# Nefertiti and Smenkhkare: who ruled between Akhenaten and Tutankhamun Report: https://historical-mysteries.netlify.app/smenkhkare/report Local copy: report.html (built from report-src/ by `python3 code/succession_model.py && python3 report-src/build_report.py`). ## What happened Akhenaten, the king of Egypt who replaced the old gods with the sun disc and built a new capital at Amarna, died in the seventeenth year of his reign, about 1336 BC. Within a few years the boy Tutankhamun was king and the old gods had been restored. Between the two reigns the monuments show two pairs of royal names sharing one throne name, Ankhkheperure. One pair belongs to a king Smenkhkare, shown once with Akhenaten's eldest daughter Meritaten as his queen. The other belongs to a king Neferneferuaten, which had been the name of Akhenaten's chief wife Nefertiti, and some of its writings carry feminine endings. Jar labels at Amarna are dated to years 1 to 3 of a reign that followed Akhenaten's, and an ink inscription in a tomb at Thebes is dated to year 3 of Neferneferuaten. In 1907 a small tomb in the Valley of the Kings, KV55, was found to hold a coffin with its names cut out and the skeleton of a man whose age at death has been disputed ever since. The Deeds of Suppiluliuma, a Hittite chronicle found in the ruins of the Hittite capital in central Turkey, records that the widow of an Egyptian king it calls Nibhururiya wrote to the Hittite king asking for a son to marry and make king of Egypt. ## Why it is a mystery, and the sides Later kings erased the Amarna period from their records, so no surviving text says who Neferneferuaten was, whether the two pairs of names belonged to one ruler or two, in which order they reigned, whose body lies in KV55, or which king's widow wrote to the Hittites. Egyptologists have disagreed about the answers since the 1970s. Aidan Dodson of the University of Bristol (2009, 2020), James Allen (since 2016) and Kawai (2023) hold that Neferneferuaten was Nefertiti reigning as king and that Smenkhkare was a separate man. John Harris (1973), Julia Samson and Nicholas Reeves hold that Nefertiti bore both pairs of names in turn. Marc Gabolde and Dimitri Laboury make the female king Meritaten. Rolf Krauss, Erik Hornung, Barry Kemp and Joachim Willeitner keep one male king and read the feminine writings as his widow's or as misreadings. Allen's 2009 paper proposed a young daughter, a view he gave up in 2016. On the body in KV55, the 2010 CT-scan study led by Zahi Hawass put the age at 35 to 45 and called the man Akhenaten, and Reeves and Gabolde agree; every examiner who has handled the bones has put the age under 27, which makes him a younger brother of Akhenaten, and Dodson, the chronologist Juan Antonio Belmonte and the Egyptologist Martin Bommas take that side. On the widow, Hans Güterbock, who published the Hittite chronicle in 1956, identified the dead king with Tutankhamun, which makes the widow his queen Ankhesenamun, and most handbooks follow him; Jared Miller, a specialist in Hittite texts, argued in 2007 that the dead king was Akhenaten, which makes the widow Nefertiti or Meritaten, and Gabolde agrees. ## How it was judged The report collected 30 pieces of evidence, 18 from Egypt, four on the KV55 body and eight from the Hittite texts, and quoted each from its original publication. It listed the thirteen reconstructions of the succession that scholars have proposed, added the combinations that no one defends so that the starting weights did not favour the views scholars have argued for, and scored each piece of evidence for how well each reconstruction accounts for it. Each score was set three times, once as the report's own reading, once as the reading least favourable to a female king that a named scholar defends, and once as the most favourable. The scores were multiplied, and the results were re-run under five starting weightings and with each item removed in turn. The full score table, the code and the score file accompany the report. ## Verdict The percentages are the report's judgements expressed as numbers. Each depends on which reconstructions were allowed to compete, which 30 pieces of evidence were counted, and how each was scored (code/succession_model.py). - The king Ankhkheperure Neferneferuaten, the name-set with the feminine forms, was a woman, and she was Nefertiti: about 89% on the readings adopted, and between 50% and 97% when every disputed item is read the way its most sceptical or its most generous specialist reads it. - Smenkhkare Djeserkheperu was a separate, short-lived male king (about 94%), most probably before her (about 80% before, 14% after). Whether