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The Egypt Connection

EGYPTIANS IN THE AMERICAS

ABYDOS - AHMOSE I - AKHENATON - AMARNA - AMENHOTEP I - AY -  DENDERA - EGYPTIAN GODS -  GIZA  -
HATSHEPSUT -  HERMES - KARNAK - KIYA - LUXOR - MERYTATEN - MOSES-  MYSTERY SCHOOLS - NEFERTITI  -
 P'TAAH - RA-TA - ISIS  - SAQQARA -  SITAMUN - SMENKHKARE -
THEBES - THOTH - TIYE - TUTANKHAMUN - YUYA - ZOSER

 

TIYE

Ahmad Osman:  In my attempt to pursue Freud's theory through the examination of recent archaeological findings, I came to the conclusion that Moses was Akhenaten himself. The son of Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye (daughter of Yuya, whom I have identified as Joseph the patriarch), Akhenaten had an Egyptian father and an Israelite mother. Yuya had been appointed by Tuthmosis IV to be the Master of the King's Horses and Deputy of the Royal Chariotry. On coming to the throne, and according to Egyptian customs, Amenhotep III married his sister Sitamun, who was just a child of three years at the time. However, in his Year 2, Amenhotep decided to also marry Yuya's daughter Tiye, the girl whom he loved, and made her, rather than Sitamun, his Great Royal Wife, his queen. (According to Egyptian customs the king could marry as many women as he desired, however the queen, whose children would follow him on the throne, had to be his sister, the heiress.) As a wedding present, Amenhotep presented Tiye with the frontier fortress of Zarw, in the area of modern Kantara in north Sinai, the capital of the Land of Goshen, mentioned by the Bible as the area where the Israelites dwelled in Egypt. Here he built a summer palace for her. To commemorate his marriage with Tiye, the king issued a large scarab and sent copies of it to foreign kings and princes.

The Birth of Moses

Amenhotep, who was later known as Akhenaten and Moses, was born in Year 12 of his father Amenhotep III, 1394 BC, in the summer royal palace in the border city of Zarw in northern Sinai. Zarw, modern Kantara East, was the center of the land of Goshen where the Israelites dwelt, and in the same location where the biblical Moses was born. But contrary to the biblical account, Moses was born inside the royal palace. His mother Queen Tiye had an elder son, Tuthmosis, who died a short time before Amenhotep's birth. Tuthmosis had been educated and trained at the royal residence in Memphis before he mysteriously disappeared—believed to have been kidnapped and assassinated by the Amun priests. Fearing for his safety, Tiye sent her son, the infant Amenhotep, by water to the safekeeping of her father's Israelite family outside the walls of Zarw. (Which was the origin of the biblical baby-in-the-bulrushes story.)

The reason for the priests' hostility to the young prince was the fact that Tiye, his mother, an Israelite, was not the legitimate heiress to the throne. She couldn't therefore be accepted as a consort for the state god Amun. If Tiye's son acceded to the throne, this would be regarded as forming a new dynasty of non-Amunite kings over Egypt. During his early years, his mother kept Amenhotep away from both the royal residences at Memphis and Thebes. He spent his childhood at the border city of Zarw, nursed by the wife of the queen's younger brother, General Aye. Later, Amenhotep was moved to Heliopolis, north of Cairo, to receive his education under the supervision of Anen, the priest of Ra, who was the elder brother of Queen Tiye.

Young Amenhotep first appeared at the capital city of Thebes when he reached the age of sixteen. There he met Nefertiti, his half-sister, daughter of Sitamun, and fell in love with her. Tiye, his mother, encouraged this relationship, realizing that his marriage to Nefertiti, the heiress, was the only way he could gain the right to follow his father on the throne.

 
Keeping track of who is who becomes more difficult because of the change of names from source to source. Besides that, husbands, wives, brothers, daughters, are all strangely intertwined with each other within families which makes it even more difficult to track relationships.  Hopefully we can put names side by side when they are different - though the same person.
 
