THE Tutankhamun MYSTERY.

The "beautiful" and elegant
golden mask of Tutankhamun
may have hid a vary sad
young man .

Mysterious boy king Tutankhamun,  as I summarize can be a great political subject . With news that king Tutankhamun's tomb might be "hiding" additional chambers , bolster the theory of Nicholas Reeves, a  (1)>>British archaeologist who believes that the tomb contains another royal burial. The hidden tomb, he has speculated, belongs to Nefertiti, King Tut’s mother-in-law, who may have ruled as a female pharaoh during Egypt’s 18th Dynasty. If so, this would be only the second intact royal burial site to be discovered in modern times—and it would, in the words of Mamdouh Eldamaty, the Egyptian antiquities minister, represent “one of the most important finds of the century.” At the press conference, he said he was “90 percent positive” that another chamber lies behind the north wall of the tomb. This is vary intriguing , but I don't believe it's Queen Nefertiti behind any of the hidden rooms in the tomb . Tutankhamen was the twelfth king of the eighteenth Egyptian dynasty (reigned 1361–1352 B.C.E. ). Although his reign was relatively unimportant, Tutankhamen became the most famous of the pharaohs (Egyptian kings) when his treasure-filled tomb was discovered in the early twentieth century. The vast and untouched contents of his tomb offered historians great insight into the ancient Egyptian culture.
King Tutankhamun's troubled family.

King Tutankhamen's father,
 the Pharaoh Amenhotep IV /Akhenaten

Pharaoh Amenhotep III his ruled over Egypt at a time the nation was at the peak of its power and wealth. His armies had extended Egypt's influence as far as Sudan in the south. From there a steady stream of gold enriched the nation's treasury. With it the Pharaoh went on a unprecedented building program extending the great Temple of Amen at Karnak and building and refurbishing other temples, palaces and public buildings, much to the pleasure of the priesthood.When Amenhotep IV came to power after his father's death, however, things changed in Egypt. They changed in a way that was not pleasing to many of the most important people in the land.For reasons that are not completely clear, Amenhotep IV turned his back on the traditional religion of Egypt and turned to worship Aten, the sun disk. Changing his name to (2)>> Akhenaten, meaning "it is beneficial to Aten," the new Pharaoh moved himself, his family and his government from the traditional capitals at Thebes and Memphis to a new city built in the desert called Amarna. Akhenaten declared he would never leave this new home.Pharaoh Akhenaten's radical changes must have been very upsetting to the Egyptian establishment. The Pharaoh had no interest in wars, so the army was not well maintained. Having decided that he believed in only one god, Aten, he no longer worshiped at, or spend money on, the traditional temples, making the priesthood unhappy.Little is known about the last five years of Akhenaten's reign, or the three year period after his death leading up to Tutankhamun's accession to the throne. Many theories have been advanced and the uncertainty has been compounded by the appearance during these years of new royal personages whose origins and identity remain a matter for debate.Late in Akhenaten's reign a mysterious pharaoh-queen appears, whose identity has often been confused with that of  (3)>>King Smenkhare. The pharaoh-queen's coronation name is Ankh(et)kheperure Neferneferuaten. Although not consistently, her name sometimes appears in a feminine form, which is how we can be sure that we are dealing with a woman. In honor of the Aten, he constructed an entirely new capital at an uninhabited place, which we now call Amarna, out in the desert. Its location was chosen so that its sunrise conveyed a symbolic meaning. “East of Amarna the sun rises in a break in the surrounding cliffs. In this landscape the sunrise could be literally ‘read’ as if it were the hieroglyph spelling Akhet-aten or ‘Horizon of the Aten’ — the name of the new city,” wrote Montserrat in his book "Akhenaten: History, Fantasy and Ancient Egypt" (Routledge, 2000).He notes that this capital would quickly grow to become about 4.6 square miles (roughly 12 square kilometers) in size. While Akhenaten was known to be Tut's dad, the identity of the boy king's mother has remained elusive. But at least one archaeologist believes she was Nefertiti.Recent DNA analyses from the mummies of Tut and his kin revealed that the boy king's parents were siblings. Those results, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) in February 2010, pointed to the "heretic" king Akhenaten and one of his sisters as the mom and dad of Tut. There is no evidence whatsoever that Nefertiti was Tutankhamun's mother, and all the circumstantial evidence is against it. (4)>> Nefertiti was widely depicted in art at a time where family and intimate portrayals were the rage. She is often with her daughters, but never a son. In fact, there is not one depiction of the Great Royal Wife Nefertiti with a son, which would be odd in light of a son's importance. Tutankhamun is never referred to as a son of the Great Royal Wife, only Son of the King's Body. There is some evidence Tutankhamun was raised by a nurse named Maia.  In Akhenaten's new state religion centred on the sun god, he and Nefertiti were depicted as the primeval first couple. Nefertiti was also known throughout Egypt for her beauty. She was said to be proud of her long, swan-like neck and invented her own makeup using the Galena plant. She also shares her name with a type of elongated gold bead, called nefer, that she was often portrayed as wearing.Long forgotten to history, Nefertiti was made famous when her bust was discovered in the ruins of an artist's shop in Amarna in 1912, now in Berlin's Altes Museum. The bust is one of the most copied works of ancient Egypt. Nefertiti is depicted in images and statuary in a large image denoting her importance. Many images of her show simple family gatherings with her husband and daughters. She is also known as the mother-in-law and stepmother of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun.Nefertiti's parentage is not known with certainty, but it is generally believed that she was the daughter of Ay, later to be pharaoh after Tutankhamen. She had a younger sister, Moutnemendjet. Another theory identifies Nefertiti with the Mitanni princess Tadukhipa.
 Amenhotep IV /Akhenaten's short term religion .

