The Enigma of Akhenaten
The most discussed pharaoh in history, considered the inventor of Monotheism, holds incredible secrets in his figure and in the history of his family. Here we reveal the true face of Amenophis IV.
History is not an exact science, as we know: based on fragmentary documents and often contradictory findings, it leaves scholars with a discretion that has very little scientific grounding, as it can be conditioned by ideologies and preconceptions. Among all the Egyptian pharaohs, there is one figure who more than any other has given rise to countless prejudices. The story of Akhenaten, originally called Amenhotep or Amenophis IV, who lived in the second half of the 14th century BCE, epitomizes the difficulties in understanding the real course of events. In the absence of conclusive evidence, theories that are false and erroneous are devised at the desk.
Indeed, Akhenaten is universally considered by Egyptologists as the heretical pharaoh who invented Monotheism and destroyed Paganism: nothing could be further from the truth. The anxiety to provide prestigious antecedents to monotheistic religions by archaeologists and narrow-minded historians has led to this belief. Akhenaten did establish the famous cult of the Sun God Aten, but he was never exclusively monotheistic nor did he destroy the temples of the Egyptian Neteru, the Gods. He did dismantle the cult of Amun-Ra, the primordial supreme deity representative of the entire universe. Aten, on the other hand, represented our beneficial yet also death-bringing star: a change that finds its most logical explanation primarily in political motivations.
But there is another mystery surrounding the figure originally named Amenhotep IV: the fact that he had himself portrayed with feminine features, sometimes even embarrassingly so. Egyptologists and other more boundary-pushing scholars have indulged in the most absurd explanations about this fact, carefully avoiding the most logical yet uncomfortable explanation for the dominant patriarchal culture.
In our view, the answer to these enigmas is quite simple, as usual, but understanding it requires reconstructing in detail all the events that unfolded in Egypt from 1380 to 1330 BCE. The international political situation in the 14th century BCE was rather tumultuous. Egypt was the most important nation in the Middle Eastern area and had rebuilt its original prestige after centuries of Hyksos invasions, thanks to a series of very determined pharaohs. One of these was Amenhotep II, ruler of the 18th Dynasty, who in the late 15th century BCE had forged an important alliance with a people inhabiting the area between present-day Syria and Turkey, the Mitanni. This population was quite unique because it combined a plebeian Semitic base, the Hurrians, with an aristocracy of Indo-European origin. These Mitanni originated from India and were part of the Aryan-Vedic populations, fair-skinned with blonde hair, who invaded the Indian subcontinent, laying the foundations of Hindu religion. In an Asia that at the time was almost entirely dominated by Indo-European populations of Cro-Magnon lineage, these Aryans settled in an area bordering that of a twin population, the Hittites, who were also Indo-European and had been their vassals for centuries. To the east of the Mitanni territory was the Babylonian kingdom and, notably, the still small but formidable Assyrian Empire, which posed the most bitter enemy, for religious and ideological reasons, to the Indo-European populations.
The Mitanni, in a logic of opposition between blocs, were strongly supported by the Egyptians, who saw them as a powerful buffer state between the rising and technologically advanced Hittites and their most formidable enemies, the Assyrians, who would conquer the known world half a millennium later. It was logical, therefore, to form alliances and maintain good trade relations with the Mitanni, especially since Egypt boasted ancient Berber origins: the Berbers were likewise an Indo-European population of Cro-Magnon stock, and many affinities could be found between these peoples.
After the conquests of Asian territories, including Palestine, by Thutmose III and the many decades of international stability thanks to the pacifist policies of Thutmose IV, who concluded many peace and alliance treaties, it was the turn of Pharaoh Amenhotep III. Ascending the throne at the age of 12, this sovereign distinguished himself as a great builder: he was responsible for the construction of the grand Temple of Luxor and the restoration of Karnak Temple, as well as numerous other palaces and a new capital city on the right bank of the Nile, Amarna. At the height of Egypt's power, Pharaoh left the Mitanni allies to handle military matters against the "bad" Assyrians, who were always formidable.
At the age of 14, Amenhotep III married the Nubian princess Tiye, a pivotal figure in our story. Tiye was dark-skinned and fit into the strategy of maintaining alliances: Egypt had previously conquered the territory of Nubia, south of the Nile Valley, and maintained a suzerainty relationship with it. Tiye, African but not Egyptian, was a contrasting figure in the eyes of the Egyptian people, and this love-distrust relationship intensified as Amenhotep III grew old and sick, eventually leaving the regency to his wife.
