Smenkhkare
Smenkhkare was an ancient Egyptian pharaoh of unknown background who lived and ruled during the Amarna Period of the 18th Dynasty. Smenkhkare was married to Meritaten, the daughter of Akhenaten, Smenkhkare's probable co-regent. Since the Amarna period was subject to a large-scale condemnation of memory by later pharaohs, very little can be said with certainty about Smenkhkare, who therefore remains subject to immense speculation.
Some researchers believe that Smenkhkare was the same person as female pharaoh Neferneferuaten, while others maintain they were two different individuals. This article follows the stance that Smenkhkare was a male ruler, separate from Neferneferuaten.
Origin and family
Smenkhkare's origins are unknown. It is assumed that he was a member of the royal family, likely either a brother or son of the pharaoh Akhenaten. If he was Akhenaten's brother, his mother was likely either Tiye or Sitamun. If a son of Akhenaten, he was presumably an older brother of Tutankhamun, as he succeeded the throne ahead of him; his mother was likely an unknown, lesser wife. An alternative suggestion, based on objects from the tomb of Tutankhamun, is that Smenkhkare was the son of Akhenaten's older brother, Thutmose and an unknown woman, possibly one of his sisters.Smenkhkare is known to have married Akhenaten's eldest daughter, Meritaten, who was his Great Royal Wife. Inscriptions mention a King's Daughter named Meritaten Tasherit, who may be the daughter of Meritaten and Smenkhkare. Furthermore, Smenkhkare has been put forth as a candidate for the mummy in KV55. If so, he would be the father of Tutankhamun.
Reign as pharaoh
Length of reign
Clear evidence for a sole reign for Smenkhkare has not yet been found. There are few artifacts that attest to his existence at all, and so it is assumed his reign was short. A wine docket from "the house of Smenkhkare" attests to Regnal Year 1. A second wine docket dated to Year 1 refers to him as "Smenkhkare, " and may indicate that he died during his first regnal year.Some Egyptologists have speculated about the possibility of a two- or three-year reign for Smenkhkare based on a number of wine dockets from Amarna that lack a king's name but bear dates for regnal years 2 and 3. However, they could belong to the other, female, Amarna king who had an attested Year 3 such as Neferneferuaten and are not definitive proof either way.
Smenkhkare Hall
While there are few monuments or artifacts that attest to Smenkhkare's existence, there is a major addition to the Amarna palace complex that bears his name. It was built in approximately Year 15 and was likely built for a significant event related to him.Theories of timing of Smenkhkare's reign
Academic consensus has yet to be reached about when exactly Smenkhkare ruled as pharaoh and where he falls in the timeline of Amarna. In particular, the confusion of his identity compared to that of Pharaoh Neferneferuaten has led to considerable academic debate about the order of kings in the late Amarna Period. Aidan Dodson suggests that Smenkhkare did not have a sole reign and only served as Akhenaten's co-regent for about a year around Regnal Year 13. James Peter Allen once depicted Smenkhkare as the successor to Neferneferuaten in 2009. and Marc Gabolde has suggested that after Smenkhkare's reign, Meritaten succeeded him as Neferneferuaten. But after the discovery of a Year 16 date for Akhenaten's Great King's Wife, Nefertiti, which established that she was still alive in Akhenaten's Year 16, Professor J.P. Allen updated his opinion and accepted the hypothesis that Neferneferuaten must be Nefertiti herself in a published GM 249 paper titled “The Amarna Succession Revised":Co-regency with Akhenaten
Per Dodson's theory, Smenkhkare served only as co-regent with Akhenaten and never had an individual rule and Nefertiti became co-regent and eventual successor to Akhenaten. Smenkhkare and Meritaten appear together in the tomb of Meryre II at Amarna, rewarding Meryre. There, Smenkhkare wears the khepresh crown, however he is called the son-in-law of Akhenaten. Further, his name appears only during Akhenaten's reign without certain evidence to attest to a sole reign. The names of the king have since been cut out but were recorded around 1850 by Karl Lepsius. Additionally, a calcite from Tutankhamun's tomb displays the full double cartouches of both pharaohs. However, this is the only object known to carry both names side-by-side. This evidence has been taken by some Egyptologists to indicate that Akhenaten and Smenkhkare were co-regents. However, the scene in Meryre's tomb is undated and Akhenaten is neither depicted nor mentioned in the tomb. The jar may simply be a case of one king associating himself with a predecessor. The simple association of names, particularly on everyday objects, is not conclusive of a co-regency.Smenkhkare as successor to Neferneferuaten
