AKHENATEN/TUTANKHAMUN

[Bianca]

February 10 - 16, 2007
 
Finally, finally we are allowed to tell you what you wanted to hear: the name of the tomb-owner of the new funerary monument we discovered this season! The Egyptians have now sent out a press release and therefore it is okay for us to talk about it. The news has already been published in all Egyptian newspapers and has been shown on the Egyptian television. This is because it is a really nice find: another tomb dating to the time of Akhenaten!
 
As you'll remember, in 2001 we found the first tomb dating to that period: the tomb of Meryneith. In 2003 we found the rear wall of the new tomb we are now excavating, and we already hoped it would be contemporary. This assumption has proved to be right. The tomb belongs to Ptahemwia, who was 'royal butler, clean of hands'. There are few inscriptions, but we already know there is a door jamb of this man in the Cairo Museum and a pilaster in Bologna. Otherwise, he was unknown from previous finds. The date is suggested by the characteristic style of the wall reliefs. I shall now describe the tomb in some detail.The tomb is built in mudbrick and measures 10.5 m wide by 16 m long. It consists of a massive entrance wall with gateway (perhaps originally shaped as a pylon), followed by a peristyle courtyard, and three chapels for the offering cult. Courtyard and central chapel have preserved a large part of the original limestone floor and wall revetment, and these wall panels again have beautiful coloured reliefs. Unfortunately, these have been robbed away for the left-hand part of the tomb, and only the northern part of the east wall, the north wall of the courtyard, and the north half of the central chapel have preserved a large part of the original relief slabs.
 
Those on the east wall are unfinished and show a lot of sketches in red ink which have never been carved. Can it be that the tomb-owner fell from grace because of his name (which means 'the god Ptah sits in his bark')? As you'll remember, Akhenaten banned most of the Egyptian gods and only wished to worship the sun god Aten. Meryneith faced the same problem and even had to change his name into Meryre, but there is no sign that Ptahemwia did something similar. Perhaps he just died untimely, and that is why the tomb is unfinished.
 
The best scenes occur on the north wall of the courtyard. On the right we see a landscape with farmers ploughing their fields. The adjacent scene shows Ptahemwia arriving at his house (depicted as a rectangle with a gabled roof), in which his wife is waiting for him. She is called the 'songstress of Amun' Maia, and a servant is pouring her a drink while she is waiting. But her husband is not ready yet: he is addressing a number of minor officials, while his charioteer, sandal-bearer and Nubian bodyguards stand at attention. Meanwhile, other servants come running to the open door of the house to greet their master, followed by some female musicians. Further to the left is a scene of the opening of the mouth ceremony and offerings in front of the seated couple. Under the chair of the wife there are two monkeys, depicted in a very vivid way while eating fruit.

The vivid style full of unique details (such as the posture of the deceased, who turns his head back to look at the officials), the characteristic elongated skulls and bulging stomachs, and the peculiar style of sunk relief (always a favourite of Akhenaten) point to a date in the Amarna period, and presumably in its early years. This would make the tomb contemporaneous with that of Meryneith. We have been very fortunate again!
 
Yesterday (Thursday 15th) we paid off our workmen: the work is done and we need two more weeks to study and record the finds. Our photographer Anneke is leaving coming Tuesday, so we have to organise everything for her. In the meantime, our artist Dorothea has almost finished drawing the large reliefs, thanks to the good weather we are enjoying. If this continues, we shall be able to finish our job this year. We already look forward to excavate the tomb shaft in 2008, although we already can see it has been entered in the 19th century.
 



MAIA, TUTANKHAMUN'S NURSE

[Bianca]

                                            A K H E N A T E N   E R A  T O M B S


                                                            S A Q Q A R A




The New Kingdom Tombs from Saqqara


Compiled by Anneke Bart




Memphis (Mennefer) has always been an important city in Ancient Egypt. The necropolis at Saqqara dates back to early dynastic times. In recent decades many areas of the necropolis have been excavated yielding many new insights into the history of Egypt.

At the presents Saqqara is being investigated by many different teams.