The religion of the (5)>> Aten is not completely understood today. We do know that Akhenaten and his wife Nefertiti worshipped only the sun god, and the names of other gods and goddesses were removed from view. The funerary religion of Osiris was dropped, and Akhenaten became the source of blessings for people after death. But this religious and artistic renaissance was short lived; Akhenaten made himself unpopular by closing the old temples, and his lack of enthusiasm for the practical duties of kingship was detrimental to Egypt’s Imperial interests. Surviving documents show that Akhenaten paid little attention to the army and navy, foreign trade began to fall off, and internal taxes began to disappear into the pockets of local officials. Abolishing the polytheistic religion did not satiate Akhenaten’s devotion to the Aten. Rather than having the capital city in Memphis, where generations of kings had ruled before him, he deemed it necessary to relocate to virgin ground and chose the site of modern Amarna to construct his new capital city, which he named Akhetaten and dedicated to Aten. Akhetaten, located in the middle of the desert, was constructed quickly. Many of the buildings had openings in the roofs so Akhenaten and the citizens of Akhetaten were able to look up and worship the sun disc throughout the day.  After the death of Akhenaten, the fortunes of the new Aten religion quickly changed for the worse. Under the King Neferneferuaten, whom we have seen may have been Nefertiti, a temple to Amun was built within the boundaries of Amarna, something unthinkable in the time of Akhenaten. Less than three years after his father's death, Tutankhaten assumed the throne and after a year in Amarna, he left to return to Thebes. There he set about to mend the heresies of his father whether willingly or otherwise. What is meant by this ambiguous statement is that the priests of Amun, having grown wealthy and powerful by the time of Amenhotep III, resented their loss of stature under Akhenaten, not to mention the defacement and despoilment of their temples. They may have exerted pressure on the young pharaoh to return to orthodoxy. What is clear, however, is that Tutankhaten changed his name to Tutankhamen, thus reversing the change of titulature and seat of power that his father had made. The only step left was to resign the Aten religion to history. He accomplished this by reimbursing the old centers of worship out of the royal treasury itself. Furthermore, a stela erected in the northern capital of Thebes proclaims the old Egyptian pantheon restored and all but vilifies his own father. The stela was placed in the palace of Thutmose I, built over two hundred years ago, perhaps emphasizing the return to tradition.(W. Murname, 1999) However, there was one unexpected outcome from the Amarna revolution. It seems that though there was an apparent return to tradition soon after Akhenaten's death, the damage to the preeminent Amun cult was severe enough to relegate it to a power sharing status with the cults of Ptah, Ra-Horakhty and other gods. Thus, while the Aten religion was all but forgotten, its legacy in Egyptian religion was subtle yet significant.

Akhenaten's death. 

