, but could she have been a half-sister of Amenhotep IV, born to a secondary wife? Perhaps even the daughter of Queen Sitamen, or of Gilukhepa? Theoretically, given the size of the royal harem, the list of potential mothers is extensive, although, as Sitamen only married Amenhotep III towards the end of his reign, it seems unlikely that she could have borne a daughter old enough to marry Amenhotep IV at the start of his rule. However, the fact that Nefertiti never refers to herself as a ‘King’s Daughter’ makes such speculation fruitless. Nefertiti could not have been a royal princess.
We have already met Tey’s husband Ay, the prominent court official who included among his many accolades the positions of ‘Overseer of the King’s Horses’ and ‘God’s Father’, the latter being his favourite title, used on all occasions until it eventually became a part of his name and he was universally known as ‘God’s Father Ay’. Circumstantial evidence makes it seem highly likely that Ay was the son of Yuya and Thuyu, and the brother of Anen and Tiy, while the shared title of ‘God’s Father’ suggests an even stronger link between the royal family and the parallel dynasty from Akhmim. If ‘God’s Father’ is not simply a priestly title but is to be taken literally, Ay, like his father before him, must have been the father-in-law of the king and the father of the queen consort Nefertiti.10 Ay himself makes no mention of his relationship with Nefertiti but, as we have seen, that is only to be expected. Tey does claim a link with Nefertiti, although from her own words it would appear that she was merely Nefertiti’s nurse and not her natural mother. Tey never lays claim to the respected title of ‘Royal Mother of the King’s Great Wife’ which had earlier given Thuyu so much pleasure. We may deduce that Tey was a second wife who had been called upon to raise the infant child of Ay’s deceased first wife; such domestic tragedies were common enough in ancient Egypt. However, their joint tomb makes no mention of a first wife and the suggestion that Tey breast-fed the child poses certain problems. Did the widowed Ay marry his daughter’s nurse? Could we be taking the title of wet-nurse too literally – does it really mean stepmother or adoptive mother? Whatever the answer, it is clear that the marriage of Nefertiti and Amenhotep IV raised the lady Tey and her husband to a position of great honour at court.
Although we know nothing of Nefertiti’s parentage we do know that she had a younger sister who spent some time at the Amarna court.11 As the term sister was used somewhat loosely throughout the dynastic period, it is equally likely that this lady could have been a half-sister, a stepsister or even a foster sister. Seven of the earlier tombs of the Amarna nobles include among their depictions of palace life a young lady referred to as Mutnodjmet, a Theban name meaning ‘The goddess Mut (or mother) is the Sweet One’. The vast majority of the women of the queen’s retinue remain anonymous background figures, and the very fact that Mutnodjmet is named is an indication of her importance,
Fig. 2.1 Mutnodjmet and her nieces
although strict Amarna etiquette ensures that she always stands behind the royal family. Mutnodjmet is consistently labelled ‘Queen’s Sister’. Like Nefertiti she never claims to be a king’s daughter, and her parentage goes unrecorded. She is, however, often shown as a companion to the three older daughters of Nefertiti. Mutnodjmet is taller than her nieces and therefore older, although the fact that she still wears the side-lock of youth indicates that she was probably too young to act as their nurse or governess.12 Mutnodjmet disappears from the scenes before Nefertiti’s fourth daughter is born and we may assume that she left the immediate royal family at this time, possibly to be married.
In the tomb of Tey and Ay – most probably her parents – Mutnodjmet watches with the ladies of the court as Nefertiti and Akhenaten present the fortunate couple with a shower of golden gifts. She refrains, however, from participating directly in any of the Amarna celebrations, and does not seem to be a devotee of the sun disc. This aloofness, her apparent reluctance to join her sister and brother-in-law at worship, and the fact that Mutnodjmet is usually accompanied by two comical dwarfs who are encumbered with funny names, caused Norman de Garis Davies to speculate again on the fate of one of the lost members of Akhenaten’s harem:
These servants, for whom ridiculous titles and names are invented, and their mistress, who stands apart without participating in the worship of the Aten, invite comment. Were it not for the evident youth of the princess and her Egyptian aspect, I would have ventured to suggest that it was Tadukheper [sic] herself under an Egyptian name, to whom the monogamous King would grant no higher title or relation than this… Her speedy disappearance would be easily explained by the king’s repugnance to the alliance. The dwarfs’ curious titles might then have some playful reference to their Syrian names.13
We have no contemporary written description of Nefertiti. However, as she was almost certainly of Egyptian descent, we can safely assume that she was relatively petite with brown eyes, a light-brown skin and wavy brown or black hair. Throughout the New Kingdom it was common practice for upper-class men and women to crop their hair and shave their bodies as a practical response to the heat, dust and bugs of the Egyptian climate; as Nefertiti frequently appears completely hairless, we may assume that she too believed in total depilation. We do know that Nefertiti used the make-up and unguents of her day, and excavations at Amarna have yielded several intimate cosmetic items including a blue glazed perfume bottle and kohl tubes inlaid with the names of the queen and her daughters.14 It is difficult to decide how much reliance to place on contemporary depictions of the queen, as the Amarna artists did not put a high premium on ‘realistic’ representations. However, her portraits suggest that Nefertiti was slightly shorter than her husband and of slender build at the time of her marriage, although she later became more pear-shaped, with a trim waist but heavy thighs and a sagging stomach. Whatever her shape, Nefertiti appears consistently graceful in her movements. Her epithets are to a large extent stereotyped expressions of queenly virtues: ‘Fair of Face, Mistress of Joy, Endowed with Charm, Great of Love’, but they do suggest that Amenhotep wished his wife to be recognized first and foremost as a beautiful woman.
