Ankhkheperure-Merit-Neferkheperure/Waenre/Aten Neferneferuaten (Ancient Egyptian: nfr-nfrw-jtn) was a name used to refer to a female pharaoh who reigned toward the end of the Amarna Period during the Eighteenth Dynasty. Her gender is confirmed by feminine traces occasionally found in the name and by the epithet Akhet-en-hyes (“Effective for her husband”), incorporated into one version of her nomen (birth name) cartouche. She is distinguished from King Smenkhkare, who used the same throne name, Ankhkheperure, by the presence of epithets in both cartouches. She is suggested to have been either Meritaten or, more likely, Nefertiti. If this person is Nefertiti ruling as sole pharaoh, it has been theorised by Egyptologist and archaeologist Dr Zahi Hawass that her reign was marked by the fall of Amarna and relocation of the capital back to the traditional city of Thebes.
General chronology
There is no broad consensus regarding the succession order of Smenkhkare and Neferneferuaten. The period from the 13th year of Akhenaten‘s reign to the ascension of Tutankhaten is very murky. The rules of Smenkhkare and Neferneferuaten were very brief and left little monumental or inscriptional evidence to draw a clear picture of political events. Adding to this, Neferneferuaten shares her prenomen (throne name) with Smenkhkare and her nomen (birth name) with Nefertiti/Neferneferuaten Nefertiti making identification very difficult at times. With little dated evidence to fix their reigns with any certainty, the order depends on how the evidence is interpreted. Many encyclopedic sources and atlases will show Smenkhkare succeeding Akhenaten based on a tradition dating back to 1845, and some still conflate Smenkhkare with Neferneferuaten. The lack of unique names continues to cause problems in books and papers written before the early 1980s: an object might be characterised as bearing the name of Smenkhkare, when if the name was “Ankhkheperure”, it could be related to one of two people.
There are almost as many theories and putative chronologies as Egyptologists interested in the period. Aidan Dodson proposes that Smenkhkare did not have an independent reign. Thus, Neferneferuaten must have come after him, resulting in Smenkhkare’s power being entirely that of a coregent, ending about a year later, in Year 14 or 15 of Akhenaten’s reign, with little firm evidence to argue against it. Gabolde cites the Smenkhkare wine docket to support the idea that Smenkhkare must have succeeded Akhenaten. Finally, Allen has used the wine docket and strong association of Neferneferuaten with Akhenaten in her epithets and on stelae to speculate that both may have succeeded Akhenaten, with one as a rival king. An Allen-Dodson hybrid could see Tutankhamun following Akhenaten directly as a rival to Neferneferuaten.
The recently discovered inscription for Nefertiti as Great Royal Wife in regnal Year 16 makes it clear she was still alive and still queen, which could be seen as supporting her candidacy as Neferneferuaten and direct succession to Akhenaten. On the other hand, advocates for Smenkhkare make the case that since she is attested as queen just before the start of Akhenaten’s final regnal year, Smenkhkare is likelier to be Akhenaten’s direct successor.
Regardless of the order, Neferneferuaten’s successor seems to have denied her a king’s burial based on items inscribed initially with her name but utilised for the tomb of Tutankhamun. In the reign of Horemheb, the authorities of the Amarna Period pharaohs from Akhenaten to Ay were erased from history as these kings’ total regnal years were assigned to Horemheb. The result is that 3,300 years later, scholars would have to piece together events and even resurrect the players, bit by bit, with the evidence sometimes limited to palimpsest.