•     The University of Leiden: lead by M. Raven and R van Walsem are excavating New Kingdom tombs located to the south of the pyramid of Unas and to the east of the step pyramid of Sekhemkhet.
•     The French archeologists from the Institute Francais d'Archeologie Orientale (IFAO), lead by A. Zivie, are excavating Old Kingdom tombs to the north-east of the Leiden team. They are also active at the Bubasteion. This team has also discovered some New Kingdom tombs.
•     The Scottish team of the Saqqara Geophysical Survey Project are excavating in the northern part of the necropolis. Under the direction of I. Matthieson, they have discovered an ancient Egyptian city which housed the workmen who built the pyramids at Saqqara.
•     The Japanesse mission from the University of Waseda and Tokai are excavating a New Kingdom necropolis at Dashur, which is part of the greater Saqqara area.


Below is a list of New Kingdom tombs. Some of the tombs have been located and excavated, while others are known to exist because objects or reliefs from the tomb have been found. The tombs are listed alphabetically.




List of Tombs from the 18th Dynasty


Alphabetically


Aperel (Aperia),      Time of Amenhotep III and Akhenaten.
Vizier, General of the Chariotry, and God's Father. Discovered in 1987 by the French under supervision of A. Zivie. The tomb is  designated at I.1 and is located  in the cliffs of the Bubasteion  (a sanctuary dedicated to Bastet).
Taweret, Aperia's wife,  may have been an important lady as  well considering the fact that she is the only New Kingdom woman to have been buried in a set of three coffins.  Their son Huy was buried in year 10 of Akhenaten or even later.
Wife: Taweret;Son: Huy (General); Also mentioned in the tomb are Aperel’s sons Seny and Hatiay.

Maia, ******Time of Akhenaten and Tutankhamen
Royal nurse of Tutankhamen. Discovered in 1996. Buried in tomb I.20 in the cliffs of the Bubasteion.


Meryneith (Meryre),         Time of Akhenaten
greatest of seers of the Aten', 'steward of the temple of Aten', 'scribe of the temple of Aten in Akhet-aten (and) in Memphis', and 'first prophet of the temple of Neith'
Found by the expedition in 2001 Father: Kawt, Wife: Anuia
http://www.let.leidenuniv.nl/saqqara/Excavation/Tombs/Meryneith/Meryneith.htm

[Majeston]

  I am
especially fond of Akhenaten myself.  I do think that he was ahead of his time.  Not only
were the Egyptians not ready for his "message", but I think he had been too imbued in
the "role" of Faraoh that it caused HIM to lose the message.

Love and Peace,
B

Bianca,

I don't get that impression,  why do you think that?

Remember this post?   This is how the "celestial beings"  who look back at the evolution of our spiritual history view the whole thing.




.

 Since the disappearance of Melchizedek in the flesh, no human being up to that time had possessed such an amazingly clear concept of the revealed religion of Salem as Ikhnaton. In some respects this young Egyptian king is one of the most remarkable persons in human history. During this time of increasing spiritual depression in Mesopotamia, he kept alive the doctrine of El Elyon, the One God, in Egypt, thus maintaining the philosophic monotheistic channel which was vital to the religious background of the then future bestowal of Michael. And it was in recognition of this exploit, among other reasons, that the child Jesus was taken to Egypt, where some of the spiritual successors of Ikhnaton saw him and to some extent understood certain phases of his divine mission.


Never in all history did any king so methodically proceed to swing a whole nation from polytheism to monotheism as did this extraordinary Ikhnaton. With the most amazing determination this young ruler broke with the past, changed his name, abandoned his capital, built an entirely new city, and created a new art and literature for a whole people. But he went too fast; he built too much, more than could stand when he had gone. Again, he failed to provide for the material stability and prosperity of his people, all of which reacted unfavorably against his religious teachings when the subsequent floods of adversity and oppression swept over the Egyptians.

Had this man of amazingly clear vision and extraordinary singleness of purpose had the political sagacity of Moses, he would have changed the whole history of the evolution of religion and the revelation of truth in the Occidental world. During his lifetime he was able to curb the activities of the priests, whom he generally discredited, but they maintained their cults in secret and sprang into action as soon as the young king passed from power; and they were not slow to connect all of Egypt's subsequent troubles with the establishment of monotheism during his reign.

