Between the reigns of Akhenaten and Tutankhamun, two kings of Egypt used the same throne name, Ankhkheperure, and the inscriptions of one of them are written in the feminine. This report weighs every inscription, object and text that bears on who she was, in which order the two reigned, whose body lies in tomb KV55, and which Egyptian king's widow wrote to the Hittites asking for a husband.
Primary sources are quoted in the original where the wording matters. Every source carries a code: (a) read in full, (b) read in part or in abstract, (c) known only from citation by another author.
Egypt in the mid-fourteenth century BC was the richest power in the Near East. Its king Amenhotep III had reigned for nearly forty years when his son came to the throne, about 1353 BC, as Amenhotep IV. Within a few years the new king had renamed himself Akhenaten, set aside the old gods in favour of one, the disc of the sun, called the Aten, and built a new capital for it on empty desert in Middle Egypt, at the place now called Amarna. His chief wife Nefertiti stood beside him in every scene, sometimes in a king's crown, once striking an enemy in the pose reserved for kings, and from his fifth year she wrote her name as Neferneferuaten Nefertiti. They had six daughters. In his twelfth year the court staged a great reception of foreign tribute, the last dated event that the tombs of his officials record.
After year 12 the dated records become few. A lesser wife, Kiya, disappears after year 11, and her monuments were recut for the daughters. The eldest daughter, Meritaten, took the chief queen's title, King's Great Wife. New royal names appear. An Egyptian king had two main names, each written inside an oval ring called a cartouche: a throne name, taken on accession, and a personal name. Two new pairs of names turn up that share one throne name, Ankhkheperure. One pair belongs to a king with the personal name Smenkhkare, who appears in a single carved scene at Amarna with Meritaten at his side as his queen. The other belongs to a king with the personal name Neferneferuaten, Nefertiti's own name, and some writings of this second pair add the endings that the Egyptian language gives to a woman. Akhenaten died in his seventeenth year, about 1336 BC. Ink labels on wine and oil jars at Amarna, dated by the year of the reigning king, show that someone counted a first, a second and a third year there after his seventeenth. An ink inscription in a tomb at Thebes, the old religious capital in the south (modern Luxor), dates year 3 of King Neferneferuaten and praises Amun, the god Akhenaten had suppressed. There the dated record of the two rulers stops. A boy of about nine, Tutankhaten, was king; the court left Amarna; he renamed himself Tutankhamun and restored the old gods; he died at about nineteen and was buried in the Valley of the Kings, the royal cemetery at Thebes, with a set of gold burial equipment that had been made for Neferneferuaten and re-inscribed for him.
Two modern discoveries added to the evidence. In January 1907 Edward Ayrton, digging in the Valley of the Kings for the American lawyer Theodore Davis, broke into a small undecorated tomb, now numbered KV55. It held a jumble of things from Amarna: a gilded shrine made for Akhenaten's mother Tiye, a coffin made for Kiya and altered for a king, its gold face torn away and its names cut out, and in the coffin a skeleton. Davis announced it as Queen Tiye; the anatomists who examined the bones found a young man. The dispute about him since then has been about his age at death. And in the ruins of the Hittite capital in central Turkey, excavated from 1906, the tablets of a royal chronicle came to light, published in full by Hans Güterbock in 1956. The Hittites were the other great power of the day. Their chronicle records that after the death of an Egyptian king, whose name it spells Nibhururiya, his widow wrote to the Hittite king Suppiluliuma: her husband was dead, she had no son, would he send one of his to marry her and become king of Egypt. He did, after sending an envoy to check that the offer was real. The prince was murdered on the way, and the Hittites answered with a raid into Egyptian territory.
The evidence is thin because the Amarna years were deliberately erased. Later kings dismantled the city, hacked the names out of monuments, and left the period out of the official king-lists. What survives is a handful of inscriptions, mostly damaged, and objects that were re-used and re-inscribed. No surviving text states who Neferneferuaten was, whether Smenkhkare came before or after, whether the two pairs of names belonged to one ruler or two, whose body lies in KV55, or which king's widow wrote to the Hittites. Every answer has to be inferred, and Egyptologists have disagreed about the inferences since the 1970s.
The first dispute is the identity of the female king. John Harris, a British Egyptologist, argued in 1973 that Nefertiti had become a king, and Julia Samson, who worked on the Amarna finds of the excavator Flinders Petrie at University College London, found her throne name written with a feminine ending on cheap glazed finger rings. Both held that Nefertiti had borne both pairs of names in turn, and Nicholas Reeves, a British Egyptologist best known for proposing in 2015 that Nefertiti's burial lies behind a wall of Tutankhamun's tomb, still holds that view. James Allen, an American Egyptologist, showed in 1988 that the two pairs of names never appear together and concluded that they belonged to two people. Aidan Dodson, of the University of Bristol, in books of 2009 and 2020 made the case that the second person, the female king, was Nefertiti and the first a younger brother of Akhenaten; Allen accepted the identification in 2016, after a paper of 2009 in which he had proposed a young daughter, and Kawai, in a paper of 2023, argued it again. Marc Gabolde, of the University of Montpellier, who in 1998 read a phrase in her name as "effective for her husband", argues instead that the female king was the eldest daughter Meritaten, a view shared by Dimitri Laboury of the University of Liège. Rolf Krauss, of the Berlin museum, who wrote the first monograph on the period's end in 1978, and Erik Hornung, of Basel, who with Krauss edited the standard handbook of Egyptian chronology in 2006, hold that a single man bore both pairs of names and that the feminine writings belong to his widow. Barry Kemp, who has directed the excavation of Amarna since 1977, argued in 2016 that there was one male king and that the feminine phrase is his queen's name absorbed into his cartouche, and Joachim Willeitner, a German Egyptologist, published in 2022 a small ivory plaque in Munich which he took as a record of a male Smenkhkare. Charlotte Dietrich's survey of 2024, the most recent map of the debate, accepts that Akhenaten and Neferneferuaten reigned together for a time and leaves her identity open.