he was a coregent who died before Akhenaten or Akhenaten's immediate successor is not decided by the evidence (48% / 32%). - Nefertiti was probably made king while Akhenaten lived, in his last year or so (about 68%), and reigned into a year 3 of her own (the ink inscription in Theban tomb 139). - The body in tomb KV55 is most probably Smenkhkare, a younger brother of Akhenaten (about 61%); Akhenaten about 21%; another son of Amenhotep III about 17%. The figure rests on the age at death: every examiner who has handled the bones has put it under 27, with estimates running from 19 to 26 (table 6 of the report); the only higher figures, 30 to 35 and 35 to 45, come from an X-ray survey and from the 2010 CT scans, whose criteria are unpublished. - Nibhururiya, the dead Egyptian king of the Hittite Deeds of Suppiluliuma, is not identified: Akhenaten about 68% on the readings adopted, Tutankhamun about 80% on the sceptical readings. His widow is therefore Nefertiti 44% / Meritaten 36% / Ankhesenamun 21%, and the evidence does not choose between them. - Label: Probable for the identity and the order (the evidence clearly favours one answer over all the others but does not prove it; the percentage moves when the same evidence is weighed differently); Unsettled for Nibhururiya and the widow (no answer is clearly ahead of the others). "Resolved" is not claimed for any part. ## Alternatives - Neferneferuaten = Meritaten (Gabolde, Laboury): 10% on the readings adopted, 26% on the sceptical readings. - Neferneferuaten a man, Smenkhkare renamed (Krauss, Hornung, Kemp, Willeitner): about 1%, 21% on the sceptical readings. - Neferneferuaten = the child Neferneferuaten-tasherit (Allen 2009, withdrawn 2016): about 1%. - One person, Nefertiti = Neferneferuaten = Smenkhkare (Harris, Samson, Reeves): about 5%, 13% when the one-person reconstructions get half the starting weight. ## Where the verdict stands among Egyptologists - Badge: "Agrees with Dodson, Allen and Kawai". The position: the two-ruler Nefertiti position of Aidan Dodson (2009, 2020), accepted by James Allen in 2016 (as Dodson 2020 n. 102 and Dietrich 2024 n. 18 report it) and argued again by Kawai (2023): Nefertiti reigned as King Neferneferuaten, and Smenkhkare was a separate male king, probably earlier. Charlotte Dietrich (2024) accepts that Akhenaten and Neferneferuaten reigned together and leaves the identity open. - The other positions are still defended. Nicholas Reeves (2001, 2015, 2023) makes Neferneferuaten Nefertiti but Smenkhkare her later name (one person). Marc Gabolde (1998 onwards) and Dimitri Laboury (2002, 2010) make her Meritaten. Rolf Krauss (1978, 2007), Erik Hornung (2006), Barry Kemp (2016) and Joachim Willeitner (2022) keep one male king. Allen's 2009 paper made her the daughter Neferneferuaten-tasherit. - The position was built in three steps, each contested when made. (1) A female ruler in the titulary: Harris 1973, from the regalia and the doubling of Nefertiti's cartouche; the feminine t credited to Harris 1974 (by Dodson) or to Julia Samson's ring bezels (by Reeves); collected by Krauss 1978, who assigned the feminine writings to a separate queen; settled by Gabolde's 1998 reading of the epithet "effective for her husband" and the 2004 collations of the coffinettes. (2) Two rulers: Allen 1988, from the fact that the two name-sets never appear together. (3) The separate female king as Nefertiti: Dodson 2009 and 2020, Allen 2016, Kawai 2023. Harris's own Nefertiti was one person who was also Smenkhkare, a different proposition. - On KV55 the report sides with the examiners of the bones (Strouhal, Duhig, Harrison, Filer), Allen's arithmetic, Dodson, Belmonte and Bommas, against the 2010 CT age and Gabolde: the body is not Akhenaten. - On Nibhururiya it leans with Miller 2007 against the Tutankhamun identification that most handbooks print, with low confidence: the answer flips under the sceptical readings. ## What the report adds The report brings no new evidence. No object was examined and no inscription was checked against the original; every text used is already in print and known to the specialists. The newest evidence used is other people's (Van der Perre 2012 and 2014; Johnson 2020; Willeitner 2022; Kemp 2016; Gad and colleagues 2020; Reeves 2023 as Dietrich reports it). A way of weighing the old evidence: - The first time all of it has been scored together (13 successions x coregency x KV55 identity x Nibhururiya identity; 30 items; three readings each; five starting weightings; each item removed in turn), with the sensitivity printed beside the headline. The scoring was not validated against anything outside