From the 1954 movie , THE EGYPTIAN . Royal physician
Sinuhe gives Akhenaten poison to drink,

If anything is more strange is perhaps the "death" of King Akhenaten himself . There has been many theories over the last century as to what was the demise of this Pharaoh .It has been suggested that Akhenaten suffered from Frohlich's Syndrome. This may explain his strange appearance, but one side effect of that disease is impotence. Akhenaten is reported to have had six daughters by Nefertiti alone which makes this explanation unlikely, although it is possible that the disease struck in later life.  Did Akhenaten really have any kind of ailment at all? There is certainly a possibility that there was nothing wrong with him. Any conclusions drawn simply from looking at artwork are highly questionable. If historians three thousand years in the future were to come to the same sorts of conclusions from looking at today's political cartoons, for instance, they would probably think that just about every president or political leader that the U.S. has ever had suffered from some kind of bizarre disorder. A good many people have offered alternative explanations as to why Akhenaten was portrayed so strangely.     One theory is that it was some form of religious symbolism. Because the god Aten was referred to as "The mother and father of all human kind," it has been suggested that Akhenaten was made to look androgynous in artwork as a symbol of the androgyny of the god (Aldred, C. 1988, Pg. 235). Either case Akhenaten appearance was highly exaggerated . While his death's cause may have been a palace "revolution" as some fictional writers has injected in the modern-age . It's true that for the average Egyptian , this Pharaoh may not have been well loved . He had a personality cult that was vary similar to the North Korean dictators . If overthrowing him was difficult . AS much as administering a cup of poison was easy . BUT I fear there was another less known , but factual , more lethal method which was sweeping the land of the Hittites and Canaan . Simple it was the plague . There is a great deal of artifacts and cuneiform tablets from that period that correspondences between the Hittites and the cities of the Canaanites that the whole region was swept with a plague that was  (11)>>brought up and out of  from Egypt . This plague may have ravaged the entire region for nearly a decade more into the reign of King Tutankhamun, may have brought the demise of many royal princes , princess of the house of Akhenaten down including the famed Queen Nefertiti before year 12 of Akhenaten. If it was not political assassination , it's obvious that something drastic happened to Akenaten's city .A more modern theory involves epidemic. Most scholars agree that a plague had struck Egypt in the reign of Amunhotep III. It is thought to have spread into Egypt from Canaan. A telling sign of this is that Amunhotep III erected a great many colossal statues of the lion-headed goddess Sekhmet. But if you recall, Amunhotep III was not a warrior-pharaoh. Everyone had already been conquered by the time he came to the throne. Why build so many Sekhmet statues, then? Another role of this goddess was pestilence and disease. She was a fearsome goddess and punisher of mankind if not appeased, so it is thought Amunhotep commissioned so many statues of her to appease the goddess and motivate her to stop the plague.It didn’t work. The plague likely continued into the reign of Akhenaten. He had sired six daughters and it seems plausible that two or more died from the plague.One can see the plausibility of the plague theory. Akhenaten elevates the Aten to supremacy and abandons the old gods. He moves 20,000 people to a new purpose-built city well away from the diseased old cities. He walls himself up in Akhetaten and avoids all other places. His city was abandned right at the hight of the plague . Where he died .

The "reign" of King Tutankhamun ?

The boy who did not want to be "king".