Very wisely Ikhnaton sought to establish monotheism under the guise of the sun-god. This decision to approach the worship of the Universal Father by absorbing all gods into the worship of the sun was due to the counsel of the Salemite physician.  Ikhnaton took the generalized doctrines of the then existent Aton faith regarding the fatherhood and motherhood of Deity and created a religion which recognized an intimate worshipful relation between man and God.

Ikhnaton was wise enough to maintain the outward worship of Aton, the sun-god, while he led his associates in the disguised worship of the One God, creator of Aton and supreme Father of all. This young teacher-king was a prolific writer, being author of the exposition entitled "The One God," a book of thirty-one chapters, which the priests, when returned to power, utterly destroyed. Ikhnaton also wrote one hundred and thirty-seven hymns, twelve of which are now preserved in the Old Testament Book of Psalms, credited to Hebrew authorship.


The supreme word of Ikhnaton's religion in daily life was "righteousness," and he rapidly expanded the concept of right doing to embrace international as well as national ethics. This was a generation of amazing personal piety and was characterized by a genuine aspiration among the more intelligent men and women to find God and to know him. In those days social position or wealth gave no Egyptian any advantage in the eyes of the law. The family life of Egypt did much to preserve and augment moral culture and was the inspiration of the later superb family life of the Jews in Palestine.

The fatal weakness of Ikhnaton's gospel was its greatest truth, the teaching that Aton was not only the creator of Egypt but also of the "whole world, man and beasts, and all the foreign lands, even Syria and Kush, besides this land of Egypt. He sets all in their place and provides all with their needs." These concepts of Deity were high and exalted, but they were not nationalistic. Such sentiments of internationality in religion failed to augment the morale of the Egyptian army on the battlefield, while they provided effective weapons for the priests to use against the young king and his new religion. He had a Deity concept far above that of the later Hebrews, but it was too advanced to serve the purposes of a nation builder.


Though the monotheistic ideal suffered with the passing of Ikhnaton, the idea of one God persisted in the minds of many groups. The son-in-law of Ikhnaton went along with the priests, back to the worship of the old gods, changing his name to Tutankhamen.   The capital returned to Thebes, and the priests waxed fat upon the land, eventually gaining possession of one seventh of all Egypt; and presently one of this same order of priests made bold to seize the crown.

But the priests could not fully overcome the monotheistic wave. Increasingly they were compelled to combine and hyphenate their gods; more and more the family of gods contracted. Ikhnaton had associated the flaming disk of the heavens with the creator God, and this idea continued to flame up in the hearts of men, even of the priests, long after the young reformer had passed on. Never did the concept of monotheism die out of the hearts of men in Egypt and in the world. It persisted even to the arrival of the Creator Son of that same divine Father, the one God whom Ikhnaton had so zealously proclaimed for the worship of all Egypt.

The weakness of Ikhnaton's doctrine lay in the fact that he proposed such an advanced religion that only the educated Egyptians could fully comprehend his teachings. The rank and file of the agricultural laborers never really grasped his gospel and were, therefore, ready to return with the priests to the old-time worship of Isis and her consort Osiris, who was supposed to have been miraculously resurrected from a cruel death at the hands of Set, the god of darkness and evil.

The teaching of immortality for all men was too advanced for the Egyptians. Only kings and the rich were promised a resurrection; therefore did they so carefully embalm and preserve their bodies in tombs against the day of judgment. But the democracy of salvation and resurrection as taught by Ikhnaton eventually prevailed, even to the extent that the Egyptians later believed in the survival of dumb animals.


Although the effort of this Egyptian ruler to impose the worship of one God upon his people appeared to fail, it should be recorded that the repercussions of his work persisted for centuries both in Palestine and Greece, and that Egypt thus became the agent for transmitting the combined evolutionary culture of the Nile and the revelatory religion of the Euphrates to all of the subsequent peoples of the Occident.

The glory of this great era of moral development and spiritual growth in the Nile valley was rapidly passing at about the time the national life of the Hebrews was beginning, and consequent upon their sojourn in Egypt these Bedouins carried away much of these teachings and perpetuated many of Ikhnaton's doctrines in their racial religion.

http://urantiabook.org/newbook/ub/ppr095_5.html

[Majeston]

Hi Bianca,

It appears that Egypt does not know who the father of boy King Tut (Tutankhamen) was.

Many believe Akhenaten (Ikhnaton) was his father.  The Urantia papers

reveal that Tut was his son-in-law.