Amenhotep III fathered two sons with his Great Royal Wife Tiye, a great queen known as the progenetor of monotheism[8] via the Crown Prince Thutmose who predeceased his father, and his second son, Akhenaten, who ultimately succeeded him to the throne. Amenhotep also may be the father of a third child—called Smenkhkare, who later would succeed Akhenaten, briefly rule Egypt as pharaoh, and who is depicted as a woman. [9]

Amenhotep III and Tiye may also have had four daughters: Sitamun, Henuttaneb, Isis or Iset, and Nebetah.[10] They appear frequently on statues and reliefs during the reign of their father and also are represented by smaller objects—with the exception of Nebetah.[11] Nebetah is attested only once in the known historical records on a colossal limestone group of statues from Medinet Habu.[12] This huge sculpture, that is seven meters high, shows Amenhotep III and Tiye seated side by side, "with three of their daughters standing in front of the throne--Henuttaneb, the largest and best preserved, in the centre; Nebetah on the right; and another, whose name is destroyed, on the left."[13]

Vase in the Louvre with the names Amenohotep III and Tiye written in the cartouches on the left, (and Tiye's on the right).

Amenhotep III elevated two of his four daughters—Sitamun and Isis—to the office of "great royal wife" during the last decade of his reign. Evidence that Sitamun already was promoted to this office by Year 30 of his reign, is known from jar-label inscriptions uncovered from the royal palace at Malkata.[14] The lineage of the royal line of Egypt was traced through its women and the religion of Ancient Egypt was interwoven inexorably with the right to rule. It must be stressed that Egypt's theological paradigm, therefore, encouraged a male pharaoh to accept royal women from several different generations as wives to strengthen the chances of his offspring to succeed him.[15] The goddess Hathor herself was related as first the mother, and later wife and daughter of Ra when he rose to prominence in the pantheon of the Ancient Egyptian religion.[16] Hence, Amenhotep III's marriage to his two daughters should not be considered as incest in our contemporary conception of marriage. Sitamun may have actually been the youngest daughter of Amenhotep III's father Thutmose IV, making her the half-sister of Amenhotep III and not his daughter.

Amenhotep III is known to have married Gilukhepa, the first of a series of diplomatic brides and the daughter of Shuttarna II of Mitanni, in the tenth year of his reign.[17] Around Year 36 of his reign, he also married Tadukhepa, the daughter of his ally Tushratta of Mitanni.[18]

 Life

Amenhotep III enjoyed the distinction of having the most surviving statues of any Egyptian pharaoh, with over 250 of his statues having been discovered and identified. Since these statues cover his entire life, they provide a series of portraits covering the entire length of any ancient Egyptian ruler.

Another striking characteristic of Amenhotep III's reign is the series of over 200 large commemorative stone scarabs that have been discovered over a large geographic area ranging from Syria (Ras Shamra) through to Soleb in Nubia.[19] Their lengthy inscribed texts extol the accomplishments of the pharaoh. For instance, 123 of these commemorative scarabs record the large number of lions (either 102 or 110 depending on the reading) that Amenhotep III killed "with his own arrows" from his first regnal year up to his tenth year.[20] Similarly, five other scarabs state that the foreign princess who would become a wife to him, Gilukhepa, arrived in Egypt with a retinue of 317 women. She was the first of many such princesses who would enter the pharaoh's household.[21]

Another eleven scarabs record the excavation of an artificial lake he had built for his royal wife, Queen Tiye, in his eleventh regnal year,

“ "Regnal Year 11 under the Majesty of...Amenhotep (III), ruler of Thebes, given life, and the great royal wife Tiyi; may she live; her father's name was Yuya, her mother's name Tuya. His Majesty commanded the making of a lake for the great royal wife Tiyi--may she live--in her town of Djakaru. (near Akhmin). Its length is 3,700 (cubits) and its width is 700 (cubits). (His Majesty) celebrated the Festival of Opening the Lake in the third month of Inundation, day sixteen. His Majesty was rowed in the royal barge Aten-tjehen in it [the lake]."[22] ”