The second dispute is the body in KV55. Zahi Hawass, then head of Egypt's antiquities service, led a CT-scan and DNA study of the royal mummies in 2010 which made the KV55 man a son of Amenhotep III and the father of Tutankhamun, put his age at 35 to 45, and called him Akhenaten; Reeves and Gabolde agree. Every examiner who has handled the bones, from the anatomist Grafton Elliot Smith in 1910 to the Czech physician and anthropologist Eugen Strouhal in 1998, has put the age under 27, which would make him a brother of Akhenaten, most likely Smenkhkare; Corinne Duhig, a British specialist in human remains, re-scored Strouhal's observations in 2010 and agreed. Dodson, the astronomer and chronologist Juan Antonio Belmonte, and the Egyptologist Martin Bommas take that side.
The third dispute is the widow. Güterbock identified the dead king with Tutankhamun, whose throne name Nebkheperure matches the Hittite spelling best, and most handbooks follow him; that makes the widow Tutankhamun's queen Ankhesenamun, a third daughter of Akhenaten. Jared Miller, a specialist in Hittite texts at the University of Munich, argued in 2007 from the timing of the Hittite campaigns and from a letter in the diplomatic archive found at Amarna in 1887 that the dead king was Akhenaten, which makes the widow Nefertiti or Meritaten; Gabolde holds the same identification, and Krauss had proposed it in the 1970s before giving it up. Two German scholars of the ancient Near East, Gernot Wilhelm and Johannes Boese, proposed Smenkhkare in 1987; neither Miller, who argues for Akhenaten, nor the handbooks that keep Tutankhamun adopt it.
The report treats the question as a matter of weighing. First it collected every piece of evidence that bears on the succession and quoted each from its original publication: 30 items in all, 18 from Egypt (inscriptions, objects, carved scenes and the ancient king-list), four on the KV55 body (the age estimates, the inscriptions in the tomb, the DNA, and a title on a carved block) and eight on the Hittite texts. Where a modern study could be read in full it was; where it could be had only in part, or only through other authors' citations, the report says so with a code beside the source. Then it listed every reconstruction that any scholar has proposed, thirteen in all, and added the combinations that no one defends, so that the starting weights did not favour the views scholars have argued for. Each piece of evidence was scored for how well each reconstruction accounts for it, on a scale from 1 (expected) to 0 (impossible), and the scores were multiplied together. Because such scores are judgements, each 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 whole score table is printed in section 4, and the code that produces the numbers accompanies the report.
The results were these. Neferneferuaten was Nefertiti at about {{P_NEF}}% on the report's readings, and still {{P_NEF_SCEP}}% on the sceptical readings. Smenkhkare was a separate man ({{P_SEP}}%) and probably reigned first ({{P_BEFORE}}%). Nefertiti was probably made king while Akhenaten still lived ({{P_COREG}}%). The KV55 body is most probably Smenkhkare ({{P_KV_SM}}%). The Hittite king is Akhenaten at {{P_NB_AKH}}% on the report's readings but Tutankhamun at {{P_NB_TUT_SCEP}}% on the sceptical ones, so that question is unsettled. Removing any single piece of evidence leaves Nefertiti as the most probable identity. The percentages are the report's judgements expressed as numbers; they depend on the reconstructions admitted and on the scores given, and a different Egyptologist would set the scores differently. The verdict agrees with the position of Dodson, Allen and Kawai. The verdict is labelled probable: the evidence clearly favours Nefertiti over the other answers but does not prove it, and the other positions listed above are still defended.
The king AnkhkheperureNeferneferuaten was a woman, and she was almost certainly Nefertiti: {{P_NEF}}% on the readings adopted here, and between {{P_NEF_SCEP}}% and {{P_NEF_GEN}}% when every disputed piece of evidence is read the way its most sceptical or its most generous specialist reads it.
AnkhkheperureSmenkhkare Djeserkheperu was a different person, a short-lived male king ({{P_SEP}}%), and he most probably reigned before her ({{P_BEFORE}}% before, {{P_AFTER}}% after). The evidence does not say whether he was a junior king reigning alongside Akhenaten (a coregent) who died before him, or Akhenaten's immediate successor.