"The son-in-law of Ikhnaton went along with the priests, back to the worship of the old gods, changing his name to Tutankhamen. "

Should we tell Zawi Hawas ? 

 
               

       


       
       
               
Egypt Feature Story

               

Who Was King Tut

               

by Jimmy Dunn

       

       

Who  exactly was King Tut,  known during his early life as Tutankhuaten (or Tutankhaten), reflecting his Amarna  roots, and later as Tutankhamun, reflecting the return to Egypt's traditional  religion? Despite the richness of his burial, King Tutankhamun remains somewhat  of an enigmatic figure, even though he has been the subject of much  investigation. Presumably, he was born in Akhetaten (modern  el-Amarna), during the latter half of the reign of Akhenaten, the Heretic king  who attempted to establish a radical departure from traditional Egyptian  religion. We believe that he died in his late teens, judging from various  analyses of his mummy.

Although his royal lineage has sometimes been questioned, an inscription  unearthed at el-Ahsmunein across the river from el-Amarna confirms that  Tutankhuaten (as he was known at that time) was indeed the son of a king. Not  surprisingly, official policy during the boy's reign  seems to have been to  stress his association with Amenhotep III,  who we actually presume to be his grandfather. Given the absence of a long  co-regency between Amenhotep III and Amenhotep  IV (later Akhenaten), it probably must be that Tutankhamun was  the son of the latter.



Though it seems that Akhenaten  must have been King Tut's father, much less evidence exists as to his mother.  However, a degree of informed speculation is possible. For example, we can  probably eliminate Nefertiti, since she appears to have provided her husband, Akhenaten, with  no sons. Of course, she was not his only wife. Among the king's secondary wives  and concubines, one in particular stands out. She is lady Kiya, identified by  some with the Mitannian princess Tadukhepa, daughter of Tushratta, sent to Egypt  to cement treaty relations between the two countries at the start of the reign.



Kiya is peculiarly prominent in the sculptural record at el-Amarna and  her special position in the king's favor is reflected in her unique title,  "Greatly Beloved Wife". In a number of Amarna reliefs, Kiya is shown in the  company of a daughter. Many believe that she might have also borne a son.  Chronological considerations by no means rule out the possibility. There are  indications that Kiya was a favorite of the Amarna court prior to years nine and  ten of Akhenaten's reign, but  after year eleven, about the time of Tutankhamun's  birth, she disappears from the the record and her monuments at el-Amarna were  appropriated by Nefertiti's daughter, Meritaten. One possible explanation is that Kiya died  in childbirth, as a fragmentary mourning scene in Akhenaten's tomb perhaps  suggests.



However, it is equally possible that Kiya fell from grace, the victim of  court intrigue engineered by the jealous Nefertiti.  Indeed, it may be no coincidence that the meteoric rise in the status of  Nefertiti seems to have begun in earnest only after Kiya's disappearance.



Irregardless of his mother's identity, Tutankhamun came  to the throne in about 1333 BC, then a young child still burdened with the name,  Tutankhaten. He married Ankhesenpaaten, the somewhat older third daughter of Akhenaten and Nefertiti, a  match perhaps made to unite opposing royal factions. He would rule Egypt  for only nine or so years, though there can be little doubt that for most of  this time, the reigns of the government were firmly in the hands of others, such  as Ay, his  successor and perhaps a relative of the king, and General Horemheb, who would  succeed Ay to the throne.



Hard  facts related to Tutankhamun's reign are few, but it is clear that the principal event of his  reign related to the reestablishment of the traditional Egyptian religion, as  well as the relocation of the Capital back to Memphis and the  reestablishment of the country's religious center at Thebes. When  the royal couple abandoned the "aten" forms of their name during year two of the  king's reign, it signaled the formal resurgence of Amun, away  from the worship of Aten, and the traditional pantheon. Promulgated by a decree at Memphis and  recorded in the retrospectively dated "Restoration  Stela", this one event marks the reign as pivotal to the subsequent course  of Egyptian History.



Hence, while it is frequently said that Tutankhamun was a  relatively insignificant king (we too have been guilty of this), despite the  wealth of his tomb, his reign was not. Whether the changes that were brought  about were his, Ay's  or Horemheb's, his was a very  important time in the history of Egypt.

