Smenkhkare.html

Smenkhkare

Pharaoh of Egypt

Reign

1336–1335 BC, 18th Dynasty

Predecessor

Akhenaten

Successor

Neferneferuaten? or Tutankhamun?

Royal titulary

Prenomen: Ankhkheperure
Living are the Manifestations of Re¹

Nomen: Smenkhkare-Djeserkheperu
Vigorous is the Soul of Re, Holy of Forms²

Consort(s)

Meritaten

Died

1335 BC

Ankhkheperure Smenkhkare (sometimes spelled Smenkhare and Smenkare; meaning "Vigorous is the Soul of Ra") was a Pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty who may have been the immediate successor of Akhenaten, and was one of the two immediate predecessors (with Neferneferuaten) of Tutankhamun. One academic source states that Smenkhkare's sole rule lasted for approximately one year.³ Some Egyptologists suggest that this pharaoh's independent reign may have been as short as a few months. Others indicate a reign as long as eleven years.

Smenkhkare is one of the most mysterious figures in Egyptian history. Tutankhamun's reign began immediately after either Smenkhkare or Neferneferuaten's death. Some scholars have speculated that Smenkhkare, rather than Akhenaten, was the parent of Tutankhamun.⁴

1 Identity
2 Family
3 Tomb
4 The Mummy in Tomb KV 55
5 External links
6 Footnotes
7 Further reading

Identity

The identity of the Pharaoh whose praenomen is Ankhkheprure, who is usually known as Smenkhkare, is somewhat mysterious. Egyptologists once did not even agree upon the gender of the pharaoh. The traditional position was that this pharaoh was a man found buried in tomb KV55 whose gender seems to be supported by various scientific examinations of the remains found there.

The most recent studies of the late Amarna period by various Egyptologists including Aidan Dodson, James P. Allen and Erik Hornung/Rolf Krauss/David Warburton all agree that there were in fact two rulers who shared the prenomen Ankhkheprure.⁵⁶⁷ As the latter write:

"It is now certain that not only a man 'Ankhkheprure', but also a woman 'Ankhetkheprure' ruled between Akhenaten and Tutankhamun. The king is first known as 'Ankhkheprure' (throne name) Smenkhkare' dsr-hprw (personal name), later as 'Ankhkheprure' mrjj Neferneferkheprure'/Waenre'/ and Neferneferuaton mrjj Waenre.' The two names of the queen, i.e. 'Ankhetkheprure' mrjj/Neferkheprure'/Waenre/ and Nefernefruaton...are nearly the same as the king's later set of names and epithets. The funerary epithet...(beneficial for her husband) is hers alone and indicates that she succeeded her husband 'Ankhkheprure.' Her identity remains problematic; Kiya, Nefertiti, and Meritaten have been proposed. Items of her funerary equipment were adapted for Tut'ankhamun (M. Gabolde, Égypte Afrique & Orient 33, 2004, 19-26). Josephus lists three rulers named AXENXEPPΣΣ < 'Ankh(et)kheprure', i.e. two male rulers (one of which might be due to a corruption of the text) and a female, described as a king's daughter. In its transmitted form the Manethonian tradition ascribes twelve years and some months to either of the kings named Akhenkherres. Possibly the figures reflect an original two years and some months [once an otiose decade is deducted]."⁸

The sets of names are associated with Smenkhkare is Ankhkheperure Smenkhkare, who may be identified as the Amarna Pharaoh who ruled beside Queen Meritaten, who was Akhenaten's daughter and Chief Wife--presumably after the death of her mother Nefertiti.

To date, no objects other than the wine jar label, six royal seals, a depiction of a male king Smenkhkare along with his Queen Meritaten and now a gold foil from the trough (or container) of the KV55 coffin are known. Some clearly feminine objects with the name Ankhkheprure Neferneferuaten, including a box of hers, were reused in the burial of Tutankhamun. The throne name Ankhkheperure occasionally is written in the feminine form Ankhetkheperure, with the feminine "t". This suggests that Meritaten may have been the female ruler Ankhkheperure Neferneferuaten and thus the successor of her recently deceased husband, Smenkhkare.⁹

According to James P. Allen's most recent research (below), king Ankhkheperure Neferneferuaten was perhaps Akhenaten's co-regent, Nefertiti, in the latter's final years, but this was a woman who is distinct from the male king Ankheperure Smenkhkare. The epithet 'desired of Waenre' (ie: Akhenaten) in Neferneferuaten's nomen occasionally is replaced with the feminine term "Effective for her husband."¹⁰ In contrast, the male king Smenkhkare ruled Egypt for a brief period on his own since he is attested in his Year 1 on a wine label from "the House of Smenkhkare",¹¹ in the tomb of Kheruef along with his queen Meritaten and by the six seals bearing his name. Allen contends that Smenkhkare was not Neferneferuaten who would then be a junior co-regent of Akhenaten before she assumed the throne on her own right.¹²

Other scholars such as Nicholas Reeves have contended that Smenkhkare was the same person as Neferneferuaten who ruled together with Akhenaten as co-regents for the final one or two years of Akhenaten's reign. Reeves contends that Smenkhkare shares some names with Nefertiti, wife of Akhenaten, and it is possible that Nefertiti was Smenkhkare, as it is not unheard of Ancient Egypt for women to become pharaoh (e.g., Hatshepsut). On several monuments, the two are shown seated side-by-side. Reeves' suggestions would give weight to the idea that all of the names in question were different titles for Meritaten, used at different times as she held different positions: Queen, co-regent, and finally, Pharaoh.