Our first glimpse of the new queen comes from the private tombs of Thebes.
In the badly damaged tomb of the royal butler Parennefer (TT 188), an unnamed lady, almost certainly Nefertiti, accompanies the king as he worships the Aten and, in a scene reminiscent of earlier tombs, sits beside Amenhotep as he receives the grovelling Parennefer.15 In the tomb of the Vizier Ramose (TT 55) we get a much better view of the queen as she stands behind her husband at the Window of Appearance, the palace balcony which allowed the royal couple to present themselves to their subjects. Unfortunately the scene is only partially carved, and Nefertiti is hidden from the waist downwards by the palace wall. She is a slender young woman with a heavy jaw, dressed in a long, elaborately pleated linen robe with sleeves. This is Nefertiti’s standard attire, and occasional depictions of an ankle-length sheath may simply represent the same dress pulled tight in order to emphasize the body. On Nefertiti’s brow there is the uraeus which signifies royalty and in her hand she carries an object which has been identified as a ‘drooping queenly lily’ but which is more probably a fly-whisk.
Nefertiti’s Nubian-style wig, a bushy layered bob cut at an angle so as to leave the nape of the neck exposed while the longer side hair falls to the clavicles, is something of an innovation.16 This style, which is believed to have been inspired by the naturally curly hair of the Nubian soldiers who fought in the pharaoh’s army, had hitherto been worn only
Fig. 2.2 The Window of Appearance: Theban tomb of Ramose
by men connected with the military or the police force. Its appearance on a high-ranking woman must have had the same startling effect on her contemporaries as the simple Eton crops of the 1920s had on a world accustomed to seeing women with elaborate long hair. Judging by modern standards of beauty the Nubian style was very becoming to Nefertiti’s gamine good looks; it is entirely possible that she adopted it simply because it made her look good. However, the fact that this hairstyle is henceforth reserved for women closely linked with the king, suggests that it may have had a deeper significance for its wearer. In fact, throughout her stay at Thebes Nefertiti varied her hairstyles, choosing between the Nubian style, and the longer, more old-fashioned tripartite wig favoured by her mother-in-law, which Nefertiti wore either straight or curled. Generally the longer, heavy wig was worn with a tall feathered crown, possibly in order to counterbalance its weight.
Standing in front of his bride, Amenhotep appears in a long and voluminous pleated robe which very much resembles his wife’s dress. Amenhotep is the active one; he leans forward with slightly outstretched arms to greet his people and in doing so reveals his trim waist, heavy hips and one breast. Nefertiti, entirely feminine in spite of her masculine wig, is passive, and seems quite happy with her traditional role as onlooker. High in the sky above, the sun disc of the Aten shines down on the queen and her husband.
Nefertiti bore six daughters within ten years of her marriage, the elder three being born at Thebes, the younger three at Amarna: Meritaten (‘Beloved of the Aten’; born no later than Year 1), Meketaten (‘Protected by the Aten’; probably born Year 4), Ankhesenpaaten (‘Living through the Aten’; born before the end of Year 7, most probably before Year 6), Neferneferuaten-the-younger (‘Exquisite Beauty of the Sun Disc’; probably born by Year 8), Neferneferure (‘Exquisite Beauty of Re’; born before Year 10) and Setepenre (‘Chosen of Re’; born before Year 10). All six daughters were depicted with their parents in a remarkable fresco painted on the mud-brick wall of the King’s House at Amarna, dated on stylistic grounds to Year 9. Here the family was shown relaxing in a columned hall. Nefertiti reclined on a pile of cushions and cuddled the tiny baby Setepenre who may have only just been born. Amenhotep, dressed in a long robe and sandals, sat opposite his wife on a low stool, and the three eldest princesses, naked but adorned with jewellery, stood between their parents, secure in the shelter of their mother’s extended left arm. Neferneferuaten-the-younger and Neferneferure, still babies themselves, sat on colourful cushions at their mother’s feet and played together. Unfortunately by the time this mural was discovered by Flinders Pétrie in 1891, it had suffered extensive damage caused by white ants and was in a highly fragile condition. The upper part of the scene was beyond reconstruction with Nefertiti and Amenhotep truncated at the waist, and baby Setepenre had vanished except for one tiny painted hand. The practical Petrie was forced to take drastic action to preserve what little he could:
Fig. 2.3 The Window of Appearance: Amarna tomb of Ay
On a still day, with a carpenter’s chisel, I cut to pieces, without any vibration, little by little, the mud-bricks of the wall, until I had the facing of mud 30 × 16 inches, standing on edge, free in the air. Having previously cut through where it should part, I brought up a box lid against the face with newspaper padding on it, grasped the sheet of mud against the lid, and turned it down. On getting it to my hut I brushed the dust off the back, made a grid of wooden bars an inch square, and as much apart, put a layer of mud on each bar and then pressed it down on the back of the mud, and put more mud as keying between all the bars. On reversal, there was the fresco unhurt resting on the grid.17
The fragment of mud showing Neferneferuaten-the-younger and Neferneferure at play was sent to the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, where, as Petrie reports with some resignation, ‘… after some years a coat of varnish was mistakenly put on the face to preserve the paint, sadly darkening and yellowing it, besides destroying the most interesting dusting with powdered orpiment which indicated the high lights reflected’.