Key evidence
Unlike Smenkhkare, there are no known named depictions of Neferneferuaten; she is only securely attested in inscriptions. Of particular interest is the lid of a box (Carter 001k) inscribed with the following:
- King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Living in Truth, Lord of the Two Lands, Neferkheperure-Waenre
- Son of Re, Living in Truth, Lord of Crowns, Akhenaten, Great in his duration
- King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Lord of the Two Lands, Ankhkheperure Mery-Neferkheperre
- Son of Re, Lord of Crowns, Neferneferuaten Mery-Waenre
- Great Royal Spouse, Meritaten, May she Live Forever
The most definitive inscription attesting to Neferneferuaten is a long hieratic inscription or graffito in the tomb of Pairi (TT139) written by a scribe named Pawah:
Regnal year 3, the third month of Inundation, day 10. The King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Lord of the Two Lands Ankhkheperure Beloved of Aten, the Son of Re Neferneferuaten Beloved of Waenre. Giving worship to Amun, kissing the ground to Wenennefer by the lay priest, scribe of the divine offerings of Amun in the Mansion [temple] of Ankhkheperure in Thebes, Pawah, born to Yotefseneb. He says:
“My wish is to see you, O lord of Persea trees! May your throat take the north wind, that you may give satiety without eating and drunkenness without drinking. My wish is to look at you, that my heart might rejoice, O Amun, protector of the poor man: you are the father of the one who has no mother and the husband of the widow. Pleasant is the utterance of your name: it is like the taste of life . . . [etc.]
“Come back to us, O lord of continuity. You were here before anything had come into being, and you will be here when they are gone. As you caused me to see the darkness that is yours to give, make light for me so that I can see you . . .
“O Amun, O great lord who can be found by seeking him, may you drive off fear! Set rejoicing in people’s hearts. Joyful is the one who sees you, O Amun: he is in the festival every day!”
For the Ka of the lay priest and scribe of the temple of Amun in the Mansion of Ankhkheperure, Pawah, born to Yotefseneb: “For your Ka! Spend a nice day amongst your townsmen.” His brother, the outline draftsman Batchay of the Mansion of Ankhkheperure.
Nicholas Reeves sees this graffito as a sign of a “new phase” of the Amarna revolution, with Ankhkheperure Neferneferuaten “taking a decidedly softer line” toward the Amun priesthood. Therefore, Neferneferuaten might have been the Amarna-era ruler who first reached an accommodation with the Amun priests and reinstated the cult of Amun—rather than Tutankhamun as previously thought—since her mortuary temple was located in Thebes, the religious capital of the Amun priesthood and Amun priests were now working within it. However, Egypt’s political administration was still situated at Amarna rather than Thebes under Neferneferuaten’s reign.
Several steles depict a king and someone else—often wearing a king’s crown—in various familiar, almost intimate scenes. All of them are unfinished or uninscribed, and some are defaced. These include:
- An unfinished stele (#17813, Berlin) depicts two royal figures in a familiar, if not intimate, pose. One figure wears the double crown, while the other wears a headpiece similar to that from the familiar Nefertiti bust, but is the Khepresh or “blue crown” worn by a king. Aidan Dodson cites this stele to support that Nefertiti may have acted as coregent, as indicated by the crown, but not entitled to full pharaonic honours such as the double cartouche.
- A female sovereign, usually identified as Nefertiti, wearing the blue crown while affectionately pouring water for Akhenaten, Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung, Altes Museum, Berlin
- Berlin 25574 depicts what seems to be Akhenaten and Nefertiti wearing her flat-top headpiece. They are accompanied by four empty cartouches—enough for two kings, one of which appears to have been squeezed in. Reeves sees this as an essential item in the case of Nefertiti. When the stele was started, she was queen and thus portrayed with the flat top headpiece. She was elevated to coregent shortly afterwards, and a fourth cartouche was squeezed in to accommodate two kings.
- Flinders Petrie discovered seven limestone fragments of a private stele in 1891, now in the Petrie Museum, U.C.410, sometimes called the Coregency Stela. One side bears the double cartouche of Akhenaten alongside that of Ankhkheperure mery-Waenre Neferneferuaten Akhet-en-hyes (“effective for her husband”), which had been carved over the single cartouche of Nefertiti.
The clues may point to a female coregent, but the unique situation of succeeding kings using identical throne names may have confused.