One explanation for the fact that Meritaten was associated with her father Akhenaten in several monuments and then her adoption of Smenkhkare's prenomen for her own use as she was pharaoh--presumably after her husband's death--was the fact that she wielded great power from her position as pharaoh's Eldest Daughter. Her high status at court also is emphasised by Amarna Letter 11 where Meritaten is called 'the Mistress' of the royal house.¹³ This evidence, together with her title as 'Chief Queen' under Akhenaten and then Smenkhkare, makes her the primary candidate for the female ruler known as Neferneferuaten.

Family

The parentage of a male king named Smenkhkare is unknown; the leading theory is that he was either a son of Akhenaten or Amenhotep III by his daughter and wife Sitamun. Unlike the majority of other Pharaohs, the only claim he made was to have been "beloved" of Akhenaten, though he never states that the latter was his father. Moreover, whenever any of Akhenaten's daughters were referred to, they were referred as "the king's daughter, of his loins, (daughter's name)." That there was no reference to a son would seem unlikely. Furthermore, as asserted by Cyril Aldred (a prominent Egyptologist), Smenkhkare would have to have been born at least three years before Akhenaten's reign began, making it very unlikely (given Akhenaten's assumed minimum age of 12 at ascension) that he was Akhenaten's son. Since Akhenaten fathered six daughters but no known sons in his 17 year reign, he must have been a mature adult when he succeeded his father. This makes it more likely that the male king Smenkhkare was a son of Amenhotep III and, therefore, a younger brother of Akhenaten.

The tomb of Meryre II contains a roughly painted scene depicting a king and queen. It names the "King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Ankhkheperure, Son of Re, Smenkhkare, Holy-of-Manifestations, given life forever continually" as the husband of "the Chief Wife, his beloved, the Mistress of Upper and Lower Egypt, the Lady of the Two Lands, Meritaten". It was through her royal blood that he may have claimed legitimacy to the throne, as was the practice in the period.¹⁴

Tomb

In 1907, Arthur Weigall and Theodore Davis discovered a tomb known as "Tomb KV 55" in the Valley of the Kings. The tomb itself is a mystery, as the door bears the name Tutankhamun, the shrine bears hieroglyphs stating it was made for Queen Tiye, and the sarcophagus indicates that it was designed for Akhenaten's second wife Kiya, four cardinal bricks bearing the name of Akhenaten, and a very poorly preserved body that is considered (with about 80% certainty) to be a male around 20 years of age. There are some indications that the body shares common traits with Tutankhamun, suggesting a filial relation, but the poor degree of preservation makes this difficult to ascertain. While some scholars consider this to be the mummy of Akhenaten because its royal cartouches were deliberately erased from the coffin and the royal uraeus was removed--as were many traces of Akhenaten because of his controversial religious revolution, several anatomical examinations of the mummy's body rule out this popular hypothesis since Akhenaten would have been an infant when he ascended the throne; this suggests that it was Smenkhkare instead. In contrast, Akhenaten had 6 daughters by his wife Nefertiti which shows that he was a mature adult when he assumed the throne. The archaeological evidence from the Amarna boundary stelas show that Akhenaten had broken with the powerful Amun priesthood and moved Egypt's capital from Thebes to the site of El-Amarna by his 5th Year. Only an adult king in full command of his mental faculties would have embarked on such a radical shift in state policy whereas a child king would have been guided--and controlled--by the state's leading administrators such as Vizier Ay who would have acted to preserve Egypt's existing political and religious order. It must be stressed that it was young Tutankhamun, not Smenkhkare, who openly turned against Akhenaten's religious revolution by shifting Egypt's capital back to Thebes and returning the power to the priesthood of Amun. Hence, the deliberate damage to king KV 55's funerary goods can also be interpreted as a reaction against Akhenaten's immediate successor--Smenkhkare--who still followed Akhenaten's policies and maintained Egypt's capital at Amarna during this brief reign.