Tradition dictated that a royal son would not be included in a formal family portrait, when the king would be surrounded by his close female dependants, the women who supported him and emphasized his power. Given the highly unconventional nature of the scene described above, however, it seems unlikely that a boy child would have been excluded from the family group purely on the grounds of gender. It seems safe to conclude that Nefertiti never bore a son, and indeed there is no inscriptional or archaeological evidence to suggest that she ever did. The royal couple must have been disappointed. Although the Egyptians, unlike almost all other ancient civilizations, seem to have loved their children irrespective of their sex, there was greater status to be gained from producing sons rather than daughters.
For Amenhotep, the lack of a male heir was not a total disaster. Although the myth of Horus and Osiris made it clear that it was the king’s son born to his consort who should follow him on to the throne, there was a good precedent for adopting a successor from the harem. Earlier in the 18th Dynasty Tuthmosis II and III had both been the sons of minor royal wives who succeeded to the throne when the queen failed to produce a son, while Tuthmosis I had been a general in the army until he was adopted by his predecessor. For Nefertiti the lack of a son was more serious, condemning her to a temporary role in Egypt’s limelight. As Nefertiti was not of royal birth she was denied the title of ‘King’s Daughter’, and her entire status was derived from her role as ‘King’s Wife’ and mother of the royal children. Without a son this role would end with her husband’s death and she could never become ‘Mother of the King’, the title which had ensured her mother-in-law’s continuing importance at court.
The royal couple hid their disappointment well. From the moment they were born the little princesses were allowed an unprecedented prominence by both their parents, with the three eldest, and Meritaten in particular, being the favourites. All six are included in both formal and informal royal scenes, where they are portrayed as miniature adults rather than babies and toddlers, and all six are consistently associated with their mother who, as the Amarna boundary stelae make clear, took responsibility for their upbringing:
… My heart is pleased with the queen and her children. May old age be granted to the Great Queen Neferneferuaten-Nefertiti… for she is in the charge of the pharaoh, and may old age be granted to her children, the Princess Meritaten and the Princess Meketaten, for they are under the authority of the queen their mother, for ever and ever.18
So ubiquitous are the royal daughters that they have frequently been used as a means of da
ting their father’s monuments, the assumption being that if a daughter is not depicted, she has not yet been born. While this is useful as a general rule of thumb, it can be dangerous to date a monument purely on the grounds of the number of daughters shown; we do not know, for example, whether a daughter would be included in a formal scene as soon as she was born, or whether the artist would wait until she was old enough to play a proper part in the ritual. Anachronisms did occur, the most obvious being an Amarna tomb scene showing the reception of foreign tribute during Year 12, where only three of the six princesses appear.
Throughout the first year of his reign Amenhotep IV acted as a conventional monarch, carrying on very much where his late father had left off. The royal court remained at Thebes, probably based at the Malkata Palace, and building work continued in and around the Karnak Temple where Amenhotep undertook the decoration of his father’s unfinished pylons with what at first sight appear to be irreproachably conventional images, although Re-Harakhty, the falcon-headed sun god who wears the sun disc on his head, was allowed unprecedented prominence. Pylon III was embellished with a scene showing the triumphant Amenhotep IV in the guise of a victorious pharaoh smiting the heads of a group of grovelling foreigners, while the southern pylon (now demolished) was garnished with a series of traditional offering scenes including the new king presenting to Re-Harakhty who is now designated ‘… he who rejoices in the horizon in his name “Sunlight that is in the Disc” ’. At Soleb Amenhotep completed his father’s unfinished temple, and here we see scenes of the son worshipping his deified father.
During Year 2 came the unexpected announcement that a sed festival was to be celebrated on the third anniversary of Amenhotep’s accession. No official explanation for this celebration has been preserved, but we might hazard a guess that it marked some important event in the king’s private life, perhaps his birthday or even his decision to dedicate himself and his people to a new god.19 An unexpected festival would certainly have set the seal on the new king’s popularity, as the heb-sed was a time of holidaying and feasting for all.
Nefertiti Page 7
