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Every one knows about the infamous Tutankhamen but what about his predecessor, Smenkhare?? What signifigane does Smenkahare have to the 18th dynasty? Was he Tutankhamen's brother, Akhenaten's brother, or as popular opinion holds...Nefertiti ruling under an assumed name? There seems to be little attention paid to Smenkhare, why is this?
Posts: 293 | From: UK | Registered: Mar 2004
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quote:Originally posted by GiggleGirl: Every one knows about the infamous Tutankhamen but what about his predecessor, Smenkhare?? What signifigane does Smenkahare have to the 18th dynasty? Was he Tutankhamen's brother, Akhenaten's brother, or as popular opinion holds...Nefertiti ruling under an assumed name? There seems to be little attention paid to Smenkhare, why is this?
One reason is because Smenkhare's reign was very brief and little is known about him or her. I've read a few reference that tend to make me believe that Smenkhare was Nefertiti, for example the statue depicting Akhenten kissing Smenkhare. There are opinions both ways. So who knows for sure.
Giggle Girl, welcome to the Amarna Tar Pits! Your questions concerning Tut. and Smenenkhara have been discussed and debated by this board and by ranking Egyptologists for decades. Tomb KV35, when found, was thought to be a re-burial, first of Tiye, then Akhnaton, and later still, Smenenkhara. In fact, one of the latest studies was an autopsy on the mummy's remains taken from the tomb, and the doctor who prefored the autopsy gave a 99% result for Smenenkhara, thus eliminating Nefertiti, because the remains were shown to be that of a man. A most confusing time, not only for us, but for the ancient Egyptians as well. The linage of the out-standing players of the Amarna ring is open to all kinds of debate!
Posts: 174 | From: Long Beach, CA U.S.A. | Registered: Nov 2003
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quote:Originally posted by GiggleGirl: Every one knows about the infamous Tutankhamen but what about his predecessor, Smenkhare?? What signifigane does Smenkahare have to the 18th dynasty? Was he Tutankhamen's brother, Akhenaten's brother, or as popular opinion holds...Nefertiti ruling under an assumed name? There seems to be little attention paid to Smenkhare, why is this?
Umm...there's a thread a few spaces down that'll probably answer your quetion.
Posts: 1219 | From: North Carolina, USA | Registered: Jul 2004
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The way out of the "Amarna Tarpits" is to look at the images from Amarna, including the contents of Tut's tomb.
1. For the only time in Egypt's 3,000-year history, we have portrait after portrait of a pharaoh, apparently about age 21 or so, who cannot stand unaided on his own two feet. Tut's tomb contains 130 walking sticks. Yet the latest examination of Tut's mummy confirms that Tut himself had no trouble walking, or running, or riding in his chariot at high speed. The 21-year-old male pharaoh who cannot stand unaided on his own two feet can only be Smenkhkare. There is no way that Nefertiti would have herself portrayed as being unable to stand on her own two feet, if she had convinced the artists to portray her, who in reality was an over-the-hill female, as being a handsome young male prince. So Smenkhkare is Smenkhkare, a male who was Akhenaten's junior co-regent, and who was lame.
2. There is no picture of two Egyptian kings kissing each other. There is a picture of Akhenaten kissing one of his young daughters. And there is a picture of Akhenaten and Nefertiti, with one of them playfully putting a hand under the other's chin. That's it. Donald Redford's old idea that Akhenaten installed an attractive male teenager as his junior co-regent, because Akhenaten was a homosexual, has now, I believe, been rejected by everyone, including all the other academics. If you as a homosexual were going to install a handsome male teenager as your junior co-regent, then why on earth would you choose for that role a guy who could not even stand up straight on his own two feet, without leaning heavily on a staff or having his wife have her right hand in his left armpit?! The idea is ludicrous, if one simply looks at the images coming out of Amarna. Besides, Akhenaten is known to have sired 10 children by 5 different women, which does not seem like a raging homosexual to me.