Nefertiti was probably made king while Akhenaten still lived, in his last year or so ({{P_COREG}}%), and she reigned into a third year of her own.
The body in tomb KV55 is most probably Smenkhkare, a younger brother of Akhenaten ({{P_KV_SM}}%). Akhenaten himself is unlikely ({{P_KV_AKH}}%), because every examiner who has handled the bones puts the age at death under 27.
The Hittite question is unsettled. Nibhururiya, the dead Egyptian king whose widow wrote to Suppiluliuma for a son to marry, is Akhenaten on the readings adopted here ({{P_NB_AKH}}%) and Tutankhamun on the sceptical readings ({{P_NB_TUT_SCEP}}%). The widow is therefore Nefertiti, Meritaten or Ankhesenamun ({{P_DH_NEF}}% / {{P_DH_MER}}% / {{P_DH_ANK}}%), and the evidence does not choose between them.
ProbableAgrees with Dodson, Allen and Kawai
Probable means that the evidence clearly favours one answer over all the others but does not prove it, and that the percentage moves when the same evidence is weighed differently. The verdict on Nefertiti agrees with Aidan Dodson (2009, 2020), with the position James Allen took in 2016 as Dodson and Charlotte Dietrich report it, and with Kawai (2023): Neferneferuaten was a female king distinct from Smenkhkare, and she was Nefertiti. Dietrich (2024) accepts that Akhenaten and Neferneferuaten reigned together and leaves her identity open. Nicholas Reeves (2001, 2015, 2023) also makes Neferneferuaten Nefertiti but treats Smenkhkare as her later name. Marc Gabolde and Dimitri Laboury make her Meritaten. Rolf Krauss, Erik Hornung, Barry Kemp and Joachim Willeitner keep one male king. Allen's own 2009 paper made her a daughter. Section 1 gives the history of the argument in three steps, each with its author and date. On KV55 the verdict sides with the examiners of the bones and with Dodson, Belmonte and Bommas against the 35-to-45 age from the 2010 CT scans and against Gabolde. On Nibhururiya it leans with Miller (2007) against the Tutankhamun identification that most handbooks print; the sceptical readings reverse it.
The percentages come from a scoring exercise set out in section 4: 30 pieces of evidence, each scored for how well every candidate reconstruction accounts for it. They are the report's judgements expressed as numbers; section 4.1 states what they depend on. The table shows how far each answer moves when the scoring changes. "Sceptical" reads every disputed item the way the scholar least friendly to a female king reads it. "Generous" reads it the way the friendliest does. The last two columns leave the readings alone and change the starting weights, first in favour of the one-person reconstructions, then in favour of the reconstructions that named scholars defend.
Table 1. How the main answers move under other readings and other starting weights. Made for this report from the scoring described in section 4.
The single item that moves the Nefertiti figure most is the box from Tutankhamun's tomb (Carter 1k) that names Akhenaten, Neferneferuaten and the King's Great Wife Meritaten as three people; without it the figure falls to {{LOO_E06}}%. Dropping the argument from her name costs {{LOO_E02_DELTA}} points. With any single item removed, the figure stays at or above {{LOO_E06}}%. Figure 1 in section 4.4 shows the effect of each item.
Section 1 sets out the two pairs of names and the history of the argument in three steps. Section 2 goes through the twelve groups of evidence that any reconstruction has to fit, quoting the sources. Section 3 lists the thirteen reconstructions that compete, with the scholars who defend each. Section 4 scores the evidence and gives the results, with every score printed and the answers re-run under sceptical and generous readings and with each item removed in turn. Section 5 takes the KV55 skeleton and the DNA. Section 6 takes the Hittite chronicle. Section 7 states the strongest cases against the verdict, in their authors' words. Section 8 lists what would overturn it. Section 9 says what the report adds to the published scholarship, and section 10 lists what was read and what could not be checked. Section 11 lists the files that reproduce every number.
The highest year of Akhenaten's reign found on any monument is 17 (Egyptian dates count the years of each king from his accession). Tutankhaten, a boy of about nine, was king by the time the court left Amarna. Between them the monuments show two sets of royal names that share one throne name, Ankhkheperure. The first set is AnkhkheperureSmenkhkare Djeserkheperu, always written without any added phrase (an epithet) in the throne-name cartouche and always with masculine forms. The second set is Ankhkheperure mery-WaenreNeferneferuaten mery-Akhenaten in several variants: the throne name carries an epithet naming Akhenaten by one half or the other of his own throne name Neferkheperure-Waenre (beloved of Waenre, beloved of Neferkheperure) or naming the Aten (beloved of the Aten), and the personal name Neferneferuaten carries beloved of Waenre, beloved of Akhenaten, ruler, or the phrase that Marc Gabolde re-read in 1998 as ꜣḫt n hj.s, "effective for her husband". On a minority of these objects the throne name is written ꜥnḫt-ḫprw-rꜥ with the -t ending that marks a feminine word in Egyptian, the epithet "beloved" as mryt, and the closing formulas with feminine endings. No object joins the epithet-bearing throne name with the name Smenkhkare, and no object joins the plain throne name with the name Neferneferuaten (Allen 1988, restated by Dietrich 2024 p. 101; no exception is known to any source read for this report).
