Neferneferuaten:
Glorious is the Splendour
of the Sun
By Robin Gordon
Auksford 2024
©
Copyright
Robin Gordon, 2024
PART V:
NEBKHEPERURE
22.
A Letter from the Queen
As the days passed Nakhtmin began to remember more details
about
the attack on Tutankhamun’s chariot – details that
had
perhaps slipped his mind because of the trauma of witnessing the death
of his beloved King, unless, perhaps, they had been suggested to him by
Ay. The impression that the attackers were Apiru bribed by
Horemheb to kill the King was spread by hints and suggestions, and even
by half-hearted and unconvincing denials by Ay, words that confirmed
that he himself could scarcely believe that the sacred person of the
God-King of Kemet, the son of Re, creator of the world, could ever be
attacked by any loyal subject, and damned Horemheb as the
King’s
assassin far more effectively than any attack.
Almost the whole court became convinced that Tutankhamun had
been
murdered on the orders of Horemheb and that the only way to prevent the
regicide taking the crown was to speed through the King’s
obsequies and enthrone Ay.
Maya remained doubtful, and perhaps he was behind the
suggestion
that Queen Ankhesenamun should become regent until a suitable prince
could be found by tracing the royal line back. Following
quiet
suggestions from Ay, his supporters clamoured for him to marry the
dowager Queen and thus cement his claim to the throne by a further
connection to the old royal family in addition to his claim to be Queen
Tiye’s brother.
For Ankhesenamun this latest blow was traumatic.
She had
lost her beloved Tutankhamun, and, despite the version circulating
around the government and the court, she was well aware that it had
been Ay and not Horemheb who had persuaded the young King to join the
campaign among the rebellious vassal states. She had followed
with dismay Ay’s propaganda campaign, his tales of the
warrior
Kings of the past, his gifts of weapons and armour and his assurances
that Tutankhamun, despite his limp, could be as great a warrior as any
of his ancestors. She had felt suspicious of his motives all
along, and, now that her worst fears were realised and her husband was
dead, she was sure that Ay, and not Horemheb, was behind the murder
– and now she was expected to accept Ay as her new husband!
“Mmnngh!
When I am King”
he sniggered, “you will have the honour of being one of my many wives,
and your only hope of
being anything more than
a minor concubine will be to give me a son and heir to
rule the Two Lands after
me,” he sneered. “Don’t
think you can spend your time in the House of the Royal
Children*1
in the Fayum with
all the other wives and concubines I’m going to
inherit. Don’t
imagine you are going to have
a life of
leisure, supervising the weavers and gossiping with the other
women. I’m going to keep you here in my
palace. I need
a son and heir, and who
better to give me one than
a princess of
the old royal family shee-hee-heee!
I’m going to enjoy
making you submit
to me, my pretty little princess.”
Here
his hands strayed towards her and touched her body. She
pulled away in horror.
“That
is a grave and serious
insult, my pretty one,” he hissed.
“I’m going to be King, and if you pull away
from me
when I want to embrace
you, I shall have to have you flogged,
hee-hee-hee-heee. You’ve been queen
once, to that stupid
limping boy,
now you’re going to be the plaything of a real man, shee-heee-heee!”
Ankhesenamun,
bereft of her beloved brother and husband, Tutankhamun, dreaded more
than anything else the embraces of this foul sniggering hypocrite whom
she knew, as sure as anything could be known, had arranged his
murder. She knew it beyond all reasonable doubt. He
had
been plotting it for months. Whom could she tell?
Even
Maya, the Overseer of the King’s Treasury, a man totally
devoted
to the King, would scarcely have believed her. All she could
do
was weep with her ladies-in-waiting and tell them what she
believed. Eventually some of these girls would tell their
fathers
or their brothers, but, for the time being, the Queen’s
suspicions remained hidden and Ay continued his triumphal progress to
the throne.
Ankhesenamun wept inconsolably for several days. If
only
there were a prince to whom she could be married. If there
were
no prince of Kemet, could there be a prince from her mother’s
people? Alas, no, for Mitanni was now a vassal state of
Hatti,
its ruler one of those who had betrayed Tushratta. At last
there
formed in her mind a plan so audacious that she scarcely could believe
she had ever thought of it. She put it aside as impossible,
but
then she thought of it again and gain. If she were not to be
married to a man old enough to be her grandfather, a man who had
planned the murder of her husband, it seemed to be the only possible
way of escape.
She decided to write a letter to Suppiluliuma, the King of
Hatti.
She summoned a scribe and dictated the following letter,
which he
wrote on papyrus in the everyday cursive script.
“I am the King’s Wife,”*2
she dictated. “My husband is dead and I have no
son.
I am afraid. People say you have many sons. If I am
not to
be forced to marry a servant, I beg you to send me one of your
sons. I will marry him and make him King of Kemet.”
She ordered the scribe not to have the message translated
into
Babylonian and copied onto clay tablets. The longer it stayed
in
Waset and the more stages it went through, the greater the chance of
Ay’s agents discovering her plan. The scribe was
instructed
to hide the papyrus document in his tunic and to take passage on the
next boat for Men-Nefer. From there he would transfer to
another
boat for a coastal port where he could catch a ship to take him to
Gubla.
The Queen advised him to head for one of the more western
ports.
Ay’s agents would be watching to ensure that no messages were
sent to Horemheb, but if he set out from the most westerly port and
took a ship that went directly to Gubla without calling at anywhere
further south he might pass undetected.
