Mihos Wrote:
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>
> Valuable insight Jammer. Akhetaten was built by
> soldier laborers. Many soldier laborers were
> foreign enemy combatants or their descendants.

And the evidence for this is? Kemp's teams are finding that in the burials of the workers of Akhetaten, from both the city and worker's villages outside the city that the deceased are native Egyptians, not foreigners. Even Dr. Hawass considers these workers native Egyptians as well. So, I think you will have to provide support for this statement.

> Peoples of the Eastern and Western Deserts and
> even the Ta-seti were considered foreigners in
> Ramesseses' day.

Who are "the Ta-Seti" of which you speak? The native Egyptian inhabitants of the Upper Egypyian nome /sti/ who were native Egyptians, and had been so considered since the earliest dynasty - or groups of archers from a variety of lands such as Libya, Nubia, and so on, including nomadic archers? For "Ta-Seti" does not refer to Nubia, as was pointed out in the "Black Pharaohs" thread on this list.

<snip>
> As for Nefertiti, I find myself wondering if she
> like Sitamun and Iaret might not represent the old
> tradition of a new king marrying his father's
> daughter -one that is a matrilineal descendant of
> an important clan mother?

For one thing, there is no "matrilineal descendant" for the king to have to marry. This old saw, the so-called "heir princess" theory, was discounted over 50 years ago, by Egyptologist Barbara Mertz, and her results were confirmed in 1983 and 1986 by Egyptologists Gay Robins and Lana Troy, as follows:

Troy, L. 1986. Patterns of Queenship: in Egyptian Myth and History. Boreas 14. Uppsala: ACTA University.

Mertz, B. 1952. Certain Title of the Egyptian Queens and Their Bearing on the Hereditary Rights to the Throne. (Ph. D. Dissertation, Unpubl.). Chicago: University of Chicago. [available through Proquest Dissertation Service.]

Robins, G. 1983. A Critical Examination of the Theory of the Right to the Throne of Ancient Egypt Passed Through the Female Line in the 18th Dynasty. Göttingen Miszellen 62: 67-77.

You can also view this result of marriages between kings and non-royal women graphically on this webpage which I created some years ago, and revised in 2006. (Note: this is an overly wide table, so click off the Yahoo advertisement and use the left--> right scroll bar to view all information.)

> Theoretically speaking, Amenhotep II managed to
> squelch the female hegemony on the second prophet
> of Amen station. His wife Tia is a mystery but she
> is likely the mother of Iaret.

Tia was a /Hmt nTr/ or priestess, but not a 'wife of the god Amun' (Gitton 1984:84; Troy 1986: 165, 18.27). She was unrelated to royalty but held the nobility title of /rpA.t pr wr/ which may imply that she served as a functioning official within the Pharaoh's household (Troy 1986: 18.27;D2/2).

As Troy (1986: 98) notes by the time of Tia, this title of/Hmt nTr/ was given only to mothers of kings, but not to daughters. Tia, as queen and Thutmose IV's mother, carried out many sacred functions such as temple consecrations (Troy 1986: 84) where she served as a representative of Seshat. So, I doubt your comment that Amenhotep II "squelching female hegemony" on sacral functions holds much weight.

> Sitamun would then be Amenhotep's half-sister not
> his daughter.

As Satamun is specifically named as the daughter of both Tiye and Amenhotep III on numerous objects, including 2 chairs (Cairo CG 51112 and 51113) found in the tomb of Yuya and Thuya (KV 46), an ebony ushabti box (BM 5899), a faience kohl jar (now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art), an alabaster vase found at Amarna (Cairo CG 18459 and Brooklyn 16.49), jar labels from Satamun's estate at Malkata, and statues of Amenhotep Son of Hapu's son, who served as overseer of Satamun's estate (CG 36598 and BM 103), I think you will have a hard time convincing many of this conjecture.

Katherine Griffis-Greenberg

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