Until the 1970s everything under the name Ankhkheperure was assigned to one young man, Smenkhkare, the supposed brother or son-in-law of Akhenaten. The view tested here, a female king Neferneferuaten beside a separate male king Smenkhkare, was built in three steps by different scholars, and each step was contested when it was made. Harris, who first argued for a female ruler, identified her with Nefertiti but kept Smenkhkare and Neferneferuaten as one person; a female Neferneferuaten beside a separate male Smenkhkare is a later and different proposition.
Step one: a female ruler in the titulary, the set of royal names. Harris argued in 1973, from the royal regalia on colossal statues from Akhenaten's temple at Karnak, the great temple precinct of Thebes, and on two unfinished small stone slabs (stelae) now in Berlin, and from the fact that Nefertiti's name was sometimes written in two cartouches like a king's, that the queen had "attained to the status of kingship" (Harris 1973 p. 13; he had made the suggestion in a short note the same year, GM 4). That paper does not cite the feminine t. The flat faces (bezels) of glazed finger rings reading ꜥnḫt-ḫprw-rꜥ, Ankhetkheperure with the feminine ending, were noticed by Samson among the finds Petrie had brought back from his excavation of Amarna in 1891 and 1892, according to Reeves (2001 p. 171; 2015 n. 31); Dodson credits the first published observation of the feminine ending to Harris's 1974 paper (Dodson 2009 p. 34). Harris 1974 and Samson 1977 could not be obtained for this report. Krauss collected the feminine writings in 1978 and read them as a queen Ankhetkheperure distinct from the king, whom he took to be Meritaten ruling briefly between Akhenaten's death and her husband's accession (Krauss 1978 pp. 29-35, 90, as reported by Dietrich 2024 nn. 14-15 and Dodson 2009 p. 35). Gabolde's re-reading of the epithet in 1998 as "effective for her husband", confirmed in 2004 when Allen and Gabolde each checked the four miniature gold coffins from Tutankhamun's tomb against the originals and read the earlier inscriptions beneath the later ones (a palimpsest), is the reading that settled the sex of the epithet-bearing king for Murnane, Eaton-Krauss and Krauss, Allen, Dodson and Dietrich; in Dodson's words, "the femininity of Neferneferuaten was thus proven beyond doubt" (Dodson 2009 p. 35).
Step two: two rulers under one throne name. Harris, Samson and Krauss all held one king Ankhkheperure who changed name. For Harris the name Smenkhkare was Nefertiti's latest personal name, taken, in Dodson's paraphrase of the 1974 paper, "to mark her status as an independent ruler" (Harris 1973 n. 5; Dodson 2009 p. 35). For Krauss, Smenkhkare was the earlier personal name of a male king who later called himself Neferneferuaten, with the feminine writings belonging to a third ruler. Allen proposed in 1988 that the plain and the extended throne name "could actually belong to different kings", on the observation that the extended throne name never occurs with the personal name Smenkhkare and the plain throne name never with Neferneferuaten (Allen 1988, known here through Allen 2009 and through Dodson 2009 p. 35, who adds that "there was by no means universal acceptance of this theory, with various scholars continuing to argue for a single male or a single female king"). William Murnane, an American Egyptologist, in a review of 2001, Marianne Eaton-Krauss and Krauss in another review of 2001, Gabolde (1998 onwards), Dodson (2009 onwards) and Dietrich (2024) work with two rulers. Reeves (2001, 2015, 2023), Kemp (2016) and Willeitner (2022) still hold one. Krauss (2007) and Hornung (2006) keep a middle position: one male king who bore both personal names, and a separate queen ruling in her own right as Ankhetkheperure.
Step three: the separate female king as Nefertiti. Harris's Nefertiti was a one-person Nefertiti who was also Smenkhkare. Once the two name-sets were separated, the question became which woman bore the second set. Dodson writes that Nefertiti "had been the general assumption since the idea that Neferneferuaten might have been a female was first mooted" (Dodson 2009 pp. 35-36), and within the two-ruler framework the rival candidates were Meritaten (Krauss 1978 for the queen; Gabolde 1998; Laboury 2002, 2010) and, briefly, the young daughter Neferneferuaten-tasherit, "the younger", the fourth of the six (Allen 2009). The case for Nefertiti as the separate female king in its present form is Dodson's (2009, restated 2020). It gained the year-16 quarry inscription found by the Belgian Egyptologist Athena Van der Perre (published 2012, 2014), which shows Nefertiti alive and still queen late in the reign. Allen accepted the identification in 2016 (as reported by Dodson 2020 n. 102 and Dietrich 2024 n. 18), and Kawai argued it again in 2023. That is the position this report's verdict agrees with. The position is contested: Gabolde and Laboury keep Meritaten, Krauss, Hornung, Kemp and Willeitner keep a single male king, Reeves keeps the one-person Nefertiti, and Dietrich leaves the identity open.