Here is where we all drift into fiction . So let us imagine it's 1361 BC . Your a 9 year old boy playing around with your friends . You never thought your life was anything significant . Suddenly a bunch of men appear moving toward you in flamboyant robes , all dressed in the finest linen , on their necks were collars of gold , and precious stones , you can hear the sound of chariots approaching. One man looks like a high priest . His name is (6)>>Aye , The first of Tut’s Svengalis was Aye, the prime minister under Tut’s father. Ahkenaten, who died in 1334 B.C.E. If you think the circumstances leading to his coronation were a mess, his family life was also very unusual by our standards , as far as for Egyptian royalty .Genetic testing has verified that King Tut was the grandson of the great pharaoh Amenhotep II, and almost certainly the son of Akhenaten. So I could Imagine , that the young boy Tut did not what to be king of Egypt . With recent examination of his mummy, secrets were finally revealed .The so called boy King suffederd from a number of illnesses , he may have been a cripple . So when he was rushed by the priests and the king makers Aye and  (7)>>Horemheb . I would have to believe that Tutankhamun sitting on his throne , may have taken his crown off his brow and threw it down . Shocking the priests , the military men . The young 9 year old boy was going to difficult even for the king makers . Aye became Tut's adoptive "father", Horemheb was the uncle figure . With no one surviving in the family of Akhenaten with an exception of a 12 year old girl Ankhesenamun who may have been a daughter of Tutankhamen's predecessor . The young boy was rushed again to be paired , married off to the young girl . Ankhesenamun ("Her Life is of Amun") was a queen of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt. She was the third of six known daughters, and became the great royal wife of her half-brother Tutankhamun when he was just 8 to 10 years old and she was 13. It is possible that she was briefly married to Tutankhamun's successor, Ay, believed by some to be her maternal grandfather. It has also been posited that she may have first been the wife of her father, Akhenaten. Although both Tutankhamun and Ankhesenamun were still children, together they ruled Egypt for the next ten years. During their reign, it is believed that Tutankhamun and Ankhesenamun conceived two children (both girls) who were born prematurely and died. Evidence comes from the mummified remains of two babies found in Tutankhamun’s tomb and DNA analysis confirmed that they were daughters of Tutankhamun.  One of the children is known to have had a condition called Spengel’s deformity in conjunction with spina bifida and scoliosis. King Tut was tall but physically frail, with a crippling bone disease in his clubbed left foot. He is the only pharaoh known to have been depicted seated while engaged in physical activities like archery. The "idea" that Tutankhamun was a puppet ruler should start off here , there is so much to suspect this . I have to"divulge" another speculation here , besides being sickly he also may have had "autism" . For this there has not been much evidence from his mummy . He was crowned at Memphis. He was only nine years old at the time, and had few close relatives left alive. His wife, Ankhesenpaaten, was older, and he was probably the political puppet of Ay and Horemheb. Under their guidance, he changed his name to Tutankhamun; restored Amenhotep III’s Theban palace; issued a decree restoring the temples, images, and privileges of the old gods; and admitted the errors of Akhenaten’s political and religious policies.Of course the new regime was under the generalissimos . The 9 year rule of the boy king by proxy did not wield any power , but was at least figurative for the public , not much as to keep the Pharonic myth of the god king alive . So for little over 9 of those year Egypt was dominated by a fearful hostile takeover from the Ahkenaten politics into military rule . I am assuming in my theory that Tut was afraid , and could not cope with the responsibilities of being a king . As much as the Amun priesthood used him as their tool of propaganda for the restoration of their power . All of these elements were headed to a collision . Remember here I want to stress that the "plague" that devastated the sun city of Akhetaten was still in full swing in the middle east .During Tutankhamun’s reign Horemheb marched the army into Syria to assist Egypt’s old ally, the Mitannian kingdom of northern Syria, which was embroiled in hostilities with vassals of the Hittites The plague's main carrier flea is thought to be native to the Nile Valley and is known to be a Nile rat parasite..  It Followed the Egyptian army into Canaan , when Egyptian solders were captured by the Hittites , the same plague was to devastate all of Asia Minor.Suppiluliuma I.  carried Egyptian captives back to Hattusa. This proved to be an unfortunate decision on his part, as a plague had been sweeping across Egypt in 1322 BCE and, by bringing the Egyptians back to his capital, Suppiluliuma I brought the plague with them. He died of the plague that same year and his son, Arnuwanda II, who had been groomed by the king as heir, died as well.   

The "real" Murder of King Tutankhamun ?

The man who stole King Tut's throne .
King Aye with royal titles as
depicted in King Tut's burial chamber
painting.

