Egypt’s golden couple: How Akhenaten and Nefertiti Became Gods on Earth
by John and Colleen Darnell
To anyone who watches modern politics in Canada, the prologue of
this book is very familiar. Recent prime ministers’ marriages are
constantly either upheld as models of solid political and personal commitment or rumoured to be
extremely dysfunctional. Either on the verge of falling apart or secretly
already separated. Their every public glance or gesture is picked
apart by bloggers, newspaper opinion pieces and the Twitterverse. So
when you read that Akhenaten is either the perfect father or
an incestuous pedophile, either a prophet of monotheism or a
totalitarian ruler who cast off all checks to his power, the public parallels are obvious. Akhenaten and his Chief Wife Nefertiti were a celebrity power couple.
Nowadays we have many written
records from people close to our leaders and their spouses,
and some sort of truth will eventually get into the history books.
But for Akhenaten and Nefertiti, truth is elusive. After 3500 years, all that’s left is
rumor... and whatever can be reasonably inferred from the public monuments and
occasional private artifacts that are left behind. Akhenaton has been
called “heretic, false profit, and incestuous tyrant by some, a loving,
compassionate, peaceful precursor to Moses and Jesus by others.”
Nefertiti is hardly ever seen as anything but the beautiful iconic image
that lives in the popular imagination, a voiceless adjunct to her
powerful husband.
Seemingly everyone from Freud to modern philosophers has had a
crack at the royal relationship and its impact on
the society, economics, and development of Egypt. What is known for
sure is that they were so hated by the powers that came after - revivals
of the priestly cults they had deposed - that their new Royal city was
flattened, and his name defaced on monuments across Egypt. It
was a deliberate attempt to erase his reign from the official record.
Did he succeed in changing Egypt forever? Does it matter? The fact that we're still talking about him, and her, 3500 years later means their detractors ultimately failed to, in current parlance, cancel them.
Diving into the meat of the book, we're introduced to their milieu via a host of begats and easy-to-imbibe anecdotes about life in ancient Egypt, such as that Egyptian
youngsters sucked on their index finger rather than their thumb; the image
became a defining aspect of the hieroglyph for child. Amid the speedy recounting of who fathered whom, the book brings to resonant
life some Egyptian ceremonials and festivals. There are also vignettes of imagined conversations between early Egyptians, allowing us insight into technical issues such as how to decipher
hieroglyphics. If you've ever wondered, they can go left to right or right to left, in vertical
columns or horizontal lines. So figuring out where to start is essential. That alone makes the successes of early Egyptologists in translating carved and painted texts even more astonishing.
Readers of the Amelia Peabody series, will recognize the names YUYA
and TUYA, the husband-and-wife mummies. Their tomb was actually found in 1905, and thus we know more about
the parents of the great queen TIYE than we do about her. How did the daughter of a prominent but not royal family marry into the royal household, and
become the king’s great wife, and eventually a goddess?
Clearly upward marital mobility
is not solely a social media phenomenon.
The book presents some evidence about the background of Nefertiti too. Unlike
Tiye, her parents get no prominent tombs or other recording on surviving
temple walls. It’s hypothesized that her father was the court official
AY and his wife Tiy, identified as “chief nurse of the great king’s
wife“ may have been her stepmother. There is some DNA evidence showing
that Nefertiti was Akhenaten’s first cousin on both sides of her parentage. It's probable the two knew each other. But their journey from childhood cohabitation in sprawling palace complexes to a revered and reviled power couple remains lost to the desert sands.
The book is eminently readable for anyone interested in armchair archaeology, making the topic accessible without much scholarly detail.
Authors John and Colleen Darnell, credited jointly and separately with several other titles relating to Egyptian history, have an entertaining social media presence that charms some and offends others.
Follow these Vintage Egyptologists on Instagram
For more on the book and the authors, see https://us.macmillan.com/tours/john-and-colleen-darnell-egypts-golden-couple/
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