Any reconstruction has to answer, at the same time, who she was, in which order the two rulers reigned, whose body lies in tomb KV55, and which king's widow asked the Hittite king for a son. Miller's remark of 2007 still stands: there is at present no reconstruction of the period that fits all the available evidence at once (quoted by Belmonte 2013 p. 423). This report states how well each reconstruction fits and what each fails to explain.
A warning that Harris gave in 1973 applies to everything below: a reference to "Smenkhkare" in older literature is worthless unless the cartouche has been checked, because the name was for decades used for objects that actually carry Neferneferuaten's names (Harris 1973 n. 6). The record cards of Howard Carter, who cleared Tutankhamun's tomb from 1922, call the trappings on Tutankhamun's mummy "of Smenkh-ka-Ra"; the surviving cartouche on them is the epithet-bearing throne name of the female king. Willeitner's 2022 publication of the Munich ivory plaque is headed "an unusual attestation of the pharaoh Smenkhkare"; the ivory carries the names Ankhkheperure mery-Waenre and Neferneferuaten, and the name Smenkhkare is not on it, as Dietrich (2024 p. 101) pointed out.
This section sets out the attestations that every reconstruction has to accommodate, in the order in which they constrain the story. The notes listed in section 11 give the full catalogue (fourteen numbered entries for the Egyptian material, and a dossier each for KV55 and for the Hittite texts) with the exact wording of every source consulted.
In 2012 Van der Perre found an inscription written in ink, in the cursive script called hieratic, in a limestone quarry at Dayr Abu Hinnis, ten kilometres north of Amarna. It is dated to year 16 of Akhenaten, day 15 of a month of Akhet, the inundation season with which the Egyptian year began, records the extraction of stone for a temple of the Aten, and gives Akhenaten's full titulary followed by the King's Great Wife Neferneferuaten Nefertiti. Dodson's summary is that "on I Akhet 15 of Akhenaten's Year 16 (a little more than a year before his death), Nefertiti was still only King's Great Wife" (Dodson 2020 p. 72). Other summaries print the third month rather than the first, and Van der Perre's full edition (Journal of Egyptian History 7, 2014, 67-108) could not be obtained, so the month is left open here; the day and the year are not in doubt. The text ends the older theories in which Nefertiti died or was disgraced around year 12, and it forces anyone who makes her the king Neferneferuaten to put her elevation in the last year or so of Akhenaten's reign. It was this find that made Allen abandon his daughter-king thesis for Nefertiti (Allen 2016, reported by Dodson 2020 p. 129 n. 102 and by Dietrich 2024 n. 18), and that made Dodson write that "the emerging data have fundamentally altered the author's own views" (Dodson 2020 p. ix). Status: (b) publisher abstract; (a) Dodson 2020 and Reeves 2015 n. 32.
The only date by regnal year attached to either pair of names is an ink inscription (a graffito) written over a doorway in the tomb of a priest named Pairi at Thebes (Theban tomb 139). Alan Gardiner, the leading British philologist of his day, published it in 1928; his translation of the opening runs:
"Year 3, third month of inundation, day 10. The King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Lord of the Two Lands, Ankhkheprure beloved of [Neferkheprure], the Son of Re, Nefernefruaten beloved of Wan[re]. Giving praise to Amun, prostration before Onnophris, by the wab-priest, scribe of the divine offerings of Amun in the House of Ankhkheprure in Thebes, Pawah, born of Iotefsonb." (Gardiner, JEA 14, 1928, p. 10)
Onnophris is a name of the god Osiris, and a wab-priest is a junior grade of priest. The throne name is the epithet-bearing form, so the ruler is Neferneferuaten, not Smenkhkare, and she counted at least three years. The text is a hymn to Amun by a priest of Amun; whatever the Amarna religion still meant, the god's cult was functioning openly at Thebes in her third year. Two readings of the temple name divide the literature. Dodson (2020b) took "the House of Ankhkheperure" with its plain throne name to be a memorial temple of a dead Smenkhkare and so an argument that Smenkhkare preceded her. Reeves (2023) re-read the phrase and called the temple a phantom; Dietrich (2024 n. 18) judges his correction convincing. Neither paper could be obtained, and the report does not use the temple name in either direction. What it does use is the observation, first made by Dietrich, that Neferneferuaten is attested in both the Aten and the Amun contexts while Smenkhkare is known only under the Aten, which fits Smenkhkare being the earlier of the two. Status: (a) Gardiner 1928, Newberry 1928, Krauss 2006; (c) Dodson 2020b, Reeves 2023.