[Bianca]

Majeston:

Akhenaten's "problems":

1. Advocating a GLOBAL BELIEF, then moving to a remote area, 100 or
    more miles away from where the bulk of the Egyptians were.  Only with
    those who believed like himself (most of whom did it for gain - check
    tomb inscriptions and murals).
 
    Any New Movement of any kind is NOT promulgated by 'going into exile'.


2.  The Egyptian belief that transition to the afterlife was only for the
     Elite.  And that it could ONLY be accomplished through Pharaoh, which
     isolated Akhenaten even more and further convinced him of his own
     divinity (Pharaonic 'hubris').


3.  His obsession with the "New Religion" caused him to ignore the
     SPREADING of it.  It lasted such a short time, that it was easy for
     his successors to almost totally erase his memory and that of the
     Aten for 2000 years and more.


      I am not going to discuss here what I think resulted from his beliefs and how they
were consequently distorted.



AS FOR TUTANKHAMUN:

He was only a little boy when he rose to the throne.  I can't believe anybody would expect
HIM to carry on where Akhenaten left off.  I do not think Akhenaten left any instructions,
save for his hymns, which do not help in power struggles.

I do believe that he was Akhenaten's son, perhaps by another wife.  For personal reasons, I
have researched Tutankhamun more than Akhenaten.  Even today, tracking down material
on his WetNurse MAYA - whose tomb has recently been found at Saqqara -  (See:Lion Skeleton
Story), everywhere I find statements that Akhenaten referred to him as "from my own loins",
(paraphrasing),  just like he did to his daughters by Nefertiti.

Of course he was also Akhanaten's son-in-law, he married his daughter Ankhesenpaaten, did he
not?  He reverted to the Pharaonic custom of marrying sister/half sister, as one could only
legitimately inherit the throne through the FEMALE line!

And, as for Tutankhamun not believing in the Aten, try to picture some of the items found in
his tomb, like:



FRONT OF CHAIR/THRONE


BACK OF CHAIR/THRONE - NOTE THE 'ATEN' DISKS

B

[+Faith+]

Hi, Faith:

It's really nice to "meet" you personally.  Thank you for the appreciative remarks.  I am
especially fond of Akhenaten myself.  I do think that he was ahead of his time.  Not only
were the Egyptians not ready for his "message", but I think he had been too imbued in
the "role" of Pharaoh that it caused HIM to lose the message.

Love and Peace,
B

Hi Bianca,

It's nice to meet you, too. You have done a lot of nice work in the forum, and I didn't know anyone else shared my interest in Alhenaton.

You think lost his message.  Yes, it caused some resentment, but what makes you say that he himself was lost?

God Bless,

+Faith+

[+Faith+]

Wonderful picture of Tut's throne!  I had no idea that he worshipped the Aton. Perhaps the religion lasted longer than Egyptologists give it credit for currently.

[Bianca]

Hi, Faith:

See my answer to Majeston above, especially point #3. 

Love and Peace,
B

[Bianca]

TUTANKHAMUN



[imghttp://cdn.channel.aol.com/aolnews_photos/01/00/20050511134909990006[/img]

CT SCAN OF TUTANKHAMUN'S SKULL

[Bianca]

ONE OF AKHENATEN'S DAUGHTERS

[Bianca]

TWO OF AKHANATEN'S DAUGHTERS

[Bianca]

MAJESTON:

LOOK AT THE THREE PICTURES ABOVE.  TUTANKHAMUN STILL NOT A BLOOD RELATIVE OF

AKHENATEN............?

Bianca


PS - D., make sure you read the next post also.

[Bianca]

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians/images/amarna_wetnurse.gif&imgrefurl=http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians/amarna_04.shtml&h=190&w=200&sz=7&hl=en&start=30&tbnid=am-szV6dZQH-PM:&tbnh=99&tbnw=104&prev=/images%3Fq%3DAKHENATEN%2BDAUGHTERS%26start%3D20%26gbv%3D2%26ndsp%3D20%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN

   
The End of the Amarna Period
By Dr Marc Gabolde

 TUTANKHAMUN PARENTAGE

A line drawing showing a small child in the arms of a wet-nurse Until recently, it was thought that the six daughters of Akhenaten and Nefertiti were the couple's only offspring. However, in one chamber of the Royal Tomb, just outside the room devoted to the funeral vigil for Akhenaten's second daughter, Meketaten, a small child is depicted in the arms of a wet-nurse.

