Queen Nefertiti was the wife of the sun-disk worshipping Pharaoh Akhenaten and stepmother to King Tutankhamun.
Nefertiti was an ancient Egyptian queen consort who was likely King Tut's stepmother and may have ruled as a pharaoh in her own right. She lived during the 18th dynasty during the 14th century B.C., but the years of Nefertiti's birth and death are not certain.
Historical records indicate that Nefertiti had six daughters with Akhenaten but did not have a son, Tyldesley noted in her book. If these records are correct that would make Tutankhamun the stepson of Nefertiti. Egyptian pharaohs often had multiple wives and concubines, and Tutankhamun's mother was likely one of them.
Was Nefertiti a pharaoh?Egyptian art depicts Nefertiti in ways normally only pharaohs are shown. For instance, she is portrayed smiting enemies, something only a pharaoh would typically do, Elizabeth Carney , a professor emerita of history at Clemson University in South Carolina, wrote in a paper published in 2001 in the journal Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies .
It's not clear why Nefertiti was depicted the way she was. One possibility is that other queen consorts got similar treatment. 'When considering this question we have to remember that Amarna has yielded more evidence of royal behaviour than other 18th-dynasty archaeological sites," Tyldesley told Live Science in an email.
Search for Nefertiti's tombUltimately, the fate of Nefertiti is unclear. Scholars are not certain exactly when she died, and her mummy has not been found. A team led by Zahi Hawass, Egypt's former antiquities minister, is conducting DNA tests in an effort to identify Nefertiti. Destruction of Nefertiti's imageRegardless of where Nefertiti's mummy is now, the ancient Egyptians did not take kindly to her in the decades following her death. Tutankhamun undid Akhenaten's religious reform; Amarna became abandoned, and images of Akhenaten and Nefertiti were destroyed.
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