Wine, oil and other jars from Amarna carry ink labels (dockets) in hieratic giving the year of the reigning king. Henry Fairman, who published the labels found by the Egypt Exploration Society's excavations of the 1920s and 1930s, established the sequence of years (City of Akhenaten III, 1951, pp. 143-159). Year 17 is Akhenaten's highest. Docket 279 has "year 1" written over "year 17", so "It records, therefore, the first year of an unnamed king which followed the 17th year of another unnamed king. There cannot be any doubt that the latter was Akhenaten" (p. 159): a successor's first year began within the vintage year of Akhenaten's seventeenth. Dockets of years 1, 2 and 3 of a successor exist in quantity at Amarna, then a final year 1 in which the vintners' title changed back to the pre-Amarna form (Krauss 2006 pp. 207-208). Docket 35 reads "House of Smenkhkare, [justified]" and is dated year 1; if the restored word "justified" is right, Smenkhkare was dead in a year 1 that was not his own. Fairman himself doubted whether any value could be attached to the term. Docket 36 names a "House of Ankhkheperure" as a distinct estate, with the plain throne name. The two dockets suggest, though they do not prove, that the estate names distinguished the two rulers by their personal names, and that the plain throne name on its own is not a mark of Smenkhkare. Petrie's finds of 1891-92 gave the same picture: many oil jars of year 2, a few of year 3, and the remark of Francis Llewellyn Griffith, who read the labels for Petrie's report, that "these dates are the only evidence that we have of the duration" of the successor's reign (Petrie 1894 p. 33). Status: (a) Fairman 1951, Petrie 1894, Krauss 2006; the facsimile plates were not seen.
The only carved scene of Smenkhkare is in the tomb of Meryre II, steward of Nefertiti's household, at Amarna (tomb 2), on a wall next to the great tribute scene dated year 12. Karl Richard Lepsius, leading a Prussian expedition, copied the cartouches in the 1840s; they had been smashed by the time Norman de Garis Davies recorded the wall for his publication of the Amarna tombs in 1905. They gave the King of Upper and Lower Egypt Ankhkheperure, the Son of Re Smenkhkare Djeserkheperu, and his King's Great Wife Meritaten, the couple standing under the rays of the Aten. Davies wrote that "it is somewhat difficult to decide whether the design as well as the cartouches belong to" the new reign (Davies 1905 p. 44). A pair of blocks from Memphis, the old administrative capital near modern Cairo, seen there in 1854 by the engineer Joseph Hekekyan and now lost, gave the same three names, as the Egyptologist Percy Newberry recorded (Newberry 1928 pp. 5-6). Kemp's point is right: the year-12 date belongs to the event, not the carving, and "there is no compelling reason on the basis of Meryra II's tomb for doubting that Ankh-kheperura Smenkhkara, married to Meretaten, ruled for a time after Akhenaten's death" (Kemp 2016 p. 15). The scene does not date Smenkhkare; it shows that he was king, that his queen was Akhenaten's eldest daughter, and that his only scene is an Aten scene at Amarna. Status: (a) Davies 1905, Petrie 1894, Newberry 1928, Kemp 2016; (c) Lepsius.
A wooden box from the entrance corridor of Tutankhamun's tomb, numbered 1k by Carter (Cairo JE 61500, now Grand Egyptian Museum 354), carries on the strip along its lid a single line of names and titles (a protocol), given here letter by letter in Dietrich's transliteration (2024 p. 100, after Newberry 1928 and Gabolde 1998):
nswt-bjt ꜥnḫ-m-mꜣꜥt nb-tꜣwj (Nfr-ḫprw-rꜥ Wꜥ-n-rꜥ)| zꜣ-rꜥ ꜥnḫ-m-mꜣꜥt nb-ḫꜥw (Ꜣḫ-n-jtn)| ꜥꜣ-m-ꜥḥꜥw.f · nswt-bjt (Ꜥnḫ-ḫprw-rꜥ mry-Nfr-ḫprw-rꜥ)| zꜣ-rꜥ nb-ḫꜥw (Nfr-nfrw-jtn mry-Wꜥ-n-rꜥ)| · ḥmt-nswt wrt (Mryt-jtn)| ꜥnḫ.tj ḏt
"King of Upper and Lower Egypt, living in truth, Lord of the Two Lands Neferkheperure Waenre; Son of Re, living in truth, Lord of Appearances Akhenaten, great in his lifetime. King of Upper and Lower Egypt Ankhkheperure beloved of Neferkheperure; Son of Re, Lord of Appearances Neferneferuaten beloved of Waenre. King's Great Wife Meritaten, may she live for ever."
Two knobs carry the two Neferneferuaten cartouches on their own. The protocol names three people in descending rank. "Great in his lifetime" is an epithet of a living king. Gabolde reads the last cartouche as a further name of the same person as the two before it, so that Meritaten and Neferneferuaten are one person; Murnane (2001), Eaton-Krauss and Krauss (2001), Allen (2009 n. 6: "a reference to two individuals remains the simplest and most transparent interpretation"), Dodson (2020 p. 128: "the apparently insurmountable problem") and Kemp (2016 p. 15: the box "makes it as clear as one could wish that he was married to Akhenaten's eldest daughter") all read three. This report reads three. Status: (a) Carter cards 001k-1 to 4, Newberry 1928, Dietrich 2024, Kemp 2016.