itself. - Within the scoring: the identity verdict does not depend on the Hittite question (the Egyptian items alone give the same identity figures), and it survives the removal of any single item, while the Hittite verdict flips under the sceptical readings. - An observation, offered as a suggestion: dockets 35 ("House of Smenkhkare, [justified]") and 36 ("House of Ankhkheperure") in City of Akhenaten III name two estates, so the plain throne name on its own did not stand for Smenkhkare in the administrative record, if the restoration holds. - Everything else reproduces published scholarship, credited by name in section 9 of the report. ## What would overturn it - Any object joining the extended throne name with the name Smenkhkare, or a feminine form with the plain throne name. - A dated text of Nefertiti as King's Great Wife after Akhenaten's death, or a queenly burial of Nefertiti. - Publication of the CT criteria behind the 35 to 45 age for KV55, or an independent re-examination giving an age over 30. - A convincing rebuttal of Miller's Armaa synchronism together with a Hittite text placing the king's death in winter. - A year-dated Smenkhkare text later than a year 3 of Neferneferuaten. ## What could not be checked - Works known only through other authors: Harris 1974 and Samson 1977 (the credit for the feminine t rests on Dodson 2009 and Reeves 2001 and 2015); Allen 1988 (through Allen 2009 and Dodson 2009); Allen 2016 (through Dodson 2020 n. 102 and Dietrich 2024 n. 18); Reeves 2023 and Dodson 2020b (through Dietrich n. 18); Van der Perre 2014 (abstract only; the month of the year-16 date is left open); Johnson 2020 and Kawai 2023 (through Dietrich); Krauss 1978 and 2007 (through Dietrich, Dodson, Miller, Belmonte and WiBiLex); Gabolde 1998 (through its reviewers); Stempel 2007 and Theis 2011 (not read). - The Willeitner and Dietrich readings of the Munich ivory's epithet disagree and were not collated. - No object was examined; readings come from published editions; the plates of Roeder, Petrie and the City of Akhenaten volumes were not seen. - The CT criteria behind the 35 to 45 age for KV55 have never been published, the raw DNA data have never been released, and no independent laboratory has typed the mummies. ## Figures Two charts were drawn from the report's own data file (data/results.json, produced by code/succession_model.py) with code/make_figures.py and rendered to PNG with code/render_figures.js. They show numbers already in the report. - figures/fig1_leave_one_out.png (also .svg). Figure 1. The Nefertiti figure with each of the 30 scored items removed in turn. Made for this report from the leave-one-out run of the scoring. Each bar runs from the figure with every item counted (89%) to the figure with that one item left out; a bar to the left means the item supports the identification, a bar to the right means it weighs against it. The box from Tutankhamun's tomb (Carter 1k) moves the figure most, to 69%; the KV55 and Hittite items leave it almost unchanged. - figures/fig2_sensitivity.png (also .svg). Figure 2. The six main answers under the three readings and under two other starting weightings; the same numbers as Table 1 of the report. Made for this report from the scoring under five settings. The blue dot is the reading adopted, the grey bar spans the sceptical and the generous readings, and the hollow circles are the two other starting weightings. The Nefertiti figure runs from 50% to 97%; the figure for Nibhururiya as Akhenaten runs from 17% to 89%. ## Files - report.html, report-src/ (template.html, part_a.html, part_b.html, build_report.py) - code/succession_model.py: the scoring model; reproduces every number. - figures/fig1_leave_one_out.svg and .png, figures/fig2_sensitivity.svg and .png; code/make_figures.py draws them from data/results.json and code/render_figures.js renders the PNGs. - data/results.json, data/results.md, data/likelihood_table.json - notes/A_egyptian_attestations.md (14-entry catalogue), notes/B_kv55_dna.md, notes/C_hittite.md, notes/D_scholarship_allen_dodson_reeves.md, notes/E_scholarship_gabolde_krauss_recent.md - sources/: full texts read, each with URL and retrieval date (Dodson 2009/2020, Harris 1973/1977, Allen 2009, Gabolde 2009/2013, Laboury 2002/2019, Kemp 2016, Willeitner 2022, Dietrich 2024, Reeves 2001/2015, Miller 2007, Devecchi-Miller 2011, Guterbock 1956, Strouhal/Duhig 2010, Petrie 1894, Davies 1905, COA I/III, JEA 14, Carter cards, Josephus, Waddell, HKW 2006, Belmonte 2013, etc.) - A PDF headed "Miskatonic University, 2025" that turned up during the search is fictitious; it is not cited anywhere and is left out of the repository.