Perhaps to calm public sentiments and also to appease the favor of the Mitanni ally, engaged in costly border wars, Amenhotep III took as wives two princesses from that state: Gilu-Heba and Tadu-Heba, daughters of the Mitanni king Tushratta, were clearly of Indo-European lineage, and one of them could be the key to our entire story. In this particular moment, with the pharaoh sick and Nubian Tiye managing the affairs of Kemet, these two Mitanni women changed the situation. Indeed, after their arrival, power passed into the hands of a son of Amenhotep III, Amenhotep IV: it was 1353 or 1351 BCE. The accession of this son raises doubts because usually the dynastic line passed through the firstborn or sons of royal lineage. Since Amenhotep III had several sons but none of them ascended the throne, it must be deduced that they were not sons of Amenhotep III or Tiye, but rather of concubines and minor wives, who were assigned to the sovereign but whose sons did not have royal dignity. Only the sons of two sovereigns were legitimized to aspire to the throne: and if throughout all the previous years Amenhotep III had not managed to place a son as regent, it is evident that Tiye had not given him any son, a fact that was normal in the history of royalty. It would therefore be logical to think that the royal lineage came through the two Mitanni princesses Gilu-Heba and Tadu-Heba, and that therefore the new pharaoh Amenhotep IV was the son of one of these, presumably Gilu-Heba.
But while traces of this are lost, through correspondence with King Tushratta, we know that Tadu-Heba married the new pharaoh in a second marriage, and from history, we know that the wife of Amenhotep IV was the beautiful and mysterious Nefertiti. Could the most beautiful woman of all time, therefore, have been the Mitanni princess? The probability is high, as there are no other royal spouses documented for this pharaoh. Moreover, the analysis of the famous Bust of Nefertiti housed in the Berlin Museum shows incredibly Indo-European features for the woman, with a slightly bronzed complexion compatible with a very fair skin type. It could very well be that Nefertiti was given in marriage to Amenhotep III around the age of 15, and by the time Amenhotep IV ascended the throne, she may have been about 25-30 years old. Amenhotep IV, however, exhibited decidedly unusual characteristics. He did not have Nubian or Negroid features like Queen Tiye, but rather boasted a dolichocephalic elongated skull typical of the Mitanni, which Nefertiti herself also possessed. From the outset, these physical traits proved unsettling, as the pharaoh was depicted in a naturalistic style showing distinctly feminine features. Alongside statues that were somewhat more virile, the sovereign was portrayed with breasts, a swollen belly as if pregnant, and even with a nude groin that showed no trace of male genitals! His broad hips and narrow waist, as well as a feminine face, perplexed Egyptologists and modern scholars, who could not understand how it was possible for a man to be depicted in such a manner. But the issue is actually quite simple: while hypotheses suggest possible homosexuality, androgyny, or an intersex condition like that of Frolich, or a hormonal mutation due to a lack of exposure to sunlight (a theory supported by Maurice Cotterell), in our view, the explanation is the most obvious and logical, in line with Occam's Razor.
Amenhotep IV was a woman: the line of succession did not have royal male offspring, so inevitably the reign passed into the hands of the person closest to this condition. Moreover, in Egypt, the female condition was on par with the male, and there were eloquent cases of pharaoh-queens, the most famous of whom was the 40-year reign of Queen Hatshepsut. She was an enlightened ruler who reigned before her stepson Thutmose III, leading Egypt to unprecedented prosperity. The fact that she presented herself in public like male pharaohs, even wearing a false Osiride beard, does not hide that she did not conceal her female condition, as statues clearly show both her features and breasts. Why couldn't the same have happened with Amenhotep IV, who came to power just over a century later? For dynastic reasons, Amenhotep IV declared himself pharaoh, just like his ancestor Hatshepsut, and exhibited regal traits of male origin derived from the iconography of Osiris; other fertility symbols such as being pregnant referred to female deities like Isis and Hathor. His female condition, widely known in antiquity, may have been obscured in later times also due to the actions of