3. Egyptologists continue to claim that Amarna is opaque and we cannot possibly understand it, unless we were to find a new tomb with a lot of hieroglyphic writing that would explain things for us. But that's not true. Just look at the images from Amarna. There's Smenkhkare, in portrait after portrait, always age 21 or 22, always accompanied by his wife, who is a few years younger than him and is usually bustling around doing things, while Smenkhkare usually is either leaning heavily on a staff, or being held up by his wife, or is seated when he should be standing, such as when he is out hunting. There are no other images like that in 3,000 years of Egyptian history.
First, here's the only finished image that is routinely attributed to Smenkhkare. Note how heavily Smenkhkare is leaning on that staff.
Now take a look at the following images. Each one was commissioned by Akhenaten in Year 16 or Year 17, and shows a 21-year-old pharaoh who cannot stand unaided on his own two feet. Remember, Tut died at age 19, and was very athletic. Each image is in the late-Amarna style of Year 16 or Year 17, and none is the post-Amarna style, which was less naturalistic, which would have applied by the time Tut got to be an older teenager. Every one of these images was taken over for Tut, instead of wasting it on dead Smenkhkare, who ruled by himself for less than 12 months. But if we look at the images, we can see that each was originally done of Smenkhkare:
Remember, in 3,000 years of Egyptian history, you never see any other pharaoh sitting down while his wife is standing up, bustling around, doing things. That can only be Smenkhkare, no one else.
Smenkhkare has got to be a male, with all those fertility images he is involved in with his omnipresent wife. He has got to be in his early 20s. Each and every one of those images of a lame pharaoh was commissioned by Akhenaten in Year 16 or Year 17, as Akhenaten tried to prepare Egypt to accept Akhenaten's full-brother, the lame Smenkhkare, as Egypt's next pharaoh. Akhenaten was trying to reassure Egypt that his daughter Meritaten would handle things, and that she would in due course bear a son by the lame Smenkhkare, so that Meritaten's son would then be the next pharaoh after Smenkhkare. Only by having Smenkhkare impregnate Meritaten would Meritaten's male child, if she ever bore one (which ended up never happening), have the identical paternal grandparents as if Akhenaten himself had succeeded in siring a son/grandson by Meritaten. The blood tests, morphology, and common sense all say that Smenkhkare is very closely related to Tut. The KV55 mummy must be Smenkhkare, as it matches absolutely perfectly with everything we know about Smenkhkare.
Here are two statues that Akhenaten commissioned in Year 16 or Year 17, where Akhenaten and junior co-regent Smenkhkare is each holding a regular shepherd's cane:
That's Akhenaten on the left, and Smenkhkare on the right.
I myself do not buy the Egyptologists' claims that we do not yet have enough information to figure out what happened at Amarna.
It is true, however, that Egyptologists have not yet come up with a coherent account of Amarna. But it can be done, if only we will look, with fresh eyes, at the manifold images we have from Amarna. It's right there in front of our eyes, if we will only look.
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Since there are only 3 cartouches, not 4 cartouches, that means that there is one king and one queen, not two kings. That's Akhenaten and Nefertiti.
By contrast, the presence of "breasts" is not very good evidence in Amarna as to whether a figure is male or female. Akhenaten liked to have himself portrayed as having breasts, oddly enough. Many of the statues found in Tut's tomb are of male pharaohs with breasts. Akhenaten seems to be claiming that he is both the male and the female, the masculine and the feminine. This hermaphrodite imagery of male pharaohs is one of the marked oddities of Amarna.
Thankfully, I believe that even the academics have now largely given up on the old idea of Prof. Redford that Amarna was just a "gay thang". It wasn't.
Besides, if a man was looking for a young male lover to name as junior co-regent, he would never pick a lame guy like Smenkhkare. No way! And he would never portray his young male lover as being held up by means of the wife of the young male lover putting her right hand in the male lover's left armpit. No way! And he wouldn't have every extant image of his young male lover be in the presence of the young male lover's wife, with an unbelievable abundance of various fertility images in the portraits. No way!
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