Amenhotep appears to have been crowned while still a child, perhaps between the ages of 6 and 12. It is likely that a regent acted for him if he was made pharaoh at that early age. He married Tiye two years later and she lived twelve years after his death. His lengthy reign was a period of unprecedented prosperity and artistic splendour, when Egypt reached the peak of her artistic and international power. Proof of this is shown by the diplomatic correspondence from the rulers of Assyria, Mitanni, Babylon, and Hatti which is preserved in the archive of Amarna Letters; these letters document frequent requests by these rulers for gold and numerous other gifts from the pharaoh. The letters cover the period from Year 30 of Amenhotep III until at least the end of Akhenaten's reign. In one famous correspondence—Amarna letter EA 4--Amenhotep III is quoted by the Babylonian king Kadashman-Enlil I in firmly rejecting the latter's entreaty to marry one of this pharaoh's daughters:

“ "From time immemorial, no daughter of the king of Egy[pt] is given to anyone."[23] ”

Amenhotep III's refusal to allow one of his daughters to be married to the Babylonian monarch may indeed be connected with Egyptian traditional royal practices that could provide a claim upon the throne through marriage to a royal princess, or, it be viewed as a shrewd attempt on his part to enhance Egypt's prestige over those of her neighbours in the international world.

The pharaoh's reign was relatively peaceful and uneventful. The only recorded military activity by the king is commemorated by three rock-carved stelas from his fifth year found near Aswan and Sai Island in Nubia. The official account of Amenhotep III's military victory emphasizes his martial prowess with the typical hyperbole used by all pharaohs.

 
Tiye (c. 1398 BC – 1338 BC, also spelled Taia, Tiy and Tiyi) was the daughter of Yuya and Tjuyu (also spelled Thuyu). She became the Great Royal Wife of the Egyptian pharaoh Amenhotep III and matriarch of the Amarna family from which many members of the royal family of Ancient Egypt were born.

Tiye’s father, Yuya, was a wealthy landowner from the Upper Egyptian town of Akhmin,[1] where he served as a priest and superintendent of oxen. Tiye's mother, Thuya, was involved in many religious cults, as her different titles attested (Singer of Hathor, Chief of the Entertainers of both Amun and Min...),[2] which suggests that she was a member of the royal family.

It sometimes is suggested that Tiye's father, Yuya, was of Asiatic descent due to the features of his mummy and the many different spellings of his name, which might imply it was a non-Egyptian name in origin.[3] Some suggest that the queen's strong political and unconventional religious views might have been due not just to a strong character, but to foreign descent.[2]

Tiye also had a brother, Anen, who was Second Prophet of Amun.[4] Other egyptologists speculated that Ay, a successor of Tutankhamen as pharaoh after the latter's death, also might have been descended from Tiye. No clear date or monument can confirm the link between the two, but these egyptologists presumed this by Ay's origins, also from Akhmin, and because he inherited most of the titles that Tiye's father, Yuya, held during his lifetime, at the court of Amenhotep III.[2][5]

Tiye was married to Amenhotep III by the second year of his reign. He had been born of a secondary wife of his father and needed a stronger tie to the royal lineage.[6] He appears to have been crowned while still a child, perhaps between the ages of six to twelve. They had at least six children, one of whom, Akhenaten, went on to become pharaoh. Tiye's eldest daughter, Sitamun, also is likely to have married her father, Amenhotep III, and become entitled, Royal Great Wife as well.[7] Recent works explain that it was mostly a symbolical marriage involving many religious and administrative duties, as it occurs during Tiye's lifetime and, probably, with her consent. Other than those two, Tiye also gave birth to Henuttaneb, Nebetiah, Isis, and Thutmosis.[8] A fifth daughter, Baketaten, is presumed as attributed to Tiye, but the father still is not confirmed.[9]

Tiye
in hieroglyphs
U33 i i Z4 B7

 Monuments

Her husband devoted a number of shrines to her and constructed a temple dedicated to her in Sedeinga in Nubia where she was worshipped as a form of the goddess Hathor-Tefnut.[10] He also had an artificial lake built for her in his Year 12.[11] As the American Egyptologists David O'Connor and Eric Cline note:

“ The unprecedented thing about Tiyi ... is not where she came from but what she became. No previous queen ever figured so prominently in her husband's lifetime. Tiyi regularly appeared besides Amenhotep III in statuary, tomb and temple reliefs, and stelae while her name is paired with his on numerous small objects, such as vessels and jewelry, not to mention the large commemorative scarabs, where her name regularly follows his in the dateline. New elements in her portraiture, such as the addition of cows' horns and sun disks—attributes of the goddess Hathor—to her headdress, and her representation in the form of a sphinx—an image formerly reserved for the king—emphasize her role as the king's divine, as well as earthly partner. Amenhotep III built a temple to her in Sedeinga in northern Sudan, where she was worshiped as a form of Hathor ... The temple at Sedeinga was the pendant to Amenhotep III's own, larger temple at Soleb, fifteen kilometres to the south (an arrangement followed a century later by Ramses II at Abu Simbel, where there are likewise two temples, the larger southern temple dedicated to the king, and the smaller, northern temple dedicated to the queen, Nefertiry, as Hathor).[12] ”

 Influence at court

Tiye wielded a great deal of power during both her husband’s and son’s reigns. Amenhotep III became a fine sportsman, a lover of outdoor life, and a great statesman. He often had to consider claims for Egypt's gold and requests for his royal daughters in marriage from foreign kings such as Tushratta of Mitanni and Kadashman-Enlil I of Babylon. The royal lineage was carried by the women of Ancient Egypt and marriage to one would have been a path to the throne for their progeny. Tiye became her husband’s trusted adviser and confidant. Being wise, intelligent, strong, and fierce, she was able to gain the respect of foreign dignitaries. Foreign leaders were willing to deal directly through her. She continued to play an active role in foreign relations and was the first Egyptian queen to have her name recorded on official acts.[13]

She may have continued to advise her son, Akhenaten, when he took the throne. Her son’s correspondence with Tushratta, the king of Mitanni, speaks highly of the political influence which Tiye wielded at court. In Amarna letter EA 26, Tushratta, king to Mitanni, corresponded directly with Tiye to reminisce about the good relations which he enjoyed with her then deceased husband and extended his wish to continue on friendly terms with her son, Akhenaten.[14]

Amenhotep III died in Year 38 or Year 39 of his reign (1353 BC/1350 BC) and was buried in the Valley of the Kings in WV22, however, Tiye is known to have outlived him for as many as twelve years. Tiye continued to be mentioned in the Amarna letters and in inscriptions as queen and beloved of the king. Amarna letter EA 26 which is addressed to Tiye, dates to the reign of Akhenaten. She is known to have had a house at Amarna, Akhenaten's new capital and is shown on the walls of the tomb of Huya – a "steward in the house of the king's mother, the great royal wife Tiyi" – depicted at a dinner table with Akhenaten, Nefertiti, and their family and then being escorted by the king to her sunshade.[15] In an inscription approximately dated to November 21 of Year 12 of Akhenaten's reign (1338 BC), both she and her granddaughter Meketaten are mentioned for the last time. They are thought to have died shortly after that date.

In 1898, Victor Loret discovered a mummy of a pharaoh that is believed to have been Amenhotep III. Alongside it was the mummy of an "Elder Lady". The identification of the "Elder Lady" as Tiye, has found considerable support among scholars, but an examination of the mummy is inconclusive in terms of her age. A lock of Tiye's hair was found in a nest of miniature coffins in Tutankhamun's tomb which is stated as belonging explicitly to Tiye.[16]

Fragmentary funerary mask of Queen Tiye - in the Ägyptisches Museum collection in Berlin

If Tiye died soon after Year 12 of Akhenaten's reign (1338 BC), this would place her birth around 1398 BC, her marriage to Amenhotep III at the age of eleven or twelve, and her becoming a widow at the age of forty-eight to forty-nine. Suggestions of a co-regency between Amenhotep III and his son Akhenaten lasting for up to twelve years continue, but most scholars today, either accept a brief co-regency lasting no more than one year at the most,[17] or no co-regency at all.[15]

 Burial

Tiye is believed to have been buried in Akhenaten's royal tomb at Amarna alongside her son and granddaughter, Meketaten, as a fragment from the tomb not long ago was identified as being from her sarcophagus. Her gilded burial shrine (showing her with Akhenaten) ended up in KV55 while shabtis belonging to her were found in Amenhotep III's WV22 tomb.[18]

Whether or not she was buried in either of these tombs is not known. In the tomb KV35, a mummy known as the Elder Lady has been identified tentatively, as hers. The British scholars Aidan Dodson & Dyan Hilton state, however, that "it seems very unlikely that her mummy could be the so-called 'Elder Lady' in the tomb of Amenhotep II."[18] This view also is supported because the Elder Lady's teeth look as if they were those of a twenty-nine year old rather than a fifty-nine year old. However, recent evidence (DNA analysis) of the Elder Woman's teeth and the lock of hair found in Tutankhamun's tomb proves that the body is Tiye[19] and is nearer to a middle aged woman.