'So we must be dealing with a seventh child of Nefertiti.'
It has long been believed that Meketaten died in childbirth and that this infant was hers. However, she was only about nine years old at the time of her death and her sarcophagus proves that she was scarcely taller than one metre.

What remains of the inscription referring to the child reads:

'(1) [...] born of (2) [...] Neferneferua[ten] Nefertiti, who lives now and forever more'
((1) and (2) indicate two columns; [...] indicates missing text.)

Given the length of the missing parts of the inscription and the similarity in composition to the titles given to other royal offspring at Amarna it is clear that we are dealing with a child of Nefertiti. And given that by the time of the birth of this child, we know that the six daughters of Akhenaten and Nefertiti were already born and that, moreover, three of them were dead, the baby is necessarily different from any of the known princesses. So we must be dealing with a seventh child of Nefertiti.

The most likely candidate is Tutankhamun, known during this period as Tutankhaten. Indeed, a block, now split in two, from the nearby site of Hermopolis still bears the insignia of the prince Tutankhaten accompanied by that of a princess whose name, unfortunately, is missing.

'...it is probable that Akhenaten and Nefertiti were the parents of Tutankhamun.'
Another block at Hermopolis confirms that Tutankhaten had at least one sister and probably two. On this block, a prince, identifiable by his loincloth, can be seen sitting on an adult's lap, together with traces of the figures of two other children. It was a rule in the official monuments of Amarna, that Nefertiti's children should never be shown alongside those of any other wife of Akhenaten. As Nefertiti is the only one of his wives known to have had more than one child, it is probable that Akhenaten and Nefertiti were the parents of Tutankhamun.


Published: 2002-09-05
Tutankhamun
Timeline of Ancient Egypt
BBC Links
BBC News - Country Profile of Egypt

[Majeston]

MAJESTON:

LOOK AT THE THREE PICTURES ABOVE.  TUTANKHAMUN STILL NOT A BLOOD RELATIVE OF

AKHENATEN............?

Bianca


PS - D., make sure you read the next post also.

Don't believe it and don't trust it dear,

"son-in-law"


.

[sevens]

Hi I was reading about the thought adjuster

This inst about Iknanten  but it about his Father Amenhotep111

Here is an excerpt out of the Urantia Book

Just checkout the Bold

http://mercy.urantia.org/papers/paper111.html

In the conception of the atman the Hindu teachers really approximated an appreciation of the nature and presence of the Adjuster, but they failed to distinguish the copresence of the evolving and potentially immortal soul. The Chinese, however, recognized two aspects of a human being, the yang and the yin, the soul and the spirit. The Egyptians and many African tribes also believed in two factors, the ka and the ba; the soul was not usually believed to be pre-existent, only the spirit.

The inhabitants of the Nile valley believed that each favored individual had bestowed upon him at birth, or soon thereafter, a protecting spirit which they called the ka. They taught that this guardian spirit remained with the mortal subject throughout life and passed before him into the future estate. On the walls of a temple at Luxor, where is depicted the birth of Amenhotep III, the little prince is pictured on the arm of the Nile god, and near him is another child, in appearance identical with the prince, which is a symbol of that entity which the Egyptians called the ka. This sculpture was completed in the fifteenth century before Christ.

The ka was thought to be a superior spirit genius which desired to guide the associated mortal soul into the better paths of temporal living but more especially to influence the fortunes of the human subject in the hereafter. When an Egyptian of this period died, it was expected that his ka would be waiting for him on the other side of the Great River. At first, only kings were supposed to have kas, but presently all righteous men were believed to possess them.

Here is an relief that came out of the temple of Luxor I wonder if this image spoken about in the UB



I'm not sure if this the exact image the Ub is talking about.  There maybe some other images displaying the the description in the UB.

Actually it could be a little different to what I thought.

But this could be the image displaying the Ka and Ba.  It comes from a Papyrus and I'm not sure of the origins but it seems to describe the Ub account.

I found this on one of Bianca's threads



Looks very close to the birth of Amenhotep111



sevens