Now the big question with this in mind , what brought down the boy king? Outside so many CAT scans ,and x-rays have shown a badly damaged body that has led to considerable speculation that he died in a chariot accident . What researchers have missed is most of the damage to the mummy was caused by Howard Carter who basically took the mummy apart from the golden coffin looking for jewelry . Poor Tut's mummy was actually caramelized and "glued" to his innermost gold coffin . This has made it difficult for an accurate scientific study . So we have has a bunch of wild theories that best explain a "myth". The clues found in the tomb of various walking stick shows that Tut was a cripple , perhaps an invalid . Other clues was the discovery of coriander seeds , that in ancient times were used to treat Malaria , diseases    , and pain . So here we have to speculate that with a weaken immune syndrome , Egypt being ravaged by a  (9)>>Bubonic  plague , it's more likely that Tutankhamen was a victim of it. His "hurried" burial in a small tomb with makeshift and reused grave goods did not much show due respect of a king with a 9 year rule . A later Egyptian Pharaoh named  (8)>>SiPtah ruled Egypt in an almost identical situation , had a much larger tomb . More than 3,300 years after Tutankhamen was entombed, Greg Cooper, a former FBI profiler and chief of police in Provo, Utah, and Mike King, director of the Ogden, the two investigators have used a wealth of sources — including books, scholarly papers, photographs of Tut's tomb, X rays of the mummy itself and interviews with contemporary experts — to apply modern forensic science to the ancient case. So well did the techniques work that the two sleuths believe they have proof of a murder as well as a pretty good idea who did it.Cooper and King obtained the original X rays and took them to a medical examiner, a radiologist and a neurologist. The experts quickly spotted more clues. Abnormalities in the thin bones above Tut's eye sockets may be the kind of fractures that can occur when the head strikes the ground during a backward fall and the brain snaps forward. What's more, the vertebrae in Tut's neck were fused — a sign of a musculoskeletal malformation called Klippel-Feil syndrome. People with Klippel-Feil cannot turn their heads without moving the entire torso, an infirmity that's impossible to hide and makes the sufferer highly vulnerable to injury from a fall — or a push. "It was like having a bowling ball on top of a pool cue," says King. Adding to these weak conditions , it's arguably that Tutankhamen's fate was sealed . 

The Real "curse" of Tutankhamen .

When Tutankhamen a puppet king died , there  emerged a power struggle that lasted for four years into Tut's successor King Aye . Aye was not as strong , into those years, the  two generals who planned a new succession was Horemheb , an a man named  (10>>Pa-ra-mes-su, ( Ramses I ) to take the throne away from Aye . Both of them were unable to return to Egypt since they both were fighting in Canaan , both were lucky to escape the plague that was still in Egypt . King Aye was not a good man fit to the throne , he obliviously forced King Tut's window to marry him.The girl Ankhesenamun seriously was in danger . In bluntly vary bad political move on her part sent a message to the King of the Hittites which has been preserved , here the desperate widow pleas with the king of the Hittites to send her one of her sons , so he can become king of Egypt . Her plea was that she would not marry a "commoner" , that reference was the king maker Aye. The message of the widow Ankhesenamun was intercepted by an Egyptian garrison stationed at Jerusalem , under general Horemheb . Soon after Pa-ra-mes-su suspected that Aye of some kind of reason , and sent solderers to ambush the Hittite  caravan with the Hittite prince . Killing the Hittite prince was not a good move either . The furious king of the Hittites marched into Canaan , captured a stronghold of Egyptian prisoners taken them back to the Hittite capital city . It was one calamity after one another , the Egyptian prisoners were all infected with the plague which soon held sway all of Hatti land , bringing down the royals of Hatti. Meanwhile the fate of the widow Ankhesenamun may have been the greatest tragedy , while we don't know what became of her . I am taking the risk in saying that she may have been killed , but honestly she disappears   soon after , Aye the usurper makes his original wife his queen , his own son a successor . Between the plague , and treason . Horemheb , and Pa-ra-mes-su had enough , both of them from the outskirts of Canaan take 20,000 troops from Jerusalem ,  the valley of Meggido , marched back to the Nile Delta with more rebellious troops waiting to join them . King Aye knowing how limited his time was made his own flesh and blood son regent and successor in charge of a southern Theben army .  This was now a civil war . It's highly contested as to what happed to King Aye , its likely that he was overthrown , perhaps killed by Horemheb who became the next Pharaoh . The lingering question next  was that the new Horemheb regime worked on political erasure . The Victim was King Tutankhamen , the cripple . He fell into the catagory of  Damnatio memoriae, his father the heretic Akhenaten , Aye , the whole Armana episode had to be erased from the official Egyptian history . The Aten temple in the new city envisioned by Akhenaten was torn stone by stone and used as rubble fill . The "curse" of  King Tutankhamen  has  been told by countless movie directors over the last century may be only confined to those who tried to erase the whole Armana episode .  Akhenaten , Aye and King Tutankhamen were reborn as cultural icons for movie makers , yes the tomb with all the glittering gold.

After word thoughts.....
While I was writing this post , there have been numerous developments in the Tomb of king Tut , that radar scans are showing that possibly that there are two more hidden chambers in the tomb. Nicholas Reeves "believes" that legendary Queen Nefertiti lies buried , but what ever the case , if it is true we might find the dismantling of Tutankhamen's burial chamber to gain access into this tomb , or hidden chamber to write more about the initial discovery later.