Amenhotep IV, who changed his name to Akhenaten a few years after seizing power. This change was a reference to the new god Aten, identified with the sun disk, which Amenhotep IV directly adopted from Hittite-Mitanni mythology. In Aten, Amenhotep saw the creator, the origin of everything, the genesis of creation, similar to how the Egyptians attributed the creation of the universe to the god Atum. Atum was simultaneously the Sun god Ra and the universal god Amun, and it is noteworthy the similarity Amon-Aton-Atum. Clearly, Amenhotep IV intended to create a syncretic deity that blended ancestral Egyptian aspects with other Hittite-Mitanni references, themselves inheritances of the ancient Indo-Vedic religion of millennia. It is no coincidence that the primordial deity of the Indo-Europeans is the celestial goddess Aditi, the personification of the cosmos and the mother of all matter composing the universe. Aditi was (and still is in Hindu mythology) called "Primordial Light Cow", "Cosmic Mother", "Nourishing Cow": from her originate the Adityas, the oldest Indian gods, among whom prominent names like Indra, Mitra, Varuna stand out. Mitra, in particular, was considered the Sun god and had the task of maintaining cosmic order: along with Varuna, he upheld the Dharma of the cosmos. The cult of Mitra was widespread in the Indo-Iranian areas and later expanded greatly in Persia, eventually reaching the West in recent times: in Asia Minor, Mitra was called, after his mother, Adoneus, and Adonis was his Phoenician version associated with fertility and vegetation. Therefore, it is logical to deduce that Mitra-Adoneus was the theological basis with which Amenhotep IV built a new cult. It is possible that the reason for this change was due to a serious epidemiological situation, as during this period Egypt was struck by the first influenza epidemic in history, and viruses of this disease spread from heat and humidity. Aten, a beneficial deity but also a carrier of viruses and death, became a counterpart to the vital Amun-Ra, and this had incredible political consequences, as the Amunite clergy had virtually maintained power over Egyptian land for centuries.
Queen Hatshepsut ruled thanks to the support of this clergy, as did all the subsequent pharaohs. It is evident that the illness (due to the Influenza?) of Akhenaten's father and the delegation of government to the Nubian Tiye greatly weakened the prestige of the royal family. Akhenaten's birth from Gilu-Heba, of Mitanni lineage, evidently placed Queen Akhenaten in precarious conditions of autonomy in the eyes of the Egyptian population, proud of their origins, especially since her possible female sex did not make her a powerful and charismatic figure internationally. Faced with these facts, Akhenaten reacted by striking the priests of Amun and delegating the governance of the country to his royal wife Nefertiti/Tadu-Heba, who was older than him. The situation that arose was therefore absolutely paradoxical and worthy of a soap opera, but the logical consequence of strict dynastic rules. Amenhotep IV was a girl of about 10-15 years old and being the only descendant from dual royalty, she was destined for the throne. Despite being a woman, according to customs, she married the Royal Wife Nefertiti, alias Tadu-Heba of Mitanni royal lineage, who was in turn the Royal Wife of her father and about 10-15 years older than her. However, we should not think of a true lesbian couple: although homosexuality was practiced and legalized in Egypt, their union was only formal in theory, and both women had male companions with whom they officially conceived their royal descendants. Due to her Mitanni origin, her Indo-Aryan-Vedic maternal culture, and to limit the power of the Amun clergy at a time when the heat of the sun was spreading the influenza epidemic, Queen Akhenaten devised a syncretistic cult in which she superimposed the attributes of the Egyptian supreme god Atum-Amon-Ra with those of the Vedic god Mitra-Adoneus. The birth of the "new" Aten was a religious but above all political maneuver aimed at culturally uniting the Egyptian people with the Mitanni. The logical opposition of the rich and powerful priests of Amun led to an incredible clash never before seen in Egyptian society. After about ten years of reign, Akhenaten had the statues of Amun toppled and closed his temples, although he did not touch those of other deities like Isis, Osiris, Horus, and so on. In essence, Akhenaten was not the inventor (or rather inventress) of monotheism, which in truth would come several centuries later.