Several items in Tutankhamun’s tomb (KV62) were initially inscribed for Neferneferuaten. Among them, Carter 261p(1), a stunning gold pectoral depicting the goddess Nut. Other items include the stone sarcophagus, mummy wrappings, royal figurines, canopic items (chest, coffinites, and jar stoppers), various bracelets and even shabti figures. Some things are believed to have been initially intended for a woman based on the style, even when a name cannot be restored. Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves has suggested that even the famous gold mask may have been initially intended for Neferneferuaten since her royal name in a cartouche, Ankhkheperure, was found partly erased on Tutankhamun’s funerary mask.
Female King
For some time, the accepted interpretation of the evidence was that Smenkhkare served as coregent with Akhenaten beginning about year 15, using the throne name Ankhkheperure. At some point, perhaps to start his sole reign, he changed his name to Ankhkheperure Neferneferuaten. An alternative view held that Nefertiti was King Neferneferuaten; in some versions, she is also masquerading as a male using the name Smenkhkare.
Things remained in this state until the early 1970s when English Egyptologist John Harris noted in a series of papers the existence of versions of the first cartouche that seemed to include feminine indicators. These were linked with a few items, including a statuette in Tutankhamun’s tomb depicting a king whose appearance was particularly feminine, even for Amarna art, which seems to favour androgyny.
In 1988, James P. Allen proposed that it was possible to separate Smenkhkare from Neferneferuaten. He pointed out the name ‘Ankhkheperure’ was rendered differently depending on whether it was associated with Smenkhkare or Neferneferuaten. When coupled with Neferneferuaten, the prenomen included an epithet referring to Akhenaten (such as ‘desired of Wa en Re). There were no occasions where the ‘long’ version of the prenomen (Ankhkheperure plus epithet) occurred alongside the nomen ‘Smenkhkare’, nor was the ‘short’ prenomen (without epithet) ever found associated with the nomen ‘Neferneferuaten’. A feminine ‘t’ glyph is often present in the prenomen, nomen, or epithets. Later, the French Egyptologist Marc Gabolde noted that several items from the tomb of Tutankhamun, originally inscribed for Neferneferuaten and initially thought to read “…desired of Akhenaten”, were actually inscribed as Akhet-en-hyes or “effective for her husband”. James Allen later confirmed his reading.
The use of epithets (or lack of them) to identify the King referenced in an inscription eventually became widely accepted among scholars and regularly cited in their work. However, a case for exempting a particular inscription or instance will occasionally be argued to support a more prominent hypothesis.
Possible sole reign
Allen later showed that Neferneferuaten’s epithets were of three types or sets. They were usually in the form of “desired of …” but were occasionally replaced by “effective for her husband”. In a few cases, the names can be followed by ‘justified’ using feminine attributes. The term ‘justified’ (maet kheru) is a standard indicator that the person referenced is dead; a similar reference associated with Hatshepsut in the tomb of Penyati is taken to indicate she had recently died. Finally, a few of Neferneferuaten’s cartouches bear unique epithets unrelated to Akhenaten. These include “desired of the Aten” and “The Ruler”. Allen concluded that the strong affiliation with Akhenaten in the epithets and the number of them made it likely that Neferneferuaten had been his coregent and, therefore, preceded Smenkhkare. The “effective…” epithets then represent a period during which Akhenaten was incapacitated but may also date from a time after Akhenaten’s death. Finally, the less common ‘Akhenaten-less’ versions represented a period of sole reign for Neferneferuaten.
Allen offers a possible explanation for using the same throne name by two successive kings. He suggested that the almost constant references to Akhenaten may be proclamations of legitimacy on the part of Neferneferuaten, with the epithets functioning to assert her as Akhenaten’s chosen successor or coregent. This implies there may have been resistance to the choice of Neferneferuaten; resistance was anticipated. This appears to be supported by her funerary items being usurped to deny her a king’s burial. He suggests that the adoption of the throne name Ankhkheperure by Smenkhkare was “to emphasise the legitimacy of Smenkh-ka-re’s claim against that of Akhenaton’s “chosen” (/mr/) coregent”. A division in the royal house put Smenkhkare on the throne as a rival king to Neferneferuaten. This was offered as a simple and logical reading of the evidence to explain the nature of the epithets, the use of identical prenomina by successive kings and that she was denied a royal burial. With no dated proof of rival or contemporaneous kings, though, it remains conjecture.