A small stone slab, stela UC 410 in the Petrie Museum in London, with a fragment found by the Egypt Exploration Society in 1934 in the Great Palace at Amarna (Cairo JE 64959), has in its top corner two pairs of cartouches, Akhenaten's and Neferneferuaten's, carved on a surface that was scraped down. Under them Gabolde read the traces of an earlier text: the queenly cartouche of Nefertiti and a caption naming a king's daughter (Gabolde 1990; the tracing is reproduced by Kemp 2016 p. 25). Allen had already argued in 1988 that Neferneferuaten's double cartouche was cut over Nefertiti's single one. A second object, the ivory plaque in the Munich museum (ÄS 7342) first published by Willeitner in 2022, gives the later form of the Aten's name, then Lord of the Two Lands Neferkheperure Waenre, Lord of Appearances Akhenaten, then Lord of the Two Lands Ankhkheperure mery-Waenre, Lord of Appearances Neferneferuaten with an epithet that Willeitner reads "beloved of Akhenaten" and Dietrich reads "effective for her husband". The sign group is the one Gabolde re-read in 1998; the two editions have not been collated and the report does not rest on either reading. A third, a carved block reused in the ruins of Hermopolis, the city across the river from Amarna where many blocks from Akhenaten's dismantled buildings ended up (block 826/VIIIA), preserves the Neferneferuaten personal-name cartouche and, in the next column, "[King's] Daughter of his body … Ankhes]enpaaten".
The unfinished stela of the soldier Pase (Berlin ÄM 17813) shows two seated figures of equal size, one in the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt turning to cup the chin of the other, who wears the blue crown, the tall helmet-shaped crown of kings of this period; three empty cartouches stand beside them. Harris counted the cartouches and read the pair as king and queen, and observed that the blue-crowned figure "has rather more obvious breasts, and extends an arm in what is conventionally a woman's embrace", with the concave neckline that Amarna art gives to women (Harris 1973 pp. 7-8). Allen read two kings, one male and one female (Allen 2009 p. 10). Berlin ÄM 20716 shows a figure in the blue crown pouring for a seated ruler in a headcloth; a lump of clay stamped with a seal (a sealing) from the house of Ranefer, an officer at Amarna, shows two crowned figures with sceptres under the Aten. In 2020 Ray Johnson, of the University of Chicago's mission at Luxor, joined block 777/VIII to the Hermopolis pillar block 406/VII; the join adds the torso and head of the second tall figure in the offering scene: "a female with a concave neck wearing a tall, most likely blue, crown with a streamer and a dress knotted underneath her breast", walking beside a king, with a small king's daughter shaking a sistrum, a rattle used in worship, behind them (Dietrich 2024 p. 103, describing Johnson's join). Dietrich, who applies the criteria Murnane laid down for recognising two kings reigning together in a scene, concludes that "the coregency of Akhenaten and Neferneferuaten [is] currently the only Amarnian coregency with substantial and convincing evidence" (Dietrich 2024 p. 105). The block naming Neferneferuaten and Ankhesenpaaten is assigned to the same monument by Allen (1991), Johnson and Kawai (2023); the join itself is a reconstruction. Status: (a) Harris 1973, Allen 2009, Dietrich 2024, Kemp 2016, Willeitner 2022a-b; (c) Johnson 2020, Kawai 2023, Gabolde 1990, Roeder's plates.
The clearest small objects are from Tutankhamun's tomb. On the chest ornament (pectoral) numbered 261p(1) by Carter, the enlargement published in 2000 "allows a reading of the praenomen as ꜥnḫ(.t)-ḫpr.w-Rꜥ mr(y.t)-wꜥ(w)-n-Rꜥ. The feminine ending is confirmed by the feminine epithet Mꜣꜥ.t-ḫrw following the cartouche. The nomen itself reads Nfr-nfr.w-Jtn Ꜣḫ.t-n-h(j)=s 'Neferneferuaten, Beneficial for her husband'" (Gabolde 2009 pp. 116-117); Eaton-Krauss reported that the traces under Tutankhamun's cartouche "confirm for sceptics" this reading (OLZ 98, 2003, 47, quoted by Gabolde). On the miniature gold coffin (coffinette) that held one of Tutankhamun's embalmed organs, the one guarded by the goddess Selkis, the same personal name with the same epithet survives in line 7 under Tutankhamun's, and on the Neith coffinette the closing formula reads "may she live for ever" (Gabolde 2009 p. 117 and n. 71). Samson had recognised the feminine throne name Ankhetkheperure on the bezel of a glazed (faience) ring in the 1970s (Petrie Museum UC 1927). Two blue faience bracelets carry "Neferneferuaten who is beneficial for her husband" (Sousa, Pieke and Bagh 2024). Kemp's objection (2016 pp. 18-20) is that the tiny t under the "beloved" sign on bezels can as easily be an r or an n, and that the .ti endings on the gilded shrines that enclosed Tutankhamun's sarcophagus are second-person forms ("you") rather than feminine ones; the objection does not reach the pectoral's mꜣꜥt-ḫrw, the coffinette's "her husband", or the bracelets. Kemp himself accepts the name "Akhetenhiyes" as a woman's name and explains it as the queen's name absorbed into her husband's cartouche. Status: (a) Gabolde 2009, Kemp 2016, Reeves 1990 and 2015; (b) Sousa et al. 2024; the objects were not examined.