Arguing against the co-regency theory, Allen suggests that Neferneferuaten followed Akhenaten and that upon her death, Smenkhkare ascended as pharaoh. Allen once proposed that following Nefertiti's death in Year 13 or 14, her daughter Neferneferuaten-tasherit became Pharaoh Neferneferuaten. After Neferneferuaten's short rule of two or three years, according to Allen, Smenkhkare became pharaoh. Under this theory, both pharaohs succeeded Akhenaten: Neferneferuaten as the chosen successor and Smenkhkare as a rival with the same prenomen, perhaps to challenge Akhenaten's unacceptable choice. However, a hieratic inscription discovered at the limestone quarry at Deir Abu Hinnis suggests that Nefertiti was alive in Akhenaten's Year 16, undermining this theory. There, Nefertiti is referred to as the pharaoh's Great Royal Wife. As noted above, in an updated 2016 Gottinger Miszellen paper titled “The Amarna Succession Revised" published in light of Vander Perre's discovery, J.P. Allen now accepts that the female pharaoh was not Akhenaten's granddaughter Neferneferuaten Tasherit but rather Queen Nefertiti herself who is known to have used the Neferneferuaten title in her lifetime as Akhenaten's queen and likely have proclaimed herself as a female king of Egypt when her husband died.Furthermore, work is believed to have halted on the Amarna tombs shortly after Year 13. Therefore, the depiction of Smenkhkare in Meryre's tomb must date to no later than Year 13. For him to have succeeded Neferneferuaten means that aside from a lone wine docket, he left not a single trace over the course of five to six years.
Meritaten as successor to Smenkhkare
In comparison to the theories mentioned above, Marc Gabolde has advocated that Smenkhkare's Great Royal Wife, Meritaten, became Pharaoh Neferneferuaten after her husband's death. The main argument against this is from Tutankhamun's tomb that lists Akhenaten, Neferneferuaten, and Meritaten as three separate individuals. There, Meritaten is explicitly listed as Great Royal Wife. Further, various private stelae depict the female pharaoh with Akhenaten. However under this theory, Akhenaten would be dead by the time Meritaten became pharaoh as Neferneferuaten. Gabolde suggest that these depictions are retrospective. Yet since these are private cult stelae it would require a number of people to get the same idea to commission a retrospective, commemorative stela at the same time. Allen notes that the everyday interaction portrayed in them more likely indicates two living people.Identity and confusion over regnal name
There has been much confusion in identifying artifacts related to Smenkhkare because another pharaoh from the Amarna Period bears the same or similar royal titulary. In 1978, it was proposed that there were two individuals using the same name: a male king Smenkhkare and a female Neferneferuaten. Neferneferuaten has since been identified as a female pharaoh who ruled during the Amarna Period and is generally accepted as a separate person from Smenkhkare. Neferneferuaten is theorized to be either Nefertiti or Meritaten. The previous hypothesis that she was Neferneferuaten Tasherit by the Egyptologist James Peter Allen in a 2009 paper was later rejected by the same scholar in a later 2016 paper in favour of Nefertiti with the publication of the Year 16 date showing that Nefertiti was still alive in Akhenaten's second last year of rule.After their initial rediscovery, Smenkhkare and Neferneferuaten were assumed to be the same person because of their similar prenomen. Typically, throne names in Ancient Egypt were unique. Thus, the use of similar titulary led to a great deal of confusion among Egyptologists. For the better part of a century, the repetition of throne names was taken to mean that Smenkhare changed his name to Neferneferuaten at some point, probably upon the start of his sole reign. Indeed, Petrie makes exactly that distinction in his 1894 excavation notes. Later, a different set of names emerged using the same: "Ankhkheperure mery Neferkheperure Neferneferuaten mery Wa en Re ".
Smenkhkare can be differentiated from Neferneferutaten by the lack of an epithet associated with his throne name. James Peter Allen pointed out the name 'Ankhkheperure' nearly always included the epithet 'desired of Wa en Re' when coupled with the nomen 'Neferneferuaten'. There were no occasions where 'Ankhkheprure plus epithet' occurred alongside 'Smenkhkare;' nor was plain 'Ankhkheperure' ever found associated with the nomen Neferneferuaten. However, differentiating between the two individuals when 'Ankhkheperure' occurs alone is complicated by the Pawah graffito from TT139. Here, Ankhkheperure is used alone twice when referring to Neferneferutaten. In some instances, a female version 'Ankhetkheperure' occurs; in this case the individual is Neferneferuaten.
The issue of a female Neferneferuaten was finally settled for the remaining holdouts when Allen confirmed Marc Gabolde's findings that objects from Tutankhamun's tomb originally inscribed for Neferneferuaten which had been read using the epithet "...desired of Akhenaten" were originally inscribed as Akhet-en-hyes or "effective for her husband."