Identity of Neferneferuaten
By the late twentieth century, there was “a fair degree of consensus” that Neferneferuaten was a female king and Smenkhkare a separate male king, particularly among specialists of the period. Many Egyptologists believe she also served as coregent based on the stela and epithets. However, a sole reign looks pretty likely, given that the Pairi inscription is dated using her regnal years. The opinion is more divided on the placement and nature of the power of Smenkhkare about her.
Most Egyptologists see the two names to indicate two separate individuals and consider this the most detailed and likely view. Most name changes in the Amarna period involved people incorporating -Aten into their name or removing an increasingly offensive -Amun element.
The focus now shifts to the identity of Neferneferuaten, with each candidate having its advocate(s), a debate which may never be settled to the satisfaction of all.
Nefertiti
Even among Egyptologists who advocate for the identification of Nefertiti as Neferneferuaten, the exact nature of her reign can vary. Nefertiti was an early candidate for King Neferneferuaten, first proposed in 1973 by J. R. Harris. The apparent use of a portion of her name made her an obvious candidate even before Neferneferuaten’s gender was firmly established. Remains of painted plaster bearing the kingly names of Neferneferuaten found in the Northern Palace, long believed to be the residence of Nefertiti, support the association of Nefertiti as the King. Nefertiti was in the forefront during her husband’s reign and even depicted engaging in kingly activities such as smiting the enemies of Egypt. The core premise is that her prominence and power in the Amarna Period were almost unprecedented for a queen, which makes her the most likely and most able female to succeed Akhenaten.
Until 2012, Nefertiti’s last dated depiction was from Year 12 of Akhenaten’s reign, suggesting that she died shortly after. However, she is now known to have still been alive in the second to last year of Akhenaten’s reign and still bearing the title of Great Royal Wife, based on an ink inscription dated explicitly to ‘Year 16 III Akhet day 15’ in a limestone quarry at Dayr Abū Ḥinnis. This inscription would argue against a coregency of more than about a year, if at all, as the inscription attests to Nefertiti’s position as Akhenaten’s queen just before the start of his final year.
This affects theories proposed by some Egyptologists, such as Aidan Dodson, who see Neferneferuaten as a coregent of Akhenaten, a sole ruler and regent or coregent of Tutankhamun. Despite her highest attested year being Year 3, he suggests she counted her regnal years only after Akhenaten’s death, a view put forth by Murnane to account for the lack of double dates in the New Kingdom, even when a coregency is known to exist. Dodson then speculates that she may later have shared Tutankhamun’s regnal dating, in effect deferring senior status at least nominally to him. He proposes that Neferneferuaten helped guide the reformation in the early years of Tutankhaten and conjectures that the revival of the Amun priesthood is the result of her ‘rapid adjustment to political reality. To support the Nefertiti-Tutankhamun coregency, he cites jar handles bearing her cartouche and others bearing those of Tutankhaten from Northern Sinai. This is not a view shared by the excavators, who note that sealings and small objects such as bezel rings from many Eighteenth Dynasty royals, including Akhenaten, Ay, Queen Tiye, and Horemheb, were found and that “linking Tutankhamun and Neferneferuaten politically, based on the discovery of their names on amphorae at Tell el-Borg, is unwarranted.” Gabolde likewise considered a coregency or regency unlikely.
Van der Perre considers it likely Nefertiti assumed the royal office using the name Neferneferuaten, adopting the throne name was briefly used by Smenkhkare in combination with her name, but that the chance of a coregency period is slim. References to Akhenaten were added to her names as epithets, confirming her legitimacy. The epithets changed over time: initially conferring legitimacy, then linking to the deified deceased King, before finally evolving to ‘Beloved of Aten’ and ‘the ruler’ late in her reign. Furthermore, it has been suggested that Smenkhkare may also be Neferneferuaten, a view still held by a few such as Nicholas Reeves and until 2004 by Dodson.