So the theories associating Aten with the Jewish God are false. Furthermore, all conjectures by esotericists, who despite being completely ignorant of history, claim Akhenaten had Jewish ancestry, are absolutely false. Some even associate him with the figure of Moses, which is quite strange because the biblical story is clearly a metaphor and set in different times (it is also worth noting that the Egyptians never enslaved the Jews as they were not an imperialist population that practiced slavery, unlike the Assyrians, Greeks, and Romans). The most logical and rational reality is that Akhenaten was not overly interested in material power and delegated his wife Nefertiti in his place. Akhenaten retired to Amarna, his paternal capital renamed Akhetaten ("the horizon of Aten"), which he transformed into an immense sanctuary. If official history attributes six children to Akhenaten, it is likely that he personally fathered them, possibly with an unknown companion; another hypothesis divides the children between him and Nefertiti, which might be the secret of Tutankhamun, the mysterious and forgotten pharaoh according to some, who was purportedly Akhenaten's son but genetically only distantly related. Tutankhamun could have been Nefertiti's nephew, who in turn was Akhenaten's aunt, let's not forget that. Certainly, though, Akhenaten's daughters had disturbing physical traits, such as severe dolichocephaly evident in depictions and statues. Some of these daughters may have seized power upon Akhenaten's death, which recent studies suggest was due to a genetic syndrome brought to Egypt by the Mitanni princesses. Marfan syndrome caused an exaggeration of dolichocephaly, as prominently seen in these daughters, along with a series of symptoms remarkably confirmed in the Bust of Nefertiti. Indeed, this degenerative syndrome causes elongation of the face, fingers, and limbs, tissue fragility, bone deformations, retinal detachment, and lens deformation, as seen in Nefertiti's left eye depicted in the famous bust. Could the hyper-realistic style explain the absence of an important detail like the left eye's pupil? The missing pupil could be explained as a consequence of this disease, and the sculptor, in creating his absolute masterpiece, may have reproduced this detail. A severe defect that does not detract from the queen's unearthly beauty.
It is clear, therefore, that Akhenaten's elongated face could find an explanation in this syndrome, which allows for a nearly normal life without prejudicing intellectual or reproductive capacities. Akhenaten may have had a considerable number of children, such as the future pharaoh Meritaten. Marfan syndrome would have been passed on to children and grandchildren, and this could also be the cause of Akhenaten's sudden death around 1336-1334 BCE. Egyptologists argue that he was assassinated, while esotericists hypothesize his escape to the Sinai following the footsteps of Moses. We think of a sudden death, caused by an aortic rupture highly likely in Marfan syndrome patients. Power may have briefly passed to a son of Akhenaten or Nefertiti, Smenkhkare, who died around the age of twenty. Then the reign passed into the hands of Meritaten and then Neferneferuaten, believed by some to be Nefertiti herself, and by others her daughter, who reigned for two years and one month. Then came the very young Tutankhamun, whose story is known through the exceptional discovery of his tomb. But even he (or she, as doubts about Tutankhamun's sex may also arise, doubts that Egyptologists have not helped clarify having always obscured the body) may have been affected by the same degenerative disease. Note how Tutankhamun was originally called Tutankhaten and changed his name in the second year of his reign, a sign that the cult of Aten, opposed by priests and part of the population, had lost strength after Akhenaten's disappearance. After "King Tut's" death, power passed into the hands of the vizier Ay, accused today of being the young pharaoh's assassin, and finally with pharaoh Horemheb, Egypt returned to a completely Egyptian dynastic line. Horemheb decided to erase this recent and confusing past, eliminating from official records all the names of these Egyptian-Mitanni pharaohs. Memory of Akhenaten was lost, but the statues remained, eloquent witnesses. Similarly, this occurred for the beautiful Nefertiti, who may have survived for a few years after her reign as queen.
About her, her mummy might have been found today: in 1908, the Egyptologist Victor Loret discovered tomb KV 35 in the Valley of the Kings, where the burial of three mummies was found. They were a young woman who died between the ages of 16 and 20, an elderly woman with red hair, and a teenage male. In 2003, an international team announced they had identified the corpse of Nefertiti in the mummy of the young woman, a fact we believe to be completely incorrect, as we have seen that Nefertiti did not die at a young age, being older than Akhenaten and surviving for some time after his death. DNA analysis attributes a relationship with Tutankhamun to the mummies from tomb KV 35, and in our opinion, it is clear that those three individuals related to King Tut could indeed be his relatives. However, it is much more likely that the mummy of Nefertiti is that of the elderly woman, foolishly attributed without any historical basis to Tiye. But if Tiye was Nubian, how is it possible that she had Indo-European features? The portraits show a face completely different from that of the "Elder Woman," as the mummy of this elderly woman who died around the age of sixty has been dubbed, while overlaying the portrait of Nefertiti from the Berlin Bust and other statues, it is seen how it perfectly matches. The reddish hair is also an unmistakable sign of the Indo-European-Mitanni origin of the queen, on which our entire theory is based. Seeing this mummy, still beautiful and full of grace, one can discern the power and charm that emanated from this foreign, beautiful woman, whose destiny intertwined with that of Akhenaten. What remained of the monotheistic cult of Aten? Virtually nothing, Akhetaten was abandoned and lost in the sands of the Sahara, the documents erased and forgotten, the statues of Amenhotep IV toppled. Jewish and Christian monotheism would have emerged elsewhere.