The Mummy in Tomb KV 55

The New York Long Island University professor Bob Brier notes that it was Dr. G.E. Smith, the head of the Anatomy department of Cairo University, who first reported that this mummy was that of a young man "who probably died in his twenties."¹⁵ A subsequent examination of the KV 55 mummy by Dr. Douglass Derry, Smith's successor, confirmed that the bones of the KV55 mummy were that of a male who died in his twenties.¹⁶ Derry also observed that the skull of the KV55 mummy bore close similarities with Tutankhamun's skull.¹⁷ As controversy continued to rage over the mummy's identity, Dr. R.G. Harrison--a professor of anatomy at the University of Liverpool--was allowed to perform the first and only modern examination of the KV 55 mummy's remains in the 1960's.¹⁸ Since most of its skeleton is complete--with only a portion of the sternum missing--Harrison was able to perform careful measurements and X-rays of the mummy to reveal the internal structure of its bones. Harrison concluded that there was no evidence of either a deformed skull or a glandular disorder in the KV 55 mummy while the body of the remains was that of a normal male with no significant abnormalities.¹⁹ This finding also eliminated the possibility that the KV 55 mummy was Akhenaten since^{verification needed} some scholars had believed that this pharaoh suffered from Froelich's syndrome, a glandular disorder which causes "an elongated head, underdeveloped genitals, and a feminizing of the physique" of the pharaoh--features with which Akhenaten is strikingly depicted in his own statues.²⁰²¹

As Bob Brier writes,

"As we age, our cartilage turns to bone, and bones near each other fuse. This is one reason we become less flexible as we grow older. In the case of the body in Tomb 55, based on the fusion of the bones in the sternum, the age at the time of death was between nineteen and twenty years. From the collarbone the estimate is twenty to twenty-two years, and from the sacrum the estimate is less than twenty-three years. Teeth are also a good indication of age. The third molar [of the KV 55 mummy] had not fully erupted, which indicates an age between eighteen and twenty-two. These findings are confirmed by the pelvic bones, which suggest an age of twenty to twenty-one. Given all the evidence, it is clear that this is a normal male who died very near the age of twenty and thus cannot have been Akhenaten. This leaves Semenkare as the leading candidate."²²

Other examinations of the KV 55 mummy by William Murnane has confirmed that this was the body of a young man who probably died between the ages of 18 to 22 years.²³ Given his relative youth, he cannot have been Akhenaten who must have fathered his first three daughters--Meritaten, Meketaten and Ankhesenpaaten--by his fourth regnal year.²⁴

A reconstruction of the mummy in KV55 shows that this king bore a strong similarity to Tutankhamun. Since the Mummy in tomb 55 was likely a young man, he was possibly an older brother or the father of Tutankhamun. Smenkhkare's reign was probably brief, lasting perhaps no more than several months or a year at the most given the paucity of objects mentioning his name.

External links

Footnotes

^ Clayton, op. cit., p.120
^ Peter Clayton, Chronicle of the Pharaohs, Thames and Hudson Ltd, 2006 paperback. p.120
^ M. Gabolde, D'Akhenaton à Toutânkhamon, Université Lumière Lyon II, Boccard, (1998), pp.219-221
^ http://history.memphis.edu/murnane/Allen%20-%20Amarna%20Succession.pdf James Allen, The Amarna Succession, p.16-17.
^ Aidan Dodson & Dyan Hilton, The Complete Royal Families of Ancient Egypt: A Genealogical Sourcebook of the Pharaohs (Hardcover), Thames & Hudson. 2004
^ The Amarna Succession by James P. Allen in 'Causing His Name to Live: Studies in Egyptian Epigraphy and History in Memory of William J. Murnane,' University of Memphis
^ Erik Hornung, Rolf Krauss & David Warburton (editors), Handbook of Ancient Egyptian Chronology (Handbook of Oriental Studies), Brill: 2006
^ Hornung, Krauss & Warburton, op. cit., p.207
^ Dodson, op. cit., p.207 & 285, n.111
^ J.P. Allen, "Nefertiti and Smenkh-ka-re," GM 141 (1994), pp.7-17
^ John Pendlebury, City of Akhenaten, vol II, pl 86 No.35
^ The Amarna Succession by James Allen
^ Marc Gabolde, D'Akhenaton à Toutankhamon, Universite Lumiere-Lyon 2, 1998. p.175
^ Smenkhkare
^ Bob Brier, The Encyclopedia of Mummies, Checkmark Books, 1998. p.182
^ D.E. Derry, "Skeleton hitherto believed to be that of Akhenaten," ASAE 31 (1931), pp.115-119
^ Brier, op. cit., p.182
^ cf. R. G. Harrison, An Anatomical Examination of the Pharaonic Remains Purported to be Akhenaten, JEA 52 (1966), pp.113-116
^ Brier, op. cit., p.182
^ Brier, op. cit., p.182
^ Clayton, op. cit., p.121
^ Brier, op. cit., p.182
^ William Murnane, OLZ 96 (2001), p.22
^ James Allen, The Amarna Succession p.13