NOTES AND COMMENTS:

 (1)>>British archaeologist The discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb by Howard Carter in 1922 is considered the most important archaeological find of the century. After years of painstaking work in the Valley of the Kings, Carter's patron, Lord Carnarvon, had warned him that that would be the last season of work because nothing significant had been found. On November 22 of that year, Carter's persistence finally paid off. Tutankhamun became a household name, and his magnificent treasures became the measuring stick for all future archaeological discoveries. The mysteries surrounding his life and death are gradually being solved. And his story continues to unfold as new theories are proposed in an attempt to explain what really happened to the boy behind the golden mask.  (2)>> Akhenaten. Students of ancient Egyptology knows that in about 1450 BC. Egypt was ruled by a woman pharaoh. Her name was Hatshepsut. Females were not allowed to be pharaohs so Hatshepsut almost always presented herself as a man. The art of the day depicted her in a male kilt and topless with no breats. It is clear that her crossdressing was done to gain and retain political power. A short time laterm a male by the name of Amenhotep followed in her footsteps. He married a woman by the name of Nefertiti, and after he ascended to the throne of Eygypt, he took the name, Akhenaten. History has dubbed him the ‘heretic king’ because he tried to dethrone the gods of Egypt and establish a cult of worship to the ‘One God’, whom he called ‘Aten’.  The art of his day almost always pictured him with full female breasts and broad hips. This may or may not have been a real condition caused by faulty genes. In any case, Akhenaten seems to have raised Nefertiti to almost as high a status as himself. The royal couple is often pictured wearing almost identical clothing and wigs. One Egyptian scholar suggest that Akhenaten made war on the Eygyptian gods because of his Transsexual desire to be a girl. He may have made this request to Amen-Min. When it went ungranted, he had all the penises removed from all the statues of the gods.  (3)>>King Smenkhare.There appears to be a lot of mystery surrounding King Tut mother’s life, and there are several reasons for this obscurity. It could partly be to King Tut’s father, Akhenaten, bringing radical changes to politics and religion during his reign; therefore, causing much turmoil amongst the population. It seems that most of the royal records that held the key to Tutankhamen’s family lineage were destroyed soon after Akhenaten’s death. Akhenaten upset the balance of the culture and region so much so, that many pharaohs after him went to great lengths to erase him from history. It looks as if his son also partook in this practice. So who was King Tut’s mother ?  Meritaten appears as a Great Royal Wife in the tomb of Meryre II in Amarna. She is depicted alongside her husband, Pharaoh Ankhkheperure Smenkhare-djeserkheperu. The scene shows the royal couple bestowing honors and gifts on Meryre. The scene appears on the wall adjacent to the wall depicting the Durbar of year 12.  Smenkhare may have served as a co-regent to Akhenaten. Meritaten was the Great Royal Wife to Smenkhare, while Nefertiti continued as the consort of Akhenaten Nefertiti still held the Great Royal Wife title in year 16, hence Smenkhare must have been a co-regent or otherwise ruled with his wife Meritaten sometime after year 16 of Akhenaten.^]Meritaten is mentioned on gold daisies that decorated a garment found in Tutankhamen's tomb. She is also mentioned on a wooden box meant to contain linen garments. The box mentions two kings: Neferkheperure-Waenre (Akhenaten) and Ankhkheperure-mr-waenre, Neferneferuaten-mr-waenre and the Great Royal Wife Meritaten.According to some scholars such as J.P. Allen, Ankhkheperure Smenkhkare ruled together with Meritaten, but in the year following Akhenaten's death Smenkhkare himself died. The theory is that Meritaten was the 'king's daughter' Akenkeres who is recorded in Manetho's Epitome to have assumed the throne for herself as the female king Neferneferuaten.