 References

  1. ^ Joyce Tyldesley, Chronicles of the Queens of Egypt. Thames & Hudson: London, 2006. p.115
  2. ^ a b c Joyce Tyldesley, Chronicles of the Queens of Egypt. Thames & Hudson: London, 2006. p.116
  3. ^ David O'Connor & Eric Cline, Amenhotep III: Perspectives on His Reign, University of Michigan, 1998, p.5
  4. ^ David O'Connor & Eric Cline, Amenhotep III: Perspectives on his reign, University of Michigan Press, 1998, pp.5-6
  5. ^ Ian Shaw, The Oxford history of Ancient Egypt. Oxford University Press: London, 2003. p.253
  6. ^ David O'Connor & Eric Cline, p.5
  7. ^ Joyce Tyldesley, Chronicles of the Queens of Egypt. Thames & Hudson: London, 2006. p.121
  8. ^ Ian Shaw, The Oxford history of Ancient Egypt. Oxford University Press: London, 2003. p.259
  9. ^ Joyce Tyldesley, Chronicles of the Queens of Egypt. Thames & Hudson: London, 2006. p.120
  10. ^ David O'Connor & Eric Cline, p.6
  11. ^ Arielle Kozloff & Betsy Bryan, "Royal and Divine Statuary" in Egypt’s Dazzling Sun: Amenhotep III and his World, Cleveland: 1992, no.2
  12. ^ David O'Connor & Eric Cline, pp.6-7.
  13. ^ Joyce Tyldesley, Chronicles of the Queens of Egypt. Thames & Hudson: London, 2006. p.118
  14. ^ [1] EA 26 - A Letter from Tushratta to Tiye
  15. ^ a b David O'Connor & Eric Cline, p.23
  16. ^ Dodson & Hilton, The Royal Families of Ancient Egypt p.157
  17. ^ Nicholas Reeves, Akhenaten: The False Prophet, pp.75-78
  18. ^ a b Dodson & Hilton, p.157
  19. ^ http://www.geocities.com/scribelist/tiye.doc accessed 27 June 2009

 External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiye"
 

A Letter from Tushratta to Tiye

EA 26

To Tiye [1], Lady of Egypt. Thus speaks Tushratta, King of Mitanni

Everything is well with me. May everything be well with you. May everything go well for your house, your son [2], may everything be perfectly well for your soldiers and for everything belonging to you.

You are the one who knows that I have always felt friendship for Mimmuriya [3], your husband, and that Mimmuriya, your husband, on his part always felt friendship for me. And the things that I wrote and told Mimmuriya, your husband, and the things that Mimmuriya, your husband, on his part wrote and told me incessantly, were known to you, Keliya and Mane. But it is you who knows better than anybody, the things we have told each other. No one knows them better [...]

You should continue sending joyful embassies, one after another. Do not suppress them.

I shall not forget the friendship with Mimmuriya, your husband. At this moment and more than ever, I have ten times more friendship for your son, Napkhuria [4].

You are the one who knows the words of Mimmuriya, your husband, but you have not sent me yet the gift of homage which Mimmuriya, your husband, has ordered to be sent to me. I have asked Mimmuriya, your husband, for massive gold statues [...] But your son has gold-plated statues of wood.As the gold is like dust in the country of your son, why have they been the reason for such pain, that your son should not have given them to me? [...] Neither has he given me what his father had been accustomed to give.

 [1] Tiye: Wife of Amenhotep III
 [2] Tiye's son: Akhenaten
 [3] Mimmuriya (Nimmuaria, Nibmuaria): Amenhotep III Neb-maat-re
 [4] Napkhuria: Akhenaten Nefer-khepru-re  

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