The four gold coffinettes, the pectoral, the gold bands and straps on Tutankhamun's mummy, and in most readings the middle coffin and the second shrine were made for Neferneferuaten and re-inscribed for Tutankhamun; Reeves (2015) reads the erased throne name Ankhkheperure under Tutankhamun's on the gold mask as well. Carter's card for the mummy trappings says that "in some cases cartouches have been deliberately cut out, plain gold inserted in their place, but in one instance the original cartouche … remains" (card 256b-05). Whatever the fate of the female king, a full kingly burial set had been prepared for her and was available at Thebes some years later. Status: (a) Carter cards, Gabolde 2009, Reeves 2015 JAEI; (b) Sousa et al. 2024; (c) Engelbach 1940, Eaton-Krauss 2016.
The chariotry officer Ranefer rebuilt his house (N49.18) on a larger plan and put the cartouches Ankhkheperure beloved of Neferkheperure and Neferneferuaten beloved of Waenre at the head of his door jambs, followed by "my lord" with the masculine article (Kemp 2016 p. 13). Painted plaster from the gateway of the North Riverside Palace carries the same throne name, written with the r under "beloved" that marks a masculine spelling, beside the personal name with "effective for her husband" (Kemp 2016 pp. 20-22, from watercolours made at the excavation in the 1930s by Hilda Pendlebury). Bricks stamped "Ankhkheperure" in the last-built pillared hall of the Great Palace give only the plain throne name. A faience ring of Ankhkheperure found under the stone threshold of the Small Aten Temple was long linked to a year-13 docket found nearby; Kemp shows from the excavation's section drawing that the two finds lay in unconnected layers (2016 pp. 17-18). The ring bezels from the Workmen's Village, the walled settlement of the tomb-builders outside the city, name Neferneferuaten in numbers, Smenkhkare a few more, and Tutankhaten most (Dodson 2020 p. 78). Status: (a) Kemp 2016, Dodson 2020, Fairman 1951; (c) Kemp and Stevens 2010.
Manetho, an Egyptian priest of the third century BC, wrote a history of Egypt in Greek that survives only in quotations. The Jewish historian Josephus, writing in the first century AD, quotes his list of kings for this period; after Orus, usually taken as Amenhotep III, it gives:
τοῦ δὲ θυγάτηρ Ἀκεγχερὴς δώδεκα καὶ μῆνα ἕνα. τῆς δὲ Ῥάθωτις ἀδελφὸς ἐννέα. τοῦ δὲ Ἀκεγχήρης δώδεκα καὶ μῆνας πέντε. τοῦ δὲ Ἀκεγχήρης ἕτερος δώδεκα καὶ μῆνας τρεῖς.
"then his daughter Acencheres for 12 years 1 month; then her brother Rathotis for 9 years; then his son Acencheres for 12 years 5 months, his son Acencheres II for 12 years 3 months." (Contra Apionem 1.96-97, Niese; Waddell 1940 fr. 50)
The later Christian chronographers Africanus and Eusebius, who abridged Manetho, lose the gender and the parentage. Acencheres is a passable Greek form of Ankh(et)kheperure, and Rathotis with nine years is Tutankhamun. The tradition therefore preserves a female king of that name who was a king's daughter, and more than one bearer of the name. Krauss and the Gabolde school use "daughter" for Meritaten; Dodson calls the list "a garbled, misordered remembrance of the Amarna kings"; Kemp holds that "nothing is gained by citing him in support of one theory or another" (Kemp 2016 p. 30). The report gives the item small weight. Status: (a) Greek text and Waddell.
Two limestone fragments (Louvre AF 9904, Brooklyn 33.51), which the Egyptologist Christian Loeben showed in 1986 to belong to one piece, give a shabti (a small funerary figurine inscribed for the dead person, to work in their place in the next world) of the King's Great Wife Neferneferuaten Nefertiti, with a queen's titles only. Allen wrote that "Nefertiti's candidacy was in the ascendant for a time until the publication of a shawabti of hers, evidence that she died as a queen, not a pharaoh" (Allen 2009 p. 16); Jean-Luc Bovot of the Louvre (1999) argued that the pieces belong to two shabtis, one of Nefertiti and one of Meritaten. Dodson's answer is that burial equipment was made in anticipation of death and that the shabti could predate her elevation (Dodson 2020 p. 89). It is the strongest single object against Nefertiti as king, and the scoring in section 4 treats it as such. Status: (a) Allen 2009, Dodson 2020, Reeves 2015 n. 35; (c) Loeben 1986, Bovot 1999; the text was not verified against an edition.
Six daughters stand with Akhenaten and Nefertiti at the year-12 reception of tribute (Davies 1905 pl. XXXVIII). The fourth, Neferneferuaten-tasherit, "the younger", was born after year 8 and was at most about ten in year 17; Allen's 2009 candidate for the female king was this child, and he withdrew the proposal in 2016. Kiya, the "greatly beloved wife" of Akhenaten, disappears after a year-11 docket, and her monuments, including the coffin and the four jars for the embalmed organs (canopic jars) later found in KV55, were re-cut for Meritaten and Ankhesenpaaten while those daughters were still princesses (Dodson 2014 pp. 129-131). Meritaten became King's Great Wife at some point after that. Status: (a) Davies 1905, Allen 2009, Dodson 2014.