^] Neferneferuaten is assigned a reign of 2 years and 1 month and is placed in Manetho's account as the immediate predecessor of Rathothis, who is believed to be Tutankhamun. (4)>> Nefertiti. In the regal year 12, Nefertiti's name ceases to be found. Some think she either died from a plague that swept through the area or fell out of favour, but recent theories have denied this claim.Shortly after her disappearance from the historical record, Akhenaten took on a co-regent with whom he shared the throne of Egypt. This has caused considerable speculation as to the identity of that person. One theory states that it was Nefertiti herself in a new guise as a female king, following the historical role of other women leaders such as Sobkneferu and Hatshepsut. Another theory introduces the idea of there being two co-regents, a male son, Smenkhkare, and Nefertiti under the name Neferneferuaten (translated as "The Aten is radiant of radiance [because] the beautiful one is come" or "Perfect One of the Aten's Perfection").Some scholars are adamant about Nefertiti assuming the role of co-regent during or after the death of Akhenaten. Jacobus Van Dijk, responsible for the Amarna section of the Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, believes that Nefertiti indeed became co-regent with her husband, and that her role as queen consort was taken over by her eldest daughter, Meryetaten (Meritaten) with whom Akhenaten had several children. (The taboo against incest did not exist for the royal families of Egypt.) Also, it is Nefertiti's four images that adorn Akhenaten's sarcophagus, not the usual goddesses, which indicates her continued importance to the pharaoh up to his death and refutes the idea that she fell out of favour. It also shows her continued role as a deity, or semi-deity, with Akhenaten.On the other hand, Cyril Aldred, author of Akhenaten: King of Egypt, states that a funerary shawabti found in Akhenaten's tomb indicates that Nefertiti was simply a queen regnant, not a co-regent and that she died in the regal year 14 of Akhenaten's reign, her daughter dying the year before. (5)>> Aten The Aten, the sun-disk, is first referred to as a deity in The Story of Sinuhe from the 12th dynasty, in which the deceased king is described as rising as god to the heavens and uniting with the sun-disk, the divine body merging with its maker. By analogy, the term "silver aten" was sometimes used to refer to the moon. The solar Aten was extensively worshipped as a god in the reign of Amenhotep III, when it was depicted as a falcon-headed man much like Ra. In the reign of Amenhotep III's successor, Amenhotep IV, the Aten became the central god of Egyptian state religion, and Amenhotep IV changed his name to Akhenaten to reflect his close link with the new supreme deity.The full title of Akhenaten's god was "Ra-Horakhty who rejoices in the horizon, in his Name as the Light which is in the sun disc." (This is the title of the god as it appears on the numerous stelae which were placed to mark the boundaries of Akhenaten's new capital at Akhetaten, modern Amarna.) This lengthy name was often shortened to Ra-Horus-Aten or just Aten in many texts, but the god of Akhenaten raised to supremacy is considered a synthesis of very ancient gods viewed in a new and different way. The god is also considered to be both masculine and feminine simultaneously. All creation was thought to emanate from the god and to exist within the god. In particular, the god was not depicted in anthropomorphic (human) form, but as rays of light extending from the sun's disk.   (6)>>Aye was one of the oldest and powerful of the advisors in Akhenaten court. It seems likely that under his influence the young King decided to abandon the city his father built and return to the traditional capital at Thebes. Aye also appears to be responsible for getting Tutankhaten to change back to supporting the original gods of Egypt instead of following his father's belief in Aten. This resulted in the young Pharaoh's name being changed from Tutankhaten to Tutankhamen. Aye's council on these matters appears to have been politically wise since these changes pleased the powerful priesthood and military leaders. The army was rebuilt and once more ventured into foreign lands to collect tribute, this time under the direction of a general who had risen up through the ranks of the army named Horemheb. (7)>> Horemheb. Horemheb was also the general in charge of the Army and may have held this post since the reign of Akhenaten.As the de-facto ruler of the country under Tutankhamun, Horemheb was a main player in moving the capital back to Thebes (modern Luxor) and restoring the old Amun religion. He was probably also responsible for changing the young king’s name to Tutankhamun from Tutankhamun. He was certainly responsible for turning the balance back against Egypt’s enemies – the Hittites in the North and the Nubians in the south. (8)>>SiPtah. Merneptah’s son Seti II (ruled 1204–1198 bc) had to face a usurper, Amenmeses, who rebelled in Nubia and was accepted in Upper Egypt. His successor, Siptah, was installed on the throne by a Syrian royal butler, Bay, who had become chancellor of Egypt. Siptah was succeeded by Seti II’s widow Tausert, who ruled as king from 1193 to 1190 bc,.....stele from the 18th dynasty of ancient Egypt (1570–1342 bce) clearly depicts a priest with a telltale paralysis and withering of his lower right leg and foot. The mummy of the pharaoh Siptah from the late 19th dynasty (1342–1197 bce) shows a similarly characteristic deformity of the left leg and foot. However, because of the sporadic appearance of the infection. Siptah ruled Egypt for almost 6 years as a young man. His stepmother and Seti II's Chief Queen, Twosret, became the Queen Regent at the Royal Court because of his relative youth. Siptah was only a child of ten or eleven years when he assumed power since a medical examination of his mummy reveals the king was a teenager of about 16 years old at death. He was tall at 1.6 metres and had curly reddish brown hair and to have likely suffered from polio with a severely deformed and crippled left foot.