Roxana Cooper Wrote:
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> Personally I am somewhat cynical about the supposed correspondance between an
> Eygptian queen and the Hittite king, which I understand is known only from records
> about a generation after the fact.

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I think I noted in my first posted that fragments of the actual letter from the Egyptian queen was found in the Boghazkoy collection of Hittite correspondence; it was published by Edel, as I also cited that. So, it's not a "story" made up by Mursilis of the Hittites.

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> While I do not doubt that Supp. tried to take advantage of the succession crisis in Egypt, his complaint about the death of Zananza proves as much, I wonder if he really required an invitation to do so. Or that Ankhesenamun would be fool enough to chose the son of a barbarian monarch over what must have been a plethora of Egyptian possibilities.<

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You forget we have both the Egyptian queen correspondence itself and the letter Suppiluliumas wrote back to Egypt before he attacked it (I also gave a link to this in my original post as well). This gives credence that it's not a story made up to "justify" the Hittite's advance on Egypt.

There is evidence that a treaty already existed between Egyptian and Hatti even before the "Egyptian Queen" correspondence, and knowing this may put a whole new light on the proposal by the "Egyptian Queen" correspondence. It's called the "Kurushtama Treaty," which was entered into probably between Hatti and Egypt during the reign of Thutmose IV, or perhaps Amenhotep II. The Deeds of Suppiluliumas recounts a reference to this treaty, for example, in recounting the "Egyptian Queen" correspondence (Murnane 1990: 31-33).

Ankhsenamun's choice of a Hittite king would have solved many problems for Egypt: for one, they were at incipient war with Hatti - a royal union between the two lands would have averted this and secured Egypti's position again a force to be reckoned with in the ANE. Secondly, she would have married a fellow royal and thus saved her own royal line (more on this, below)

As to the "plethora of Egyptian possibilities:" exactly who did you have in mind? If Ankhsenamun's relatives Tutankhamun and Smenkhkare are gone, she would have to marry a noble and in essence give up her family's royal line. Yet, if she marries another royal, perhaps a foreigner, she's on the same playing field of her class.

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> Egyptian precedent, Sobekneferu for example, justified female succession in the
> absence of male heirs. Possibly Ankhes chose to ally herself with her probable
> grandfather, (and great uncle) as co-regent. He was probably the most powerful man
> at the Egyptian court, the one she trusted most and had the further advantage
> of being much older and so likely to leave her to enjoy an independent reign
> once she was more secure and experienced. However as it happened she died too -
> or so we must assume - leaving Ay sole pharaoh.

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Ay considered himself the "father" of Tutankhamun, and states so on several monuments where he called Tutankhamun his "son." He probably came to this form of relationship myth relying upon his title of /nTr it.f/, 'father if the god (king).' This position isn't so much a family relationship, but one as a trusted mentor. Ay considers his mentor title to Tutankhamun so important he keeps the title as part of his titulary even as pharaoh (he never drops it).

Yet, to merely have this title is not enough: he must somehow be joined to the royal family so his position as pharoah looks unassailable. So, Ankhsenmaun as his consort (wife?) would seem to fit all bills. Now, whether Ay chooses Ankhsenamun as queen, or she chooses him is probably a matter of political importance, especially upon the death of Zannanza, prince of the Hittites. Unfortunately, the machinations of who chose who and for what reasons is not something we're bound to find in the Egyptian records.

The Hittites claim in the Annals of Suppiluliumas that the "Egyptian queen" wrote that she would not marry "a servant of mine." Is this a reference to Ay, or is it Horemheb to which she refers (assuming we're right about it being Ankhsenamun, of course)? We'll never know, though if she marries Ay against her will, this may also explain her quick exit from the scene after he becomes king (she is killed or somehow dies [?]). More prosaically, though, she just as well may have simply died from any possible hosts of diseases/accidents without asuming foul play.

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> This reconstruction may be contradicted by Tut's funerary reliefs which show
> Pharaoh Ay presiding over his rites with no trace of a co-regent, suggesting that
> he directly succeeded his great-nephew (?).

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Note this is the only known example of a king overseeing the funeral of his predecessor, which makes the sceen look all the more political, IMO. Murnane (1990: 135) also has argued that this scene was put in after Tutankhamun had been interred, and thus after Ay had had himself made pharaoh (he has some support from Carter for such a statement, BTW). I can't see why Ay would have had any 'co-regent' by this time, especially since Zannanza is dead and Ankhsenamun isn't acting as pharaoh (in other words, I don't get your point here).

Further, since we don't know how long the embalming period of Tutankhamun was, Murnane's theory (1990) that this could have taken months for the correspondence, and the eventual death of Zannanza on route to Egypt, is plausible, IMO. Embalming wasn't the strictly 70 day period which we're led to believe. Some embalming periods were much longer - up to 272 days for Queen Meresankh III (Ikram and Dodson 1999: 104)! There are other examples of longer than 70 day embalming periods.

Murnane (1990: 133-136) opined that perhaps the goal of the "Egyptian queen" correspondence was to bring Zannanza into Egypt, have Ay rule with him as his mentor king. Eventually Ankhsenamun and Zannanza would rule together and have heirs from their marriage in order to save the Egyptian royal line. The plan had some very distinct implications and possibilities along that line.

In theory, upon the death of a king, his heir "ascends" or "arises" to the throne. The king's coronation can take place later (I think there's some example where a king "arose" but was never crowned, but I'd have to look into that before claiming as fact). If Tutankhamun has died, with no heir, the next regent in place would be his wife as the next royal in place. But I would assume that Ankhsenamun was not so foolish as to recall what occurred when a female was left alone to rule - her family line dies out upon her death. So, perhaps, to save her family line, she decides that marriage with another royal - a foreign one, perhaps one with no familial connections to Egypt, would work, as any child they may have together would still be of her royal family line (as the Egyptians would have recognised her family line claim first, not the Hittite royal line).

In many ways, the "Egyptian queen" correspondence shows some careful thinking about how a dynastic line could be saved by one of its last female members. In comparison, see how Cleopatra's son Caesarion was easily accepted by the Egyptians as the next pharaoh, without a single thought about Caesar (a Roman) being his father.

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> Personally I rather like the idea of Merytaten/Neferneferuaten as the queen of
> the Hittite letters but that doesn't seem very likely. More likely the letters
> were a propaganda invention after the fact.

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Not so, see above.

Reference:

Ikram, S. and A. Dodson. 1998. The Mummy in Ancient Egypt: Equipping the Dead for Eternity. London: Thames and Hudson.

Murnane, W. J. 1990. The Road to Kadesh: A Historical Interpretation of the Battle Reliefs of King Sety I at Karnak. Second Ed., Revised. Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilizations. SAOC 42. Chicago: Oriental Institute.

HTH.

Katherine Griffis-Greenberg

Doctoral Candidate
Oriental Institute
Doctoral Programme in Oriental Studies [Egyptology]
Oxford University
Oxford, United Kingdom





Edited 6 time(s). Last edit at 07/22/2007 08:15AM by Katherine Griffis-Greenberg.