Temples, Tombs & Hieroglyphs_ A Popular History of Ancient Egypt - Barbara Mertz [119]
Excavators have found a gold ring whose bezel bears the joined cartouches of Ay and Ankhesenamon, side by side, as the name of royal consorts are written. This may indicate a scheme of Ay’s to justify his occupation of the throne by marriage to Tutankhamon’s widow. If it actually took place, the marriage didn’t last long. The queen who stands beside Ay in his reliefs and statues is the same woman who was his wife in his humbler days at Amarna, and Ankhesenamon, like her parents, vanishes from history.
Some scholars deny the clue of the ring and believe that Ay never had any plans to marry his youthful queen. I personally cannot produce any other explanation for the joined cartouches. But for me the “clincher” is the queen’s poignant letter to Shubilulliuma: “Shall I marry a servant of mine and make him king?” she asks—not once, but twice. Feminine intuition is as aggravating in historical study as it is in family discussions; yet I venture to suggest that this is precisely the comment a woman would make if she had been offended, as a woman and as a queen, by advances from a man of Ay’s age and nonroyal status—especially if he really was her grandfather! It’s pure speculation, of course, but the ring, the letter, and the sudden disappearance of Akhesenamon do permit us to suspect that she died before a marriage could take place. She may have been murdered after the discovery of her attempt to deliver Egypt over to the Hittites, but another explanation is possible. Perhaps Ay was actually a “fate worse than death” to the proud daughter of the heretic king.
I really hate to qualify this romantic narrative, but candor compels me to admit that practically every statement I have made is open to debate. Many of the major actors in the drama of Amarna vanish from the scene as mysteriously and as inconclusively as does Ankhesenamon. Her mummy has never been found, nor have the remains of her grandmother Tiye, her mother Nefertiti, or any of her sisters. Every now and then someone claims to have identified one of the numerous anonymous female mummies as Tiye or Nefertiti; then somebody else comes along and proves it isn’t. Like other romantics, I believe that there is at least one more royal cache to be found—the burials of the missing royal ladies of the late Eighteenth Dynasty, including those of Nefertiti and her daughters.
Let’s suppose that they and Smenkhkare were originally buried at Amarna, like Akhenaton. When the city was abandoned, the mummies and the portable parts of their funerary equipment were moved to new tombs in the protected Valley of the Kings. While this process was under way, Tutankhamon died. He had presumably begun a tomb—every Egyptian king did—but it wasn’t ready for occupancy, and his funerary equipment was incomplete. His successor might have decided to swipe some of Smenkhkare’s belongings, and bundle the latter into a leftover coffin. Or maybe…
Well, that’s how it goes with the Amarna debates. We can invent half a dozen scenarios that would make perfectly logical plots for historical novels, but until there is absolute proof the end must be in doubt. At this writing there are rumors of evidence that would identify the occupant of the KV55 coffin beyond dispute. Wait and see. And wait for the latest news from the Valley of the Kings, where the recently discovered cache of funerary materials known as KV63 may indicate the existence of at least one other unknown tomb of Amarna date.
Despite the almost certain identification of the mysterious skeleton as that of Smenkhkare, the theorists have not abandoned their theories about Akhenaton’s physical peculiarities, basing them now solely on the abnormalities depicted in the sculptures, which are admittedly odd enough. The latest kick is something called Marfan’s syndrome. I still cling stubbornly to the belief that one cannot give a statue a physical examination, and the existence of Akhenaton’s daughters, and perhaps