(9)>>Bubonic.  National Geographic News March 10, 2004. The bubonic plague, or Black Death, may have originated in ancient Egypt, according to a new study."This is the first time the plague's origins in Egypt have been backed up by archaeological evidence," said Eva Panagiotakopulu, who made the discovery. Panagiotakopulu is an archaeologist and fossil-insect expert at the University of Sheffield, England.While most researchers consider central Asia as the birthplace of the deadly epidemic, the new study—published recently in the Journal of Biogeography—suggests an alternate starting point.Documented in medical papyri as well as archaeological findings, and re-echoed in biblical texts, a plague entered Egypt's main harbor, Avaris, around 1715 BC. As a result, the country was severely weakened at a time when it was already facing serious sociopolitical issues: crumbling central government, immigration, foreign influence, and the rise in power of the army and of warlords. The Hebrews, one of the ethnic groups within the Avaris area, appeared immune amidst the devastation of the plague. This immunity was key to identify the etiological agent of the epidemic: Francisella tularensis, the Gram-negative bacterium passed by ticks, and that causes tularemia. (10>>Pa-ra-mes-su, ( Ramses I ) .was of non-royal birth, being born into a noble military family from the Nile delta region, perhaps near the former Hyksos capital of Avaris. He was a son of a troop commander called Seti. His uncle Khaemwaset, an army officer married Tamwadjesy, the matron of the Harem of Amun, who was a relative of Huy, the viceroy of Kush, an important state post. This shows the high status of Ramesses' family. Ramesses I found favor with Horemheb, the last pharaoh of the tumultuousEighteenth dynasty, who appointed the former as his Vizier. Ramesses also served as the High Priest ofAmun – as such, he would have played an important role in the restoration of the old religion following the Amarna heresy of a generation earlier, under Akhenaten.Horemheb himself had been a nobleman from outside the immediate royal family, who rose through the ranks of the Egyptian army to serve as the royal advisor to Tutankhamun and Ay and, ultimately, Pharaoh. Since Horemheb was childless, he ultimately chose Ramesses to be his heir in the final years of his reign presumably because Ramesses I was both an able administrator and had a son (Seti I) and a grandson (the future Ramesses II) to succeed him and thus avoid any succession difficulties. (11)>>brought up and out of  from Egypt .  The idea of the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt , perhaps would have taken place somewhat during the turbulent years of Akhenaten, Aye and death of Tutankhamen would seem less likely ,but it would have been a perfect time for any large body of slaves to escape , since the central government collapsed during the four year rule of Aye . Aye succeeded Tutankhamun as Pharaoh, but ruled only a few years before he too mysteriously disappeared The army commander, Horemheb, married a surviving heiress (believed to be Mutnodjme, a sister of Nefertiti) of the royal line and became Pharaoh in his place. It was during Horemheb's reign that Ramses was appointed commander of the Egyptian army. Ramses had formerly been the mayor of Zarw, and upon his appointment as army commander, he began to expand the fortress city of Zarw which was renamed Pi-Ramses (the House of Ramses) in his own honor Renewed building at Zarw was later inititated by Ramses II.When Horemheb died without heir and was succeeded by Ramses, the Egyptian 18th Dynasty came to an end. In the Sinai desert, at the location known as Mount Sarabit, there are the remains of an ancient Egyptian temple. It was here that the archaeologist Flinders Petrie found an exquisite statue of Akhenaten's mother, Queen Tiye. It was also here that a stele set up by Pharaoh Ramses I was found which declared that the Aten and all its dominion were now under his rule. What more logical location would there be for such a stele than at the very spot where Akhenaten (Moses) would have spent much of his time in exile? What other reason would Ramses have had to place this monument in such a remote area?