The Coregency Stela (UC 410), mentioned earlier, might resolve the question if it were not so severely damaged. The name Neferneferuaten replaced Nefertiti’s name on it. How the image of Nefertiti was changed to match the new inscription could settle matters if her image were not missing. If her entire image were replaced, Nefertiti was replaced by someone else called King Neferneferuaten, and perhaps she died. If just a new crown were added to her image, it would be firmly argued that Nefertiti adopted a new name and title. As it is, the scene seems to be another of the royal family, including at least Meritaten. Replacing the name Nefertiti with King Neferneferuaten in depicting the royal family still favours Nefertiti as the new King.
The primary argument against Nefertiti has been that she likely died sometime after Year 12, which was her last known dated depiction until 2012. However, an inscription discovered in 2012 showed that she was still alive in Year 16. Evidence put forward to suggest she predeceased Akhenaten includes pieces of an ushabti indicating her title at death was Great Royal Wife; wine dockets from her estate declining and ceasing after Year 13; Meritaten’s title as Great Royal Wife alongside Akhenaten’s name on items from Tutankhamun’s tomb indicating she replaced Nefertiti as in that role; the floor of the tomb intended for her shows signs of cuts being started for the final placement of her sarcophagus. A single ushabti for Nefertiti seems scant evidence for her death, given there is about 200 shabti for Akhenaten. It is possible the two pieces belonged instead to two separate shabtis, one of Nefertiti and the other of Meritaten. Alternately, it may have been a votive placed in the burial of a family member such as Meketaten at a time before she was elevated.
Meritaten
Meritaten as a candidate for Neferneferuaten seems to be the most fluid, taking many forms depending on the views of the Egyptologist. She had been put forth by Rolf Krauss in 1973 to explain the feminine traces in the prenomen and epithets of Ankhkheprure and to conform to Manetho’s description of Akenkheres as a daughter of Oros. He speculated that Meritaten might have ruled with the feminine prenomen ‘Ankh-et-kheperure’ after Akhenaten’s death and before Smenkhkare’s accession. Smenkhkare then takes the masculine form of her prenomen upon gaining the throne through marriage to her. Although few Egyptologists endorsed the whole hypothesis, many did accept her at times as the probable or possible candidate for a female Ankhkheprure ruling for a time after Smenkhkare’s death and perhaps, as regent to Tutankhaten.
The primary argument against Meritaten, either as Krauss’s pro tempore Ankh-et-kheprure before marriage to Smenkhkare or as Akhenaten’s coregent King Neferneferuaten is that she is well attested as wife and queen to Smenkhkare. For her to later rule as King means necessarily, and perhaps incredibly for her subjects, she stepped down from King to the role of King’s Wife. This view places Smenkhkare after Neferneferuaten, which requires the Meryre depiction to be drawn 5–6 years after the ‘Durbar’ depiction is alongside and several years after work on tombs had stopped.
The counter to this view comes from Marc Gabolde, who offers political necessity as the reason for Meritaten’s demotion. He sees the box (Carter 001k tomb naming her alongside Akhenaten and Neferneferuaten) as depicting Meritaten in simultaneous roles, using the name Neferneferuaten as coregent and using her birth name in the role of royal wife to Akhenaten. He has also proposed that the Meryre drawing was executed before an anticipated coronation, which ended up not taking place due to his death. Most recently, he has suggested that Meritaten was raised to coregent of Akhenaten in his final years. She succeeds him as an interregnum regent using the name Ankhkheprure. He also identifies her as the queen of the Dakhamunzu affair, with the Hittite prince Zannanza ascending the throne as Smenkhkare. As there is no evidence of when or where he died nor that he was murdered, Gabolde believes that he completed the trip and died only after becoming King. After his death, she adopts full pharaonic prerogatives to continue to rule as King Ankhkheperure Neferneferuaten. Since Tutankamun was alive and of royal lineage, Meritaten’s actions almost certainly must be taken as intending to prevent his ascension. The Smenkhkare/Zannanza version garners little support among Egyptologists. With the presence of Tutankhamun, Miller points out that Meritaten “would presumably have needed the backing of some powerful supporter(s) to carry out such a scheme as the tahamunzu episode. One is left with the question of why this supporter would have chosen to throw his weight behind such a daring scheme”.