In Gubla he could purchase a horse and chariot with the gold
Ankhesenamun gave him and set out to find King Suppiluliuma, who might
be in his capital city of Hattusa or, more likely, somewhere in the
war-zone adding new conquests to his ever-growing empire.
It was about three weeks later when the messenger found King
Suppiluliuma. He was on campaign in the land of
Carchemish.
His generals had just taken Amqa*3
and he himself was preparing to take the city of Carchemish.
His
servants told him a messenger had come with a letter from the Queen of
Kemet. A scribe translated the unfamiliar language, and the
King
was astonished at what he heard, saying that nothing like this had ever
happened in all of history.
He called his chamberlain, Hattu-Zittish, and sent him to Kemet to
discover the truth behind the Queen’s letter. He
knew that
the King of Kemet was dead, but he also knew that the King’s
ministers were afraid that his conquest and destruction of Amqa was
just the first step of a campaign to take all the vassal kingdoms that
owed allegiance to Kemet, and perhaps even to attack the Black Land
itself. Who knew what sort of trickery might be behind this
invitation, this hitherto unheard-of invitation from the ruler of a
great power to ask the ruler of a rival power to take control of her
country?
Hattu-Zittish arrived in Waset about eighteen days later. On
the
advice of Ankhesenamun’s servant he came not as the important
envoy of the Great King of Hatti but like a private citizen, a merchant
who hoped to sell some pretty things from the north to the unhappy
widow. It was an appropriate deception. He arrived
at
Ankhesenamun’s palace unchallenged, conversed with her, told
her
that his King was cautious and feared deception, received from her a
further letter to his master, and departed quietly, now convinced that
the Queen was sincere in her desire to marry a Hattian prince and make
him King of Kemet.
The Queen’s second letter to the King of Hatti read: "Why do
you
say, 'they are trying to deceive me'? If I had a son, should
I
write to a foreign country in a manner humiliating to me and to my
country. You do not believe me and you even say so to me. He
who
was my husband is dead and I have no son. Should I then
perhaps
take one of my servants and make of him my husband? I have written to
no other country. I have written only to you. They say that you have
many sons. Give me one of your sons and he will be my husband and lord
of the land of Kemet."
Suppiluliuma was convinced by this letter and by the report from
Hattu-Zittish that the Queen was in genuine distress and completely
sincere. He decided to send his son Zannanza.
Ay’s spies in the Queen’s household reported to him
that a
Hattian merchant had been closeted with her for several hours of
private conversation. Another spy on board the boat going
downriver was able through apparently casual conversation with the
man’s attendants, to identify him as the chamberlain of the
King
of Hatti. Ay sent Nakhtmin to question
Ankhesenamun’s
ladies in waiting, and, by a mixture of bluster and threats, he forced
them to tell him her plan. Ay himself then confronted
Ankhesenamun. He told her he knew of her treasonous attempt
to
hand the Two Lands over to their greatest enemy.
“I have never heard of
such disloyalty,”
he ranted. “Nnngh!
Nnnngh! That a daughter of a King of Kemet, a
granddaughter of
our great King Nebmaatre,
should do such a thing!
I am your
King now, and you will obey ME!
I will also
be your husband,
and you will obey ME
as your lord and
master.”
“I will never marry you,” stormed
Ankhesenamun.
“You are old enough to be my grandfather and I know you
murdered
Tutankhamun. I will marry a son of King
Suppiluliuma. Even
if he is a foreigner he will make a better King than you.”
Thus Ay was warned of the coming of a Hattian prince, and made aware of
how much Ankhesenamun distrusted and detested him.
“It’s a grave
and serious insult,”
he told Tey. She ought to respect me and
realise how lucky
she will be to become one of
my concubines.”
He punished her by taking away her faithful ladies in waiting, placing
her under house arrest in his own house, and setting Tey and his
servants to keep a close watch on her.
“Mmmnngh!
There is no
escape for you,” he told her. “You will
stay here
under house-arrest until
I am crowned.
When I am King
I shall take you whether
you like it or not, shee-heee-heee-heee!”
Ankhesenamun
The version emanating from Ay and his followers was that
Ankhesenamun, distressed beyond measure by the deaths of her babies and
the mysterious death, possibly murder, of her beloved husband, had
begged Ay to take her under his protection. She was, it was
reported, terrified that an ambitious man would force her to marry him
so that he could claim the crown, and she needed the protection of a
man she could trust.
Nakhtmin was the only one to whom Ay revealed the whole
truth,
for Nakhtmin was assigned a special task: he had to send out spies to
watch for a Hattian prince and to make sure that that prince never
arrived in Kemet. Meanwhile Ay continued his preparations for
the
funeral of the beloved boy-king.
Notes
*1 The
House of the Royal Children in the Fayum
The King’s wives, daughters,
concubines and
other women lived in a palace in the Fayum, a pleasant area used as a
holiday resort, where they ran a profitable spinning and weaving
business and lived in comfort.
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*2 The King’s
wife
Translated for the King of Hatti as
Dahamanzu, an Akkadian approximation of the Egyptian words ta hemet nesu (the
King’s wife).
Back to text
*3 Amqa
There are two pieces of information used
to date
Tutankhamun’s death. One is the taking of Amqa by
Suppiluliuma and the other the flowers found in Tutankhamun’s
coffin. I believe the flowers probably came from a store of
dried
flowers kept by the funerary priests so that they were available at all
times of the year. See the Introduction, Part 7: Tutankhamun.
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