Since Nefertiti has been confirmed to be living as late as Year 16 of Akhenaten’s reign, however, the Meritaten theory becomes less likely because she would no longer be the most likely living person to be using either the name Neferneferuaten or “Effective for her husband” as the epithet of a ruling female pharaoh. Secondly, both Aidan Dodson and the late Bill Murnane have stressed that the female rulers Neferneferuaten and Meritaten cannot be the same. As Dodson writes:
…the next issue is clearly her [i.e., Neferneferuaten’s] origins. Cases have been made for her being the former Nefertiti (Harris, Samson and others), Meryetaten (Krauss 1978; Gabolde 1998) and most recently Neferneferuaten-tasherit, [the] fourth daughter of Akhenaten (Allen 2006). Of these, Meryetaten’s candidature seems fatally undermined by the existence of the KV62 box fragment JE61500, which gives the names and titles of Akhenaten, Neferneferuaten and Meryetaten as clearly separate individuals.
Neferneferuaten-tasherit
In 2006, James Allen proposed a new reading of events, suggesting that Neferneferuaten was Akhenaten and Nefertiti’s fourth daughter, Neferneferuaten-tasherit. The evidence presented in favour of this identification is solely based on her name.
The primary element in the nomen of a pharaoh always corresponds to the name he (or she) bore before coming to the throne; from the Eighteenth Dynasty onward, epithets were usually added to this name in the pharaoh’s cartouche, but Akhenaten provides the only example of a complete and consistent change of the nomen primary element. Even he used his birth name, Amenhotep, at his accession. The evidence of this tradition argues that the coregent bore the name Neferneferuaten before her coronation. Since it now seems clear that the coregent was not Nefertiti, she must have been the only other woman known by that name: Akhenaten’s fourth daughter, Neferneferuaten Jr.
Allen explains the ‘tasherit’ portion of her name may have been dropped, either because it would be unseemly to have a King using ‘the lesser’ in their name, or it may have already been dropped when Nefertiti died. This theory is the only one that does not rely on someone changing their name in some awkward fashion to assume the role of Neferneferuaten. Akhenaten’s choice of her as coregent remains a mystery. She is a less attractive candidate now that the Year 16 graffito for Queen Nefertiti has been verified.
Neferneferuaten-tasherit age is the first objection often raised. She is thought to have been about ten at the time of Akhenaten’s death, but Allen suggests that some daughters may have been older than generally calculated based on their first appearance. Their first appearance may have been on the occasion of being weaned at age three; Neferneferuaten-tasherit may have been as old as 13 by the end of Akhenaten’s reign. The later use of the “effective…” epithets may indicate that she, too, was eventually old enough to act as wife to her father, supporting the older age. However, a younger age need not disqualify her since Tutankhaten ascended the throne at a similar age, but a ten-year-old girl seems unlikely to many.
Reuse of Neferneferuaten’s funerary equipment for Tutankhamun’s burial
The faces of the canopic jars of Tutankhamun have distinctively female features; many scholars argue they originally were meant for a female pharaoh and repurposed for Tutankhamun.
According to Nicholas Reeves, almost 80% of Tutankhamun’s burial equipment was derived from Neferneferuaten’s original funerary goods, including his famous gold mask, middle coffin, canopic coffinettes, several gilded shrine panels, the shabti figures, boxes and chests, the royal jewellery, etc. In 2015, Reeves published evidence showing that an earlier cartouche on Tutankhamun’s famous gold mask read, “Ankheperure mery-Neferkheperure” or (Ankheperure beloved of Akhenaten); therefore, the mask was initially made for Nefertiti, Akhenaten’s chief queen, who used the royal name Ankheperure when she assumed the throne after her husband’s death.
This development implies that either Neferneferuaten was deposed in a power struggle, possibly deprived of a royal burial—and buried as a queen—or that she was buried with a different set of King’s funerary equipment—may be Akhenaten’s funerary equipment—by Tutankhamun’s officials since